The People for Whom Shakespeare WroteWarner, Charles Dudley
History
The People for Whom Shakespeare Wrote
Warner, Charles Dudley
England -- Social life and customs -- 16th century; Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Contemporaries
into black and blue colors, most ugglesome to behold, and her face (which
before was so amorous) became most deformed, and fearful to look upon.
This being known, preparence was made for her burial, a rich coffin was
provided, and her fearful body was laid therein, and it covered very
sumptuously. Four men immediately assayed to lift up the corpse, but
could not move it; then six attempted the like, but could not once stir
it from the place where it stood. Whereat the standers-by marveling,
caused the coffin to be opened to see the cause thereof. Where they found
the body to be taken away, and a black Cat very lean and deformed sitting
in the coffin, setting of great Ruffs, and frizzling of hair, to the
great fear and wonder of all beholders."
Better than this pride which forerunneth destruction, in the opinion of
Stubbes, is the habit of the Brazilian women, who "esteem so little of
apparel" that they rather choose to go naked than be thought to be proud.
As I read the times of Elizabeth, there was then greater prosperity and
enjoyment of life among the common people than fifty or a hundred years
later. Into the question of the prices of labor and of food, which Mr.
Froude considers so fully in the first chapter of his history, I shall
not enter any further than to remark that the hardness of the laborer's
lot, who got, mayhap, only twopence a day, is mitigated by the fact that
for a penny he could buy a pound of meat which now costs a shilling. In
two respects England has greatly changed for the traveler, from the
sixteenth to the eighteenth century--in its inns and its roads.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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