Fires, too, were common. Doubtless a few arose from the overheating of corn in barns and stacks, and some from the absence of chimneys to so many houses. The corporation did what it could, but there were no resources adequate to deal with a conflagration, for all that the Avon ran at the foot of the town. They came to the conclusion in 1582 that the absence of chimneys was a fruitful source of disaster, and ordered every householder to build one. They also ordered every burgess to provide himself with a bucket. Looking back to the times, it is not easy to say that the corporation of Stratford was really backward; its members did all that the people of a little town in the heart of Warwickshire could have been expected to do, and there would seem to have been no lack of public spirit, no falling away from continuous endeavour, no shirking of onerous duties. Every man had his work to do in the public service, and those who failed were punished. When we look round at our busy manufacturing towns in this year of grace, and remember how much we know of the best tradition of municipal work, can we say that, _mutatis mutandis_, the advantage is altogether with us? Plague and fire and flood have been overcome, but men and women live lives entirely undisciplined. Little or nothing binds the citizen to the State, and the adulteration of food has become so common that pure bread and pure beer are the exception, and the supervision of those who prepare the necessities of our daily life is much less strict than it was when old John Shakespeare, the poet's father, was Stratford's ale-taster, empowered to see, _inter alia_, that every baker sold a whole loaf of true weight for one penny. But if the corporation ruled Stratford strictly in Elizabethan times, it encouraged all kinds of sport, to some of which the poet makes reference in his plays. Young and old knew the Maypole. Nine Men's Morris was another popular game, and Falstaff, referring to his treatment when he escaped from Ford's house disguised as the fat woman of Brentford, says, "Since I plucked geese, played truant, and whipp'd top, I knew not what it was to be beaten, since lately." Goose-plucking was a particularly barbarous pastime. We know that hockey and football were played in Elizabethan England, and that the corporation of Stratford kept a bowling-alley at the municipality's expense for the free use of the town. Cock-fights were among the less reputable sports of the time, and bears or bulls were baited. Hunting, hawking, coursing, fishing, and the rest beguiled the leisure hours of those who had any, and the harvest festivals would have played their part. There were great fairs and open markets held at certain seasons of spring and summer. Within doors, cards and shovel-board would seem to have been the only kind of amusement that were not directly associated with social ceremonies.