CHAPTER VIII.

VIEW OF COUNTRY LIFE DURING THE AGE OF SHAKSPEARE CONTINUED DIVERSIONS.

THE attempt to describe all the numerous rural diversions which were prevalent during the age of Shakspeare, would be, in the highest degree, superfluous ; for the greatest part of them, it is evident, must remain, with such slight or gradual modification as to require but little notice. It will be, therefore, our endeavour, in the course of this chapter, after giving a catalogue of the principal country-diversions of the era in question, to dwell only upon those which are now either entirely obsolete, or which have subsequently undergone such alterations as to render their former state an object of novelty and curiosity.

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This catalogue may be taken, with tolerable accuracy, from Randal Holme of Chester, and from Robert Burton; the former enumerating the games and diversions of the sixteenth century, and the latter those of the prior part of the seventeenth. If to these, we add the notices to be drawn from Shakspeare, the sketch will, there is reason to suppose, prove sufficiently extensive.

In the list of Randal Holme will be found the names of some juvenile sports, which are now perhaps no longer explicable; this poetical antiquary, however, shall speak for himself.

They dare challenge for to throw the sledge;
To jumpe or lepe over ditch or hedge;
To wrastle, play at stool-balle, or to runne;
To pitch the barre or to shote offe the gunne;
To play at loggets, nineholes, or ten pinnes;
To trye it out at fote balle by the shinnes;
At ticke tacke, seize noddy, maw, or ruffe;
Hot-cockles, leape froggè, or blindman's buffe ;

To drinke the halfer pottes, or deale att the whole canne;
To playe at chesse, or pue, and inke-horènne;

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To daunce the morris, playe at barley breake;
At alle exploytes a man can thynke or speake;
Att shove-grote, 'venter poynte, att crosse and pyle;
Att "Beshrewe him that's last att any style;"

Att lepynge over a Christmas bon fyer,

Or att the "drawynge dame owte o' the myre;"

At "Shoote cock, Gregory," stoole-ball, and what not;
Pickè-poynt, top, and scourge to make him hot." *

Burton, after mentioning Hawking, Hunting, Fowling, and Fishing, says, many other sports and recreations there be, much in use, as ringing, bowling, shooting, (with the bow,) keelpins, tronks, coits, pitching. bars, hurling, wrestling, leaping, running, fencing, mustring, swimming, wasters, foiles, foot-ball, balown, quintan, &c., and many such which are the common recreations of the Country folks."† He subsequently adds bull and bear baiting as common to both countrymen and ‡ citizens, and then subjoins to the list of rural amusements, dancing, singing, masking, mumming, and stage-players. § For the ordinary recreations of Winter as well in the country as in town, he recommends " cards, tables and dice, shovelboord, chess-play, the philosopher's game, small trunks, shuttle-cock, balliards, musick, masks, singing, dancing, ule games, frolicks, jests, riddles, catches, purposes, questions and commands, and merry tales." ||

From this statement it will immediately appear, that many of the rural diversions of this period are those likewise of the present day, and that no large portion of the catalogue can with propriety call for a more extended notice.

At the head of those which demand some brief elucidation, we shall place the Itinerant Stage, a country amusement, however, which, in the days of Elizabeth, was fast degenerating into contempt. The performance of secular plays by strolling companies of minstrels, had

* MS. Harl. Libr., No. 2057, apud Strutt's Customs, &c.

+ Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, 8th edit. fol. 1676. p. 169, 170.

+ Ibid. p. 172.

§ Ibid. p. 174.

Ibid. p. 172.

been much encouraged for two or three centuries, not only by the vulgar, but by the nobility, into whose castles and halls they were gladly admitted, and handsomely rewarded. At the commencement of the sixteenth century, the custom was still common, and Mr. Steevens, as a proof of it, has furnished us with the following entry from the fifth Earl of Northumberland's Household Book, which was begun in the year 1512:

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"Rewards to Players.

“Item, to be payd to the said Richard Gowge and Thomas Percy for rewards to players for playes playd in Chrystinmas by stranegers my house after xxd. every play by estimacion somme xxxiijs. iiijd. Which ys appoynted to be paid to the said Richard Gowge and Thomas Percy at the said Christynmas in full contentacion of the said reward ys xxxiijs. iiijd." *

That these itinerants were still occasionally admitted into the country-mansions of the great, during the reign of Elizabeth, we have satisfactory evidence; but it may be sufficient here to remark, that Elizabeth herself was entertained with an historical play at Kenelworth Castle, by performers who came for that purpose from Coventry; and that Shakspeare has favoured us with another instance, by the introduction of the following scene in his Taming of the Shrew, supposed to have been written in 1594:

Go, sirrah, take them to the buttery,

And give them friendly welcome every one:

Let them want nothing that my house affords." *

From this passage it may be deduced, that the itinerant players of this period were held in no higher estimation than menial servants; an inference which is corroborated by referring to the anonymous play of A Taming of a Shrew, written about 1590, where the entry of the players is thus marked, "Enter two of the plaiers, with packs at their backs." The abject condition of these strollers, Mr. Pope has attributed, perhaps too hastily, to the stationary performers of this reign; "the top of the profession," he observes, "were then mere players, not gentlemen of the stage; they were led into the buttery by the steward, not placed at the lord's table, or the lady's † toilette;" a passage on which Mr. Malone has remarked, that Pope "seems not to have observed, that the players here introduced are strollers; and there is no reason to suppose that our author, Heminge, Burbage, Condell, &c. who were licensed by King James, were treated in this manner." +

On the other hand Mr. Steevens supports the opinion of Pope by asserting, that "at the period when this comedy (Taming of a Shrew) was written, and for many years after, the profession of a player was scarcely allowed to be reputable. The imagined dignity," he continues, "of those who did not belong to itinerant companies, is, therefore, unworthy consideration. I can as easily believe that the blundering editors of the first folio were suffered to lean their hands on Queen Elizabeth's chair of state, as that they were admitted to the

* Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ix. p. 21, 22. 25, 26.

+ Pope's Preface to his edition of Shakspeare, vide Reed's Shakspeare, vol. i. p. 183. Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ix. p. 25, note 3.

table of the Earl of Leicester, or the toilette of Lady Hunsden. Like Stephen, in Every Man in his Humour, the greatest indulgence our histrionic leaders could have expected, would have been a trencher and a napkin in the buttery."*

The inference, however, which Mr. Malone has drawn, appears to have the authority of Shakspeare himself; for when Hamlet is informed of the arrival of the players, he exclaims, "How chances it, they travel; their residence, both in reputation and profit, was better both ways;" a question, the drift of which even Mr. Steevens explains in the following words: "How chances it they travel?―i. e. How happens it that they are become strollers? Their residence, both in reputation and profit, was better both ways—i. e. To have remained in a settled theatre was the more honourable as well as the more lucrative situation." We have every reason, therefore, to suppose, that the difference between the stroller and the licensed performer was in Shakspeare's time considerable; and that the latter, although not the companion of lords and countesses, was held in a very respectable light, if his personal conduct were good, and became the occasional associate of the first literary characters of the age; while the former was frequently degraded beneath the rank of a servant, and, in the statute, indeed, 39 Eliz. ch. 4. he is classed with rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars.

This depreciation of the character of the itinerant player, towards the close of Elizabeth's reign, soon narrowed his field of action; the opulent became unwilling to admit into their houses persons thus legally branded; and the stroller was reduced to the necessity of exhibiting his talents at wakes and fairs, on temporary scaffolds and barrel heads; " if he pen for thee once," says Ben Jonson, addressing a strolling player, "thou shalt not need to travell, with thy pumps full of gravell, any more, after a blinde jade and a hamper, and stalk boards and barrel-heads to an old crackt trumpet." §

upon

* Reed's Shakspeare, vol. ix. p. 26, note. Ibid. vol. xviii. p. 131. note 7.

+ Ibid. vol. xviii. p. 130, 131.

§ Poetaster, 1601, vide Ben Jonson's Works, fol. edit. of 1640, vol. i. p. 267.