But no wise man, I thinke, so kind would vse her....”
Stubbes, Anatomie of Abuses, Part ii. p. 274.
In the streets a lady of condition was preceded by a lackey carrying a stick or wand. Gentlemen were followed by their servants carrying the master’s sword. The servants were dressed in blue with the master’s badge in silver on the left arm. The men kept on their hats indoors except in warm weather. The nobles, who were mostly poor, joined with the merchant adventurers in their foreign enterprises; many of the merchants were consulted by the Sovereign and held positions of trust—for example, Gresham; yet the separation of City and Court was already beginning, as is shown by the repeated sneers of the dramatists at the vulgarity and ostentation of the City Madams. We get occasional glimpses of the lower class women and girls; they were rough in their manners and coarse in their conversation; we find them dancing in the street to the music of the tabor and the pipe; we also see them playing at ball up and down the street, like the ’prentices. They lived, like the men, on strong meat and beer; they were therefore physically strong, perhaps as strong as the young men their lovers. The richer sort of citizens had country gardens, generally small enclosures, either in or north of Moorfields, whither they resorted in the long summer evenings; their wives, it is said, used the gardens in the morning for assignations and the carrying on of intrigues.
In the morning the haunt of the gallants was St. Paul’s Cathedral. (See [Appendix VIII.]) They walked up and down the middle of the nave, called then the “Mediterranean,” exhibiting their new cloaks and their new feathers. After a few turns up and down, or when the clock struck eleven, they left the place and disappeared, going to some of the shops, the tobacconist’s, or the bookseller’s, where they took tobacco and talked about the new books. They then repaired to an ordinary and spent two or three hours over dinner, after which they went back to St. Paul’s and spent there the whole afternoon.
The merchant had his Exchange; the citizen his tavern; the gallant had the apothecary’s shop, where he bought and smoked his tobacco. For daily discourse and business the scholar, the divine, the poet, the wit, had the bookseller’s shop. “He will sit you,” said Ben Jonson, “a whole afternoon in a bookseller’s shop, reading the Greek, Italian, and Spanish.” He would read, and he would talk. Remember that in the year 1590 or thereabouts the art of printing had only been in use a hundred years; all the books were new books; every poet was printed or translated for the first time; the booksellers’ shops contained editions, always new, of ancient classics; of living poets; of foreign writers; there was far greater interest in a new book than our age can understand: as we have seen there were in London alone at least 240 poets, known and acknowledged, whose names are still remembered, and whose poems still remain Anthologies, and there was interest among the reading world in every one of them. There may have been jealousies: poets have always been a jealous folk; but there was appreciation, and there was generosity. And the bookseller’s shop was the place where all who valued new books could meet and talk of books—what talk is more delightful? What criticism more sincere than that between those who themselves belong to letters in an age when literature knows not yet the meaning of the words exhaustion or decay?
Mr. Ordish (Shakespeare’s London, p. 233) has compiled a list of Elizabethan booksellers from the title-pages of the Shakespeare quartos. Such a list was well worth making, though it cannot be considered more than a small instalment. Indeed, the literary output was so enormous during the latter half of the sixteenth century, that the number of booksellers must have been proportionately greater than at present.
The following were some of the signs:—
I. In St. Paul’s Churchyard—
At the sign of the Angel, the Fox, the Flower de Luce and the Crown, the Greyhound, the Green Dragon, the Holy Ghost, the Gun (Edward White), the Pied Bull, the Spread Eagle.
II. By St. Dunstan’s in the West—