ENGLAND IN SHAKESPEARE'S TIME.*
TOWARDS the middle of the sixteenth century, Reginald Wolfe (afterwards printer to Queen Elizabeth) conceived the idea of publishing a Universall Cosmographie of the Whole World, and therewith rdso certaine particular histories of every knowne nation. .and though adverse circumstances interfered with the execution -..of this magnificent plan—stunting it indeed in amanner suggea- .:.Live of the "parturient mountains" of Horace and the Rejected ,Addresses—yet it was not wholly without fruit. The part which - eventually saw the light consisted of the chronicles of England, Ireland, and Scotland, which Holinahed had prepared for the larger work ; but to accompany them, a certain William Harrison, who was chaplain to Lord Cobham, Rector of Radwinter in Essex, -and a man of literary notoriety at the time, was engaged to write
description of these countries. The result was the book, a
-portion of which, ender the name of Shakspere's England, is -$0w being edited for the New Shakspere Society by its director, 44r. Furnivall, and which -corresponds exactly to its title, by -furnishing minute information respecting the aspect and institu-
• tions of the England-which the poet knew. In reintroducing his -4riend of " twenty years' standing " to the reading public, Mr.
Furnivall thinks it necessary to speak in a rather deprecatory tone, even bespeaking indulgence in Prior's well-known couplet— which he strangely enough calls an old saw. But in fact, Harrison, for then:oat part, says what he has to say in a chatty, familiar manner, which is pleasant enough, though he is given to disgrea- sion, and his editor's mode of distinguishing between the first and second editions sometimes gives an appearance of intricacy to his sentences. What is somewhat remarkable, considering the shortness of the interval that separated the two writers, is the much greater frequency with which antiquated forms occur in this book than in Shakespeare. The neuter possessive pronoun, for in- stance, which is found some twelve or fifteen times in the latter (never however, before Romeo and Julie41,597), is unknown to Harri- son, while such expressions as " fro " (for from) "so grim as," "him listeth," &c., which one would rather expect in Chaucer, are not -uncommon. The information with which he supplies us, is, as his editor justly remarks in his " Forewords," most comprehensive - as well as minute, and yet there is one point on which he is silent —though giving abundant details on matters with which readers of that-time must have been equally familiar. Perhaps it was • Shaksperds England. Published by the New Shakespeare Society. hardly to be expected that he should care to dwell on the per- sonal characteristics of the people whom he was addressing, yet one could wish that he had done so, as his explicit testimony on the point would have been valuable. The English of that day are represented as a fair-haired, light-eyed race, whereas three- fourths of the people one meets now-a-days are dark in both these respects. Why is this? There has been no 'large admixture of southern blood since the Conquest and the centuries which immediately followed—when, indeed, it was much larger than is generally supposed. It may soothe the national vanity to connect our conquerors rather with the kindred race inhabiting Scandinavia than with the French, but a very slight examination of facts shows, that they point the other way. The female half of his pedigree, from Rollo's name- less bonne cmaie, to Arlette, the daughter of the tanner of Falaise, proves the Conqueror to have been French—that is to say, Roman- Provincial—in all but name, and his non-Norman followers were pure Provincials—the rapscallions of Northern Gaul, as Palgrave quaintly terms them—while since the original settlers in Normandy were not generally accompanied by their women, and did not, except the Danish colony in Harold Blaatand's time, receive any reinforcement from the North, Frenchmen in 1066 were pro- bably (to adapt Feates' words) as like Normans as pilchards are to herrings, the Normans the bigger. But however great may have been the admixture at this time, there has been none since to account for the change, which is apparently taking place in the national appearance. Can Knox's theories be correct, and is the race, after passing through a Saxon and Danish phase, re- verting to an earlier dark-haired type ?
But whatever the composition of our ancestors' blood may have been, that they took due care to maintain it in full vigour, that in fact they lived like the proverbial fighting- cock, is abundantly evident from the chapter on the "food and diet" of the English, where, after recording the national partiality to butchers' meat generally, and especially that addiction to beef which furnishes the French nobles on the eve of Agincourt with a contemptuous allusion, he gives us a long and most appetising list of other " delicate" served at the tables of the richer classes. It is observable that Iago's descriptions of the Englishman, as being so exquisite in drinking, receives no countenance whatever from the Rector of Radwinter, who, on the contrary, takes occasion to praise the "nobleman, merchant, and frugal artificer" for their abstemious- ness, and though he cannot " clears the meaner sort of husbandmen and countrie inhabitants" [Christopher Sly must have been sketched from nature !] of occasional excess, he expressly states that "they take it generallie as no small disgrace if they happen to be cup- shotten." But if his countrymen were not at this time liable to the charge that lago brings against them, it most certainly was not that, like Gonzalo in his imaginary island, they 'soaped being drunk for want of wine, since our author takes care to mention that there were no fewer than eighty-six sorts commonly in use, fifty-six light and thirty stronger varieties,—specifying among others of the latter the malmsey of Richard III., and that mar- vellous searching wine, canary, which put Mistress Doll into such an excellent good temporality. Nor were native drinks wanting. Ale and beer of course occupy the most prominent position, several of their varieties being enumerated, and their preparation described at some length ; but though Ypocras, wormwood wine, cider, and perry receive due mention, the post of honour is re- served for a beverage which our author compares to the ambrosia or nectar of the Greeks,—namely, the Welsh metheglin, of which we hear from Sir Hugh Evans, and less appropriately from Biron. How did metheglin and wort come to be so well known at the Court of Navarre ? Probably another instance of the attention to local colouring for which Shakespeare has been praised, because, forsooth, the Venetians Salarcio and lago (if the latter was a Venetian), aware once each by a deity of pagan Rome ! Pane- gyrists would do well to remember that praise undeserved, though it may not be intended for slander in disguise, has very much the same effect, and at all events, Shakespeare is surely strong enough to dispense with such strained and unnatural support. Local colouring? What is there distinctively Italian about Launcelot or old Gobbo, with his dish of doves ? Are not Dogberry and and Verges English caricatures? Is not the forest of Ardennes in England, lions and palm-trees notwithstanding, and Sir Toby Belch an Englishman,—a distant cousin of Falstaff apparently, who has, by some accident, got himself transplanted into Elyria, just as Sir Andrew • Aguecheek is a connection of the Slender family ? The truth seems to be that, satisfied with his larger fidelity, the poet cared infinitely little about-such matters,—as
little as he did about making Hector talk of Aristotle in Priam's council-chamber, about allowing Thersites to allude to the sup- posed properties of the potato more than 2,000 years before the discovery of America, about sending Kings John and Philip Augustus to besiege Angiers with artillery, about Henry V. talking of bearding the Grand Turk at Constantinople while that city was still in the possession of the Greek Emperors or any other of his anachronisms. But to return to Harrison, he. nowhere shows himself inclined to undervalue the national advantages, missing, on the contrary, few opportunities of di- lating on the vast superiority of the English to their Continental neighbours, but when he comes to their apparel and attire his
patriotic self-complacency entirely deserts him, and he can hardly find words strong enough to condemn their fickleness and caprice. After describing how Andrew Boord, endeavouring to give a written account of the English dress, was at length compelled to abandon his attempt in despair, and to resort to the device of drawing a naked man with a pair of shears in one hand and a piece of cloth in the other, to signify the national inability to re- main satisfied with any one thing, and eagerness to adopt new fashions, he continues thus :-
" Certes, this writer (otherwise being a lewd [popish hypocrite] and vngracious priest) showed himself herein not to be [altogether] void of lodgement, sith the phantasticall follie of our nation [even from the courtier to the carter] is such, that no forme of apparell liketh vs longer than the first garment is in the wearing, if it continue so long, and be not laid aside to receiue some other trinket newlie devised by the fickle-headed tailors, who couet to have seuerall trickes in cutting, thereby to draw fond customers to more expense of mono. For my part, I can tell better how to enueigh against this enormitie, than describe [anie certaintie of] our attire : sithence such is our mutabilitie, that to daie there is none to the Spanish guise, to morrow the French toles are most fine and delectable, yer long no such apparell as that which is after the high Alman fashion, by and by the Turkish maner is geperallie best liked of, otherwise the Morisco gowns, the Barbarian sleenes [the mandilion worne to Collie weston ward, and the short French breches] make such a comelie vesture, that except it were a dog in a doublet, you shall not see anie so disguised as are my countrie men of England."
Does not one seem in part of this quotation to be reading Portia's description of her oddly-suited English admirer, with his Italian doublet, his French round hose, his German bonnet, and his cosmopolitan behaviour ?
But many and interesting as are the passages which tempt quota- tion, and the subjects which invite remark, want of space obliges us.to leave them all, with one or two exceptions, unnoticed ; and to refer our readers to the work itself, confident that though they may stumble on an " unlucky chapter " here and there, they will, viewing the book as a whole, join with us in thanking the New Shakspere Society and Mr. Furnivall for publishing it, and thereby rendering accessible to the general public its copious stores of information respecting the manners and customs of our ancestors at a most interesting epoch in our history. And now for our exceptions. Behind the 133,00G men of whom Captain Hosier speaks as constituting the English land forces at the time of the Armada must have stood a very considerable reserve, for Harrison tells us that the muster-rolls of 1574-5 showed a number exceeding 1,100,000,—raw troops, no doubt, and with their im- perfect discipline, elementary organisation, and inchoate training, very unfit to cope with the formidable veterans, to whom, had Parma succeeded in crossing from the Low Countries, they would have been opposed ; still, as campaigns were not then an affair of a few weeks or months, their chances were not so hopeless as might at first sight appear. Passing to the chapter on punishments, we ,find at page 227 a passage which affords fresh and curious illustration of the oft-repeated truth that,—
" Thar nis no newe gyse that it nas old," for the Guillotine, whose origin is almost universally ascribed to the French Revolution, appears to have been in full operation at Halifax centuries before that event ! Embryonic and undeveloped apparently, but few readers will doubt that in the machine here described, as in its seeds and weak beginnings, lay intreausured the grim form of the Despot of the Place de Greve. With a fine sense of retributive justice, however, the Yorkshire authorities, in cases of tlegt, made the object stolen the actual executioner of the thief ; so literally correct may be Edgar's words,- " The Gods are just, and of our pleasant vices
Make instruments to plague us."
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