To give you the flavor and feel of the time during which Fletcher and his contemporaries wrote, below is list of fun and random, but always enlightening facts regarding Elizabethan and Jacobean England and the people and society of that time.
Alms collectors: Recovered lunatics from Bedlam, equipped with horns to draw attention and badges to establish authority, were sent out in the streets to raise money for the hospital.
Beer: The oldest alcoholic beverage in the world dates back before ancient Greek theatre. In England Europe Europe
Cuckold: In addition to describing a man whose wife has cheated on him, “cuckold” can also be used as a verb (“My wife has cuckolded me”). The word derives from the cuckoo bird: the females habitually lay their eggs in other birds’ nests, which birds are then deceived into raising chicks that are not their own.
Strangely, cuckolded men were always associated with horns, both in literature (see The Merry Wives of Windsor for such a reference) and artwork. Most scholars fail to explain this association, but at least one source conjectures as to why a man grew such pointy appendages due to his wife’s infidelity: the imaginary horns have their origins in the old custom of cutting the spurs off of cockerels when the young roosters are castrated, then planting the growths in the comb (the fleshy outgrowths atop their heads), where they develop into hornlike features that make it easy to distinguish the castrated male chickens (capons) from other fowl. These capons were traditional symbols of cuckoldry.
Devonshiring: The cutting off and burning of old pasture that would create fertile land was a common occupation in 17th century England England
Eggs: Elizabethans didn’t know whether the chicken came first or not, but in the English Renaissance, eggs were considered a powerful aphrodisiac, a kind of 17th century version of Viagra. In The Tamer Tamed, Petruccio also uses muscatel and buttered parsnips as aphrodisiacs. Yum!
Fire: On the night of September 2, 1666, a small fire broke out in a baker's shop in Pudding Lane London
Whatever the cause, the results were disastrous; the fire spread quickly and soon the whole building was aflame. In the tight-packed streets of London
The Great Fire of London devastatingly destroyed much of the city’s center, but thankfully it also killed off most of the black rats and fleas that carried the plague bacillus (aka the Bubonic Plague).
Gewgaws, or trinkets: They weren’t just for Valentine’s Day – lovers like Roland and Livia in The Tamer Tamed would exchange baubles and gifts of all kinds, including bracelets, rings, and locks of hair, all year round.
Hobbies: Sunday afternoons in England
I’th’cut, or “in the fashion”: Neither formal nor day wear altered considerably for either sex during the 16th and 17th centuries. Small changes were made, but all clothing very much represented what we would imagine original Shakespearean costume to look like.
The Elizabeth I (Hardwick House), portrait to the right depicts Queen Elizabeth in 1592. The style of her dress, while popularized during her reign, remained in fashion during King James’s reign. Such dresses were comprised of a long, pointed, and rigid bodice, and a wide skirt that was supported by hip bolsters in the drum farthingale (the platter-shaped object around the waist that caused the skirt to fall straight down). Wearing wide sleeves, low necklines, and ruffs framing their faces, ladies no longer wore caps, but rather their hair was styled high with decorative ribbons and feathers.
Men’s Fashion
For pictures and further descriptions of 17th century English
dress, please visit: http://www.historic-uk.com
Jonson, Ben (1572-1637): A famous dramatist, poet, and actor, Jonson is still well known today for his satirical plays, the most famous of which are Volpone and The Alchemist. As Master of the Revels for Charles I, Jonson penned court masques that were performed for foreign dignitaries visiting the king and his wife, Queen Anne of Denmark.
King James I inherited the throne from Queen Elizabeth I in 1603. James was the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, whom Elizabeth Elizabeth
London
Morris Dance: a British folk dance dating from the late fifteenth century. Often the women who dance wear anklets made of bells. The dance is characterized by groups of dancers who execute rhythmic step maneuvers and sometimes wield sticks or handkerchiefs (see picture to right).
Neats Tongue to Hash, or a dish of cow tongues: To make this common 17th century meal, simply follow the recipe included in The Whole Duty of a Woman: Or a Guide to the Female Sex (1696):
Boil, blanch, and slice the tongues and put the pieces into a pipkin (small pot) with raisins, mace (a spice similar to nutmeg), three or four blades, blanched almonds, and claret. Boil all together, and add a bit of sweet butter, some verjuice (sour fruit juice), and a little sugar. Strain a ladle or two of the liquor, and beat it up with the yolk of two or three eggs. Place it on a sippet (bread soaked in gravy) and garnish with slices of lemons, parsley, and pickled barberries.
YUMMY! For more delicious recipes and other information on traditional English dishes, go to:
Occupational structure of London
Incubation took only four to six days, and when the plague appeared in a household, the house was sealed, condemning the whole family to a horrible fate. A painted red cross on the door marked these homes, and at night the corpses were brought out in answer to the cry “Bring out your dead” and put in a cart and taken away to the plague pits.
The plague started in the East and quickly spread throughout Europe London
Quack doctors were popular throughout the 14th – 18th centuries. Also called mountebanks, quacks listened to people’s ailments, pretended to know exactly what their symptoms implied, and then offered completely ludicrous medical advice. For example, did you know that to remove freckles all a girl has to do is wash her face with elderflower water in the wane of the moon? Who knew cosmetic surgery could be so simple!
Ring a Ring O' Roses: The nursery rhyme is said to be a macabre parody on the horrors of the Bubonic Plague. One of the first signs of the plague was a ring of rose-colored spots, and many believed that the protection against this horrific disease was a posy of herbs. Sneezing was taken as a sure sign that you were about to die, and the last line of the poem ("We all fall down") omits the word, "dead!” Creepy.
Shrew or Scold: The historic definition of the shrew (as in Taming of the) is a poor woman who is a social outcast and likely to vent her frustrations to the nearest authority figure. Essentially, shrews and scolds (basically equivalent terms) were outspoken, strong women who had the guts to speak out against the patriarchal powers of their time. Because of their nerve, they were oftentimes punished in the same manner as “witches”: strapped to a chair (a “cucking stool” – remember the discussion of the cuckold?) on a cart and paraded through town to ensure humiliation, they were then dunked into a river numerous times. Another popular torture was the use of the “scold’s bridle,” a metal device secured to the head that painfully bound down the tongue so that the woman could not speak (her mind). Doesn’t exactly make you want to travel back in time to Shakespeare’s day, now does it?
Tea: What would the English be without their tea? Incredibly, this quintessential British drink was not introduced to Europe and the UK until the early 1600s, though legend has it that the Chinese invented it as early as 2737 B.C.E. Coffee and chocolate also came into European fashion around the same time in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. To make chocolate, cocoa beans were lightly crushed, boiled for hours with white sugar, cinnamon, Mexican pepper, cloves, aniseed, almonds, orange-flower water, and vanilla straws. It was then enriched with milk and beaten eggs. Such fine ingredients and intricate processing clearly made chocolate a luxury that only the gentry could afford: in fact, it was so extraordinarily popular with the wealthy that a lady would often have a dish of chocolate with her morning cup of tea.
Usher & 17th century servants: The usher brought the dishes up from the kitchen, directed the garnishing from the sideboard, and if bread or beer was desired on the table, he would call for it. For unexpected surprises, he always had a boy posted at the chamber door, ready to run errands, and he saw to it that the best dressed servants attended the lords and ladies of the house, while the other servants remained below and out of sight.
Elizabeth
Virgin Queen: Elizabeth I (reigned 1558-1603): Daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn,
Films about the Virgin Queen and the time of her reign: Elizabeth (1998), Elizabeth: the Golden Age (2007), Shakespeare in Love (1998).
Women were both better and worse off during the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James. With the rise of the Church of England, the convents in Great Britain
X-rated: Puritans and other moralists wrote treatises and preached loudly against the theatres, both in the 17th century and later. Some of the reasons given for their anti-theatrical prejudices were that the theatres often served as brothels. Such things really did go on at the theatres, as members of the oldest profession would meet their clients during the show and then serve as intermission entertainment.
England
Yeoman: In
In addition, Yeoman Warders, now commonly referred to as Beefeaters (see picture to right), have guarded the Tower of London
For a musical twist on the Yeoman Warder, see Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Yeomen of the Guard, or The Merryman and His Maid. One of the darkest of the famous duo’s works, this operetta tells the story of a colonel who is sentenced to be beheaded in the Tower and his bride-to-be who only wants to marry him so that she can inherit his fortunes once he’s dead.
Zennor and other Parishes: A Parish is the smallest unit of the Church organization and can refer to a township or a cluster of townships that maintain their own church (the parish church). A parish has its own priest, vicar, or clergyman to whom the tithes and ecclesiastical dues are paid.
To learn more about Zennor in particular, and to view the beautiful land that inspired the artwork of Terry Frost and Patrick Heron, and the literary masterpieces of D.H. Lawrence, visit that Parish’s official website: http://www.zennor.org/.
