The People for whom Shakespeare Wrote | Page 9

classes in England--gentlemen, citizens, yeomen, and
artificers or laborers. Besides the nobles, any one can call himself a
gentleman who can live without work and buy a coat of arms--though
some of them "bear a bigger sail than his boat is able to sustain." The
complaint of sending abroad youth to be educated is an old one;
Harrison says the sons of gentlemen went into Italy, and brought
nothing home but mere atheism, infidelity, vicious conversation, and
ambitious, proud behavior, and retained neither religion nor patriotism.
Among citizens were the merchants, of whom Harrison thought there
were too many; for, like the lawyers, they were no furtherance to the
commonwealth, but raised the price of all commodities. In former,
free-trade times, sugar was sixpence a pound, now it is two shillings
sixpence; raisins were one penny, and now sixpence. Not content with
the old European trade, they have sought out the East and West Indies,
and likewise Cathay and Tartary, whence they pretend, from their now
and then suspicious voyages, they bring home great commodities. But
Harrison cannot see that prices are one whit abated by this enormity,
and certainly they carry out of England the best of its wares.
The yeomen are the stable, free men, who for the most part stay in one
place, working the farms of gentlemen, are diligent, sometimes buy the
land of unthrifty gentlemen, educate their sons to the schools and the
law courts, and leave them money to live without labor. These are the
men that made France afraid. Below these are the laborers and men
who work at trades, who have no voice in the commonwealth, and
crowds of young serving-men who become old beggars,
highway-robbers, idle fellows, and spreaders of all vices. There was a
complaint then, as now, that in many trades men scamped their work,
but, on the whole, husbandmen and artificers had never been so good;
only there were too many of them, too many handicrafts of which the
country had no need. It appears to be a fault all along in history that
there are too many of almost every sort of people.

In Harrison's time the greater part of the building in cities and towns
was of timber, only a few of the houses of the commonalty being of
stone. In an old plate giving a view of the north side of Cheapside,
London, in 1638, we see little but quaint gable ends and rows of small
windows set close together. The houses are of wood and plaster, each
story overhanging the other, terminating in sharp pediments; the roofs
projecting on cantilevers, and the windows occupying the whole front
of each of the lower stories. They presented a lively and gay
appearance on holidays, when the pentices of the shop fronts were hung
with colored draperies, and the balconies were crowded with spectators,
and every pane of glass showed a face. In the open country, where
timber was scarce, the houses were, between studs, impaneled with
clay-red, white, or blue. One of the Spaniards who came over in the
suite of Philip remarked the large diet in these homely cottages: "These
English," quoth he, "have their houses made of sticks and dirt, but they
fare commonly so well as the king." "Whereby it appeareth," comments
Harrison, "that he liked better of our good fare in such coarse cabins,
than of their own thin diet in their prince-like habitations and palaces."
The timber houses were covered with tiles; the other sort with straw or
reeds. The fairest houses were ceiled within with mortar and covered
with plaster, the whiteness and evenness of which excited Harrison's
admiration. The walls were hung with tapestry, arras-work, or painted
cloth, whereon were divers histories, or herbs, or birds, or else ceiled
with oak. Stoves had just begun to be used, and only in some houses of
the gentry, "who build them not to work and feed in, as in Germany and
elsewhere, but now and then to sweat in, as occasion and need shall
require." Glass in windows, which was then good and cheap, and made
even in England, had generally taken the place of the lattices and of the
horn, and of the beryl which noblemen formerly used in windows.
Gentlemen were beginning to build their houses of brick and stone, in
stately and magnificent fashion. The furniture of the houses had also
grown in a manner "passing delicacy," and not of the nobility and
gentry only, but of the lowest sort. In noblemen's houses there was
abundance of arras, rich hangings of tapestry, and silver vessels, plate
often to the value of one thousand and two thousand pounds. The
knights, gentlemen, and merchants had great provision of tapestry,
Turkie work, pewter, brass, fine linen, and cupboards of plate worth

perhaps a