Friday evening, emergency service sirens…

…lowing en masse towards the plaats delict. An evening home alone, twittering birds for company. Twitter too if I wanted it to be.

I’ll be facebooking this post later when it’s done, but for now the synapses snap to deciding what indeed to write. So much to tell, not enough of the material read, so many inferences to be drawn in defence of Early Modern England’s development from the bottom-up.

The secondary source I’m using is a book called ‘All the world is a bear baiting das Hetztheater in England im 16 und 17 Jahrhundert’, which is in German with primary source quotes in English and German from the lowest to the highest of social status either solid english citizen or European traveller.

The Bear and Bull baiting arenas (one and the same)? on the South Bank were directly responsible for the rise of the Theatres, which also in several cases doubled as both Theatre and bear baiting establishments.

Philip Henslowe with his son in law Edward Alleyne owned and operated a theatre and a bear baiting establishment. Henslowe was also warder of the bears. And dogs and bulls and cocks, that were the bloody symbols exploited, for this popular aspect of the entertainment industry. We have more accounts from contemporaries, whether english or european, on visiting these places than we do for early modern theatre.

These mini-amphitheatres coz let’s face it that’s what the Globe and they were. Albeit the animal baiting arenas were of inferior strucure they did the job. A penny gets you in; another another level; another the top level.

A microcosm of society from pickpockets and thieves literally up to lords and ladies. For a laugh from a lower perspective, with any luck a wounded dog tossed by an infuriated bull might land on miladies lap, as is severally reported.

Gambling on such bloody pastimes was (and is) huge. And the ideas of Tarantino and Scorsese are not too far fetched from the truth of Elizabethan times. Each culture has its underworld and indeed it caters to the desires of the upper world; where history is writ in less penitential themes.

Robert Greene must have had a hell of a self-confidence. He wrote pamphlets, books really, about conny-catching. He exposed the tricks of the Elizabethan underworld in a series of exposes. The thieves in true and honest piss take fashion replied with their own attacks on writers and layabout creative types.

In fact you could say (it might not be true) self-confidence was a trademark of the Early Modern thinking. For the first time in hundreds of years the individual was starting to have some degree of self-determination.

The times were Humanist versus Puritan times. But religion was splintering into the Protestant Catholic rift and Puritans were opposed to any fleshly pleasures, whether of mind or body.

I’m not saying Shakespeare was a made guy. But, through the Burbages, he was definitely connected. Early Modern Security firm on the door. Lattley Fattfoy and his lads.

So what do you think Elizabethan London must have been like with no police force outside of the authority of the Queen and her Earls, who like Lear would have had their own men. Many of these people carried swords and knives and daggers.

And would use them for honour’s sake if need be. There was a hierarchy and that would have to be obeyed in dress and manner. Unless you were a player where all fashions and genders can be yours.

Late friday night in Elizbethan London would be natural dark (ever been in the jungle or deep woods) and the lighting would have been minimal. Some people like the dark and can function in it. The night time is right time to do nefarious deeds. Unseen equals not caught. Most people had lives to attend to and rose with the sun and slept as it slept.

Hanging was a popular method of punishment and hanged men’s corpses were left at crossroads as a warning to the populus. The population of the City of London tripled in size during Sh’s lifetime.

The public theatre was the showbusiness of the time. English actors were for the first time in demand for their abilities. For musicians it was probably the only time they got paid more than actors! Though an actor who could play music and dance? Elizabethan triple-threat.

Old Europe was in a state of renewal, especially with the Protestant/Catholic divide. New ideas were being exchanged with those in London from all over europe, on all levels of society.

Ships were coming and going up and down the Thames bringng new cargoes, new people, new ideas. And then of course there were the old ideas. And all the institutions they represented composed of ideas from Antiquity.

But the new generation wanted to re-interpret those texts from antiquity. And they could thanks to the printing press. There were plenty of other scholars of Sh’s time translating works and seeing it into print. These are the people I’d expect Sh to be talking to and exchanging ideas with.

That we realise this was all done with the stench and stink of death and refuse all around we take as a given and plague and epidemic can break out at any time. No vaccines, cept herbal remedies.

That we can accept that all levels of society, both Elizabeth and James loved what we PC or just plain sensitive would call blood sports and cruelty to animals. Hang, drawing and quartering was a popular pastime too.

People were inured to violent acts but sensible enough to feel them. Some condemned them outright and held out God’s shield to defend themselves and others under their care from the morally fallen that visit plays and lewd and bloody spectacles.

Both sides of the hunting game were already in place as they are today. Last night CNN had a special dealing with the 12 year old matador popular in Spain right now. And from Bull-fighting to Hunting with hounds and the ban current in our Liza’s time, that Elizabeth nor James could have deamed of passing.

I’m of two minds on this one being a gamekeeper’s and poacher’s son. My dad could skin a rabbit in less than a minute. He didn’t enjoy killing or culling but executed swiftly when necessary. I never really took to the killing thing. I shot a bird which simply toppled over backwards into the gutter with an air rifle when i was 12 and I was devestated.

I was a beater as a boy on a couple of shoots on a large 20,000 acre estate King George had hunted on. The beater is one of a line of poeple moving through the brush and undergrowth driving the animals towards the line of fire.

Rabbits, pheasants, ducks, anything edible or that could be made into a fine pate was aimed at and shot. There was a trailer littered with game, a brace of this, a thrice of that. And now i write it down I feel a little hungry…