By Paul Carrier
We know it was a time of literary accomplishments (William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, et al), religious turmoil (Anglicans versus Puritans and all of them versus Catholics), and maritime exploration (Francis Drake’s circumnavigation of the globe). Not to mention the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588.
But as historian Ian Mortimer makes clear in his intriguing new book, The Time Traveler’s Guide to Elizabethan England, Elizabeth’s realm was far more complex, contradictory, changeable and tumultuous than most of us realize.
Following on the heels of The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England, which was published in 2008, Mortimer revs up his time machine yet again, to transport readers to the 1500s rather than the 14th century, as he did in the earlier volume. Once we get there, Mortimer writes in the present tense, guiding readers on a tour of the sceptered isle's landscape, people, religions and character, as we would find them if we turned the clock back more than 400 years. Clothing, travel, accommodations, food, health care, “law and disorder,” entertainment . . . each is examined in this thoroughly researched book.
From the “smells of the towns and cities” and the “uncertainty of life” to the “dead bodies lying in the street” when the plague strikes and the “starving beggars in their filthy rags,” Elizabeth’s England is not always golden, Mortimer explains. Intolerance and ignorance are rampant. Physicians believe health is governed by “the four humors.” The educated argue about whether the earth revolves around the sun, or vice versa. Supposed criminals are burned at the stake. The heads of traitors are placed on public display. Yet it is a time of progress and innovation in poetry, drama, architecture, fashion and seafaring, among other endeavors.
Mortimer’s review is exhaustive. So exhaustive that he answers fascinating questions a reader might not even think to ask. Men began growing beards at a later age back then, so “most men have no more than a few hairs by the age of twenty-two.” Codpieces stuffed with wool, which were all the rage during Henry VIII’s time, have fallen out of fashion. The aging Elizabeth has “dozens” of wigs in the 1590s. Life preservers are made from pigs’ bladders that are inflated by blowing into them. The fork is “generally regarded in England as foppish.” Gypsies, for some reason, are known as Egyptians.
Another surprising tidbit: by 1558, England is "more independent from Europe than it has been since Saxon times." That’s because the country no longer has any continental territory, it has broken from the Catholic Church and it is ruled by a queen who is more truly English, genetically, than the medieval kings of old.
A leitmotif of The Time Traveler’s Guide to Elizabethan England is that Elizabeth's kingdom changed in countless ways over the course of her 45 years on the throne.
In 1572, the government passed a law imposing penalties on “vagabonds,” but 25 years later, Parliament enacted legislation to care for the poor. Shakespeare had double the vocabulary at his disposal - 20,000 words - than did a writer at the start of Elizabeth’s reign, thanks to the growing adoption of words from other languages. “What is (religiously) orthodox in 1558 is sufficient to have you hanged in 1570,” Mortimer explains.
Mortimer’s comprehensive approach is impressive, leaving little doubt that his expertise is broad and deep. His description of the Elizabethan theater, in particular, is eloquent and moving. But there is a downside. The Time Traveler’s Guide to Elizabethan England sometimes buries the reader in data, which is a pity because the author has a light touch much of the time. In a section dealing with Elizabethan England’s maximum wage (there was no minimum wage), a lengthy paragraph slogs through the top wages for all sorts of jobs, including three separate grades of workers in the building trades.
Still, Mortimer couples his erudition with humor, repeatedly quoting the likes of Philip Stubbes, an acerbic Puritan with a scathing dislike for the excesses of Elizabethan fashion. Stubbes is, Mortimer tells us, “the most entertaining writer of the period whom you would not want actually to meet in person.”
