cordelier's girdle, dyed black for comeliness sake: and in his
bosom he bears his handkerchief made of the reversion of his
old tablecloth. His spectacles hang beating over his codpiece
like the flag in the top of a maypole. His breeches and stock-
ings are of one piece I warrant you, which, having served him
in pure kersey for the tester of a bed some twenty years, is by
the frugality of a dyer and the courtesy of a tailor for this
present made a sconce for his buttocks. His shoes of the old
cut, broad at the toes and cross-buckled with brass, and have
loop-holes like a sconce for his toes to shoot out at.
His gown
is suitable, and as seemly as the rest, full of threads I warrant
you, wheresoever the wool is employed, welted on the back
with the clipping of a bare cast velvet hood, and faced with
foins that had kept a widow's tail warm twenty winters before
his time.

Thus attired, he walks Paul's, coughing at every step as if he were broken-winded, grunting sometime for the pain of the stone and strangury: and continually thus old, and seeming ready to die, he notwithstanding lives to confound many families. If you come to borrow money, he will take no usury, no marry will he not: but if you require ten pound, you shall pay him forty shillings for an old cap, and the rest is yours in ready money; the man loves good dealing. If you desire commodities at his hand, why sir you shall have them, but how? not (as the caterpillars wont to sell) at high prices, but at the best and easiest pennyworth, as in conscience you can desire them: only this, at the insealing of the assurance, if you help him away with a chest of glass for ten pound of ten shillings price, you shall command his warehouse another time. Tut he is for you at casual marts, commodities of proclamations and hobby-horses, you shall have all that you please, so he receive what he desires. It is a common custom of his to buy up cracked angels at nine shillings the piece. Now sir if a gentleman (on good assurance of land) request him of money, "Good sir," saith he, with a counterfeit sigh "I would be glad to please your worship, but my good money is abroad, and that I have, I dare not put in your hands." The gentleman thinking this conscience, where it is subtlety, and being beside that in some necessity, ventures on the cracked angels, some of which cannot fly for soldering, and pays double interest to the

ร

own;

miser, under the cloak of honesty. If he fails his day, God
forbid he should take the forfeiture, he will not thrive by other
men's curses, but because men must live, and we are infidels if
we provide not for our families, he is content with this his
only a leaf, a toy of this or that manor, worth both his prin-
cipal and ten times the interest; this is easy for the gentleman
to pay, and reasonable in him to receive. If a citizen come to
borrow, "My friend" quoth he, "you must keep day, I am glad
to help young men without harming myself": then paying
him out the money and receiving his assurance, he casts Jolly
Robins in his head how to cozen the simple fellow. If he have
a shop well furnished, a stock to receive out of the Chamber,
possibility after the death of his father, all this he hearkens
after: and if he fail of his day, "Well," saith he, "for charity
sake I will forbear you, mine interest paid": meanwhile
(unknown to the wretch) he sues him upon the original to an
outlawry, and if the second time he fail (as by some slight en-
couragement he causes him to do) he turns him out a doors
like a careless young man, yet for Christianity sake, he lets him
at liberty, and will in charity content him with his goods.
THOMAS LODGE, Wits Miserie 1596

The Debtors' Prison

Shylock. Gaoler, look to him: tell me not of mercy.

Portia.

The Merchant of Venice, III. iii. I

But mercy is above this sceptred sway
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,

It is an attribute to God himself,

And earthly power doth then show likest God's

When mercy seasons justice. Ibid. IV. i. 193-197

You have another cruelty in keeping men in prison so long, till sickness and death deal mildly with them, and (in despite of all tyranny) bail them out of all executions. When you see a poor wretch that to keep life in a loathed body hath not a house left to cover his head from the tempests, nor a bed (but the common bed which our mother the earth allows him) for his cares to sleep upon, when you have (by keeping or locking him up) robbed him of all means to get, what seek you to have him lose but his life? The miserable prisoner is ready to

famish, yet that cannot move you; the more miserable wife is
ready to run mad with despair, yet that cannot melt you; the
most of all miserable, his children lie crying at your doors, yet
nothing can awaken in you compassion. If his debts be heavy,
the greater and more glorious is your pity to work his freedom;
if they be light, the sharper is the vengeance that will be
heaped upon your heads for your hardness of heart.
We are
most like to God that made us, when we shew love one to
another, and do most look like the devil that would destroy us,
when we are one another's tormentors. If any have so much
flint growing about his bosom, that he will needs make dice
of men's bones, I would there were a law to compel him to
make drinking bowls of their skulls too:
and that every
miserable debtor that so dies, might be buried at his creditor's
door, that when he strides over him he might think he still
rises up (like the Ghost in Ieronimo) crying 'Revenge.’

THOMAS DEKKER, The Seuen Deadly Sinnes of London 1606

$5. Dress and Fashion

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,
That all with one consent praise new-born gawds.
Troilus and Cressida, III. iii. 174—175

Nerissa. What say you, then, to Falconbridge, the young baron of
England

Portia. ...How oddly he is suited! I think he bought his doublet in Italy, his round hose in France, his bonnet in Germany, and his behaviour every where. The Merchant of Venice, 1. ii. 70-81 Petruchio.

We will return unto thy father's house,
And revel it as bravely as the best,

With silken coats and caps and golden rings,
With ruffs and cuffs and farthingales and things;
With scarfs and fans and double change of bravery,
With amber bracelets, beads and all this knavery.

Haberdasher. Here is the cap your worship did bespeak.
Petruchio. Why, this was moulded on a porringer;

A velvet dish fie, fie! 'tis lewd and filthy:
Why, 'tis a cockle or a walnut-shell,
A knack, a toy, a trick, a baby's cap:

Away with it! come, let me have a bigger.

>

Petruchio.

Thy gown? why, ay: come, tailor, let us see't.
Oh mercy, God what masquing stuff is here?
What's this? a sleeve? 'tis like a demi-cannon:
What! up and down, carv'd like an apple-tart?
Here's snip and nip and cut and slish and slash,
Like to a censer in a barber's shop.

*

Tailor.

You bid me make it orderly and well,
According to the fashion of the time.

The Taming of the Shrew, IV. iii. 53-95

Fashion in general

The fantastical folly of our nation (even from the courtier to the carter), is such that no form of apparel liketh us longer than the first garment is in the wearing, if it continue so long, and be not laid aside to receive some other trinket newly devised by the fickle-headed tailors, who covet to have several tricks in cutting, thereby to draw fond customers to more expense of money. For my part, I can tell better how to inveigh against this enormity than describe any certainty of our attire; sithence such is our mutability, that to-day there is none to the Spanish guise, to-morrow the French toys are most fine and delectable, ere long no such apparel as that which is after the high Almain fashion, by-and-bye the Turkish manner is generally best liked of, otherwise the Morisco gowns, the Barbarian fleeces, the mandilion worn to Colley weston ward, and the short French breeches make a comely vesture that, except it were a dog in a doublet, you shall not see any so disguised as are my countrymen of England. And as these fashions are diverse, so likewise it is a world to see the costliness and the curiosity, the excess and the vanity, the pomp and the bravery, the change and the variety, and finally the fickleness and the folly, that is in all degrees, insomuch that nothing is more constant in England than inconstancy of attire. Oh, how much cost is bestowed nowadays upon our bodies, and how little upon our souls! How many suits of apparel hath the one, and how little furniture hath the other ! How long time is asked in decking up of the first, and how little space left wherein to feed the latter! How curious, how nice also, are a number of men and women, and how hardly can the tailor please them in making it fit for their bodies! How many

times must it be sent back again to him that made it! What chafing, what fretting, what reproachful language, doth the poor workman bear away! And many times when he doth nothing to it at all, yet when it is brought home again it is very fit and handsome. Then must we put it on, then must the long seams of our hose be set by a plumb-line, then we puff, then we blow, and finally sweat till we drop, that our clothes may stand well upon us. I will say nothing of our heads, which sometimes are polled, sometimes curled, or suffered to grow at length like woman's locks, many times cut off, above or under the ears, round as by a wooden dish. Neither will I meddle with our variety of beards, of which some are shaven from the chin like those of Turks, not a few cut short like to the beard of Marquess Otto, some made round like a rubbingbrush, others with a pique de vant (O! fine fashion), or now and then suffered to grow long, the barbers being grown to be so cunning in this behalf as the tailors. And therefore if a man have a lean and straight face, a Marquess Otto's cut will make it broad and large; if it be platter-like, a long, slender beard will make it seem the narrower; if he be weasel-beaked, then much hair left on the cheeks will make the owner look big like a bowdled hen, and so grim as a goose, if Cornelis of Chelmsford say true. Many old men do wear no beards at all. Some lusty courtiers also and gentlemen of courage do wear either rings of gold, stones, or pearl in their ears, whereby they imagine the workmanship of God not to be a little amended. But herein they rather disgrace than adorn their persons, as by their niceness in apparel, for which I say most nations do not unjustly deride us, as also for that we do seem to imitate all nations round about us, wherein we be like to the polypus or chameleon; and thereunto bestow most cost upon our arses, and much more than upon all the rest of our bodies, as women do likewise upon their heads and shoulders. In women also, it is most to be lamented, that they do now far exceed the lightness of our men (who nevertheless are transformed from the cap even to the very shoe), and such staring attire, as in time past was supposed meet for none but light housewives only, is now become a habit for chaste and sober matrons. What should I say of their doublets with pendant codpieces on the breast, full jags and cuts, and sleeves of sundry colours? Their galli