Topic III: Customs & Lifestyle

i. Personal hygiene

Bathing
During Elizabethan times, the wealthy took baths once every couple of weeks while peasants only bathed three times a year on average. Hygiene done on a daily basis was the washing of hands, wrists, face, teeth and feet, generally before having a meal. A view during the Elizabethan times, which people nowadays would disagree with, is that washing hair often is unhealthy, ad thus hair was often styled with lard and lead powder.

Makeup
Women in the high-class society wore pale make-up to appear as white as possible and avoid being under the sun. These women also caked lead-based powder on their face, neck, chest and hair and frequently bathed in wine or milk to improve skin complexion.

Smell
Because of irregularity of bathing, perfumed candles, potpourri and perfume were used to mask pungent odours. Wealthy women, like Queen Elizabeth I, often carried vinaigrettes, which are small silver boxes, containing perfumed sponges.

ii. Diet

The rich during the Elizabeth era ate few vegetables and fruit, as they view this variety of food with suspicion. They only ate fruits in the form of pies or preserved in honey. Vegetables and fruits were more commonly eaten by the poor, in the form of stew, soup or pottage. Few vegetables made it to the Noble’s table, like rape, onions, garlic and leeks. The rich also kept away from dairy products as they felt they were inferior goods. This made the rich lack Vitamin C, calcium and fibre, making them susceptible to health problems like bad teeth, skin diseases, scurvy and rickets. Only rich people could afford sugar at that time since it was expensive, and it blackened teeth. This became fashion and black teeth were considered beautiful. Cosmetics were even applied to get black teeth when sugar was not enough.

iii. Recreation

There were two very common sports during the Elizabethan era, which people nowadays would consider inhuman. Such sports were active twice a week in London, and appealed to large crowds.

Bear baiting or bull baiting is one of the two blood sports then. In bear baiting, a bear was tied to a stake by a long rope. Then, it was put into a pit with four or five large, fierce dogs, or even lions, for the dogs to attack the bear. Dogs that survived the bear’s retaliation were pulled off just before the bear was killed. Dogs are considered winners if the bear was killed, but losers if many of them were disabled. Apes were sometimes used as well. Bullbaiting is similar, except that the bull is let into the pit and teased or hurt until it died. Such acts are very cruel in the eyes of today’s world, but in the Elizabethan era, it was a fun sport for them to observe.

Another popular blood sport was cockfighting. In this sport, roosters, fitted with sharp blades on each foot, were put into a pit to fight to the death. Since fighting cocks were expensive, only rich men could own these birds, but men of all classes came to observe and bet.

Fencing was also very popular at that time. Betting on fencing was also very common. In addition, much time was spent with the sport of hawking, which is very popular with gentlemen. A hawk or falcon is trained in the beginning by taming it. To do so, the eyes are sealed with needle and thread, then the thread is tied back over the head of the bird in order for the trainer to open and close the bird’s eyes at will. This temporary blinding makes it easy to train the hawk or falcon to hunt other birds. Moreover, bells were attached to the legs of the birds in order to track their whereabouts.

Other than sports, a preferred recreation during the Elizabethan Era was going to the theatre. Since it was the time of Shakespeare, many people went to the most well-known Globe Theatre where many of Shakespeare’s plays were acted.

iv. Dress

Women wore stockings, corsets, farthingales, stomachers, petticoats, kirtles, foreparts and partlets as underclothes. For over clothes, they were gowns, separates sleeves, ruffs, cloaks, shoes and hats.

For men, shirts, stockings, codpieces and corsets acted as underclothes. In terms of over clothes, they wore doublets, separate sleeves, breeches, belts, ruffs, cloaks, shoes and hats.

References:
http://www.ehow.com/facts_5619840_personal-hygiene-elizabethan-age_.html/
http://www.elizabethan-era.org.uk/elizabethan-food-and-diet.htm/
http://www.tomecek.com/jay/RecreationandSports.html/
http://www.elizabethan-era.org.uk/elizabethan-clothing.htm/

More questions to consider:
a. How were women expected to behave in Shakespeare’s time?

Upper Class Women
Women were expected to be submissive towards men, as they were seen as the inferior sex. They were often used to get closer to powerful families through arranged marriages.

Women in the Elizabethan era also had many limitations. They were not allowed to go to school, to enter University, to be heirs to father’s titles with the exception of royals, to be doctors of lawyers, to vote or enter politics, to enter the army or navy and to act in theatres.

Lower Class Women
Women from the lower classes were expected to obey male members as well. However, they never had education, unlike the home-tutored upper class women, and were made to learn to take care of a household instead. All women were expected to marry, and would be dependant on her male relatives for her whole life.

b. What were their roles as wives and daughters?

The roles of the women were to be housewives and mothers. Their roles were just to give birth to as many children as possible, although many die of illnesses and thus, families were not always large. In fact, women gave birth to children once every two years on average.

Daughters were mostly to be used to marry men of higher status through arranged marriages for the daughter’s family to rise in status as well.

Women were regarded as the weaker sex, and therefore had to listen to the males in the family. They also had to be under the care of a male, be it the father, brother, husband or a male relative.

c. In what ways do Portia and Jessica fulfil / subvert these roles / expectations?

Portia did follow her father’s instruction to choose her husband through the test of the three caskets. Moreover, Portia expressed that all her inheritance in now Bassanio’s after he marriage, fulfilling her role as a wife. However, Portia entered the court although she was banned from doing so and this was a subversion of her role.

Jessica did not have arranged marriages since she fled from Shylock to be with Lorenzo. However, Jessica’s property, which was given to her and Lorenzo after Shylock lost the court case, was given all to Lorenzo, fulfilling her role as a wife.

References:
http://www.elizabethan-era.org.uk/elizabethan-women.htm/
http://www.elizabethi.org/us/women/