View of London from Southwark, c. 1630;
based on Claes van Visscher’s
‘Panorama of London’ (1616)
Shopping malls in London in the seventeenth
century
Inigo Jones’s design for the façade of the New
Exchange
• Shop Boy.
• What do you lack? What is’t you buy? Very fine China stuffs of
all kinds and qualities? China chains, China bracelets, China
scarves, China fans, China girdles, China knives, China boxes,
China cabinets, caskets, umbrellas, sundials, hourglasses,
looking-glasses, burning-glasses, concave glasses, triangular
glasses, convex glasses, crystal globes, waxen pictures, ostrich
eggs, birds of paradise, musk-cats, Indian mice, Indian rats,
China dogs and China cats? Flowers of silk, mosaic fishes?
Waxen fruit and porcelain dishes? Very fine cages for birds,
billiard balls, purses, pipes, rattles, basins, ewers, cups, cans,
voiders, toothpicks, targets, falchions, beards of all ages,
vizards, spectacles? See, what you lack?
• (From ‘The Entertainment at Britain’s Burse’ by Ben Jonson,
performed 11 April 1609 to James I, Anna of Denmark and
Prince Henry)
The town is at this present
very empty and solitary,
there being nothing thought
on, by reason of the
sickness but fugae et
formidines [flights and
terrors].
8 June 1609, London
Nathan Field, actor and
playwright (1587-1619/20)
‘Impressed’ to act with the
Children of the Chapel
Royal at the Blackfriars
Theatre 1600; performed in
both Epicoene and
Bartholomew Fair
When his play of a Silent Woman was first acted, ther was found verses
after on the stage against him, concluding that the play was well named
the Silent Woman, ther was never one man to say Plaudite to it.
January 19, 1619. Conversations with William Drummond of Hawthornden
…then to the King’s playhouse and there saw The Silent Woman; the
best comedy, I think, that was ever wrote; and sitting by Shadwell the
poet, he was big with admiration of it.
Samuel Pepys, Diary, 19 September 1668
The Intrigue of it is the greatest and most noble of any pure
unmix'd Comedy in any Language: you see it in many persons
of various characters and humours, and all delightful…I shall
not waste time in commending the writing of this Play, but I will
give you my opinion, that there is more wit and acuteness of
Fancy in it then in any of Ben. Johnson's. Besides, that he has
here describ'd the conversation of Gentlemen in the persons of
True-Wit, and his Friends, with more gayety, ayre and freedom,
then in the rest of his Comedies.
John Dryden, Of Dramatick Poesie (1668)
What a deal of cold business doth a man misspend the better part of
life in! in scattering compliments, tendering visits, gathering and
venting news, following feasts and plays, making a little winter-love in
a dark corner.
There cannot be one colour of the mind, another of the wit. If the
mind be staid, grave, and composed, the wit is so; that vitiated, the
other is blown and deflowered. Do we not see, if the mind languish,
the members are dull? Look upon an effeminate person, his very
gait confesseth him. If a man be fiery, his motion is so; if angry, it is
troubled and violent. So that we may conclude wheresoever
manners and fashions are corrupted, language is. It imitates the
public riot. The excess of feasts and apparel are the notes of a sick
state, and the wantonness of language of a sick mind.
Ben Jonson, Timber, or Discoveries, made upon
men and matter, as they have flowed out of his
daily readings
Costume for
Lady Bedford
as the
Amazon
queen,
Penthesilea,
in The
Masque of
Queens
(1609)
Lucy Russell, Countess of
Bedford (probably)
Jacobeans in drag
The Law of God very straightly forbids men to put on womens
garments, garments are set downe for signes distinctiue betwene
sexe & sexe, to take vnto vs those garments that are manifest signes
of another sexe, is to falsifie, forge, and adulterate, contrarie to the
expresse rule of the word of God. Which way I beseech you shall
they be excused, that put on, not the apparrell onely, but the gate, the
gestures, the voyce, the passions of a woman?
Stephen Gosson, Playes confuted in fiue actions prouing that they are not to
be suffred in a Christian common weale (1582)
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