A Survey of London

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A Survey of London

Excerpt from A Survey of London

By John Stowe

Originally published in 1598

Reprinted in The Renaissance in England, 1954

Most English people in the sixteenth century worked very hard. Though wealthy nobles, or the elite men and women who held social titles, did not usually need income, they often held demanding jobs in government or in the military. Ordinary people, who worked to support themselves and their families, put in long hours at their jobs. In the countryside most people did agricultural work; in the city most residents worked in trades and crafts. Hard work was considered an important virtue. But the English also valued leisure time, and they participated eagerly in a wide variety of sports, games, and other types of entertainment. For most ordinary people, leisure activities took place on Sundays or religious holidays, after church attendance.

According to one Elizabethan writer, quoted in Jeffrey L. Singman's Daily Life in Elizabethan England, the English were "strangely addicted to all kinds of pleasure above all other nations." English cities and towns, he noted, "swarm[ed] with companies of musicians and fiddlers," and Londoners frequently enjoyed fencing matches, tightrope walking performances, and similar entertáinments. Also common were gambling houses, where people played at dice or cards.

"In the holy days all sommer [summer] the youths are exercised in leaping, dancing, shooting, wrastling, casting the stone, and practicing their shields."

Though the Puritans, a group of Protestants who followed strict religious standards, disapproved of many types of merrymaking, arguing that frivolous activities wasted people's time and might lure them into sin, they agreed with the general view that idleness was a danger to be avoided. One important way to fill time in an enjoyable and productive way was to practice sports. Not only did athletic activities keep men strong and healthy in case they might be needed for military service, but they also provided men with the opportunity to practice military skills. Fencing, for example, improved a man's ability to use a sword, while archery taught the use of the bow and arrow. Military drills, in which men had to learn a complicated pattern of positions using pikes, became a popular entertainment for both participants and spectators.

Many nonmilitary sports were enjoyed as well. These included football (soccer), handball, tennis, bowling, badminton, foot races, swimming, and throwing weights. The wealthier classes particularly enjoyed horseback riding, and people of all social classes liked to take long walks or leisurely strolls in their gardens. In general athletics were reserved exclusively for men. But women and men participated together in some activities, particularly dancing. Elizabeth I (1533–1603), for example, loved to demonstrate her skill at executing complex dance steps, and she insisted that all of her courtiers be graceful dancers. (A courtier is a person who serves or participates in the royal court or household as the king's or queen's advisor, officer, or attendant.) Ordinary people also enjoyed dancing, which gave unmarried men and women a socially acceptable occasion to meet.

Hunting was another common pastime in which women could participate with men. Only the wealthier classes hunted for sport, since common folk did not own any land and had no legal right to take game from private property. Many people used hounds to chase their quarry, but some continued to enjoy the ancient art of falconry, in which falcons were trained to hunt game.

In addition to athletic activities, people in sixteenth-century London enjoyed many different spectator sports. Cockfighting, bull baiting, and bear baiting drew huge audiences among all social classes, with many spectators gambling on the outcome of these fighting matches between animals. In cockfights, specially trained roosters fought against each other. In bull and bear baiting, however, specially bred dogs were trained to attack the large animal, clamping their powerful jaws shut on its face. The dogs would hang on while the baited animal tried, with increasing desperation, to shake it off. The queen herself enjoyed bear baiting and attended matches frequently. So popular were these sports that permanent buildings, called bear gardens, were erected near London where matches could be held. These structures, however, were situated just outside the city—often on the south bank of the Thames River—where they would not be subject to Puritan restrictions on their operation.

Of all the entertainments available to Londoners in the late 1500s, the theater was among the most significant. English people had enjoyed plays for centuries, but these had been relatively simple works that dramatized religious stories or moral dilemmas. In the sixteenth century, however, brilliant new playwrights and performers transformed the stage, thrilling audiences with plays that challenged old ideas and demonstrated the full expressive possibilities of the English language. Playwrights such as Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593) and William Shakespeare (1564–1616), for example, created works that were immensely popular and drew thousands of people to performances. New theaters were built in which plays, which had formerly been performed in the large courtyards of inns, could be staged. Like the bull and bear baiting establishments, these buildings were located outside the city walls to avoid Puritan restrictions.

Among the most famous London theaters was the Globe, built by the theatrical company in which Shakespeare was a business partner. Situated on the south bank of the Thames, the Globe could hold an audience of about three thousand people. Admission was relatively cheap—comparable to the price of a movie in modern times—so all sorts of people were able to attend. Theaters were built in a roughly circular shape around a large courtyard. The stage occupied one end, and roofed galleries surrounded the yard on three sides. Gallery seats were occupied by the wealthier audience members, while common folk, for the price of a penny ticket, could stand on the ground. For this reason, they became known as "groundlings."

Elizabethan audiences could be extremely rowdy. People brought food and drink into the theater, made a lot of noise, and thought nothing of jeering the actors or even throwing food at the stage in response to a poor performance. Audiences expected, and got, spectacular entertainment at the theater. Plays were filled with music, dancing, battles, swordfights, and murders, as well as jokes, trickery, and couples in love. Though stages lacked scenery, producers enjoyed using gorgeous costumes and often experimented with special effects. One such effect caused a fire that destroyed the Globe in 1613. A cannon, shot off during a battle scene in Shakespeare's Henry VIII, ignited the thick straw roof over the galleries and consumed the building. The fact that its owners were able to rebuild the Globe that same year demonstrates how popular and financially successful the theater had become.

These and other popular Elizabethan leisure activities are described in the excerpt from A Survey of London by sixteenth-century historian John Stowe (1525–1605). Because A Survey of London presents highly detailed descriptions of the buildings, customs, and daily activities of London in the 1500s, historians have found this text extremely valuable to the study of Elizabethan society.

Things to remember while reading the excerpt from A Survey of London:

People from all levels of society enjoyed sports and entertainments.
Athletic activities were considered important ways to keep men fit and trained, in case they were needed for military action.
Sports and games were usually segregated by gender. The major exception was dancing.
Puritan leaders disapproved of many kinds of entertainments and advocated for laws restricting them.

A Survey of London

Sports and Pastimes of Old Time Used in This City
Let us now, saith Fitzstephen, come to the sports and pastimes, seeing it is fit that a city should not only be commodious [useful] and serious but also merry and sportful…. London, for the shews upon theaters and comical pastimes, hath holy plays, representations of miracles which holy confessors have wrought, or representations of torments wherein the constancy [faithfulness] of martyrs appeared. Every year also, Shrove Tuesday (that we may begin with children's sports, seeing we all have been children), the schoolboys do bring cocks of the game to their maister and all the forenoon they delight themselves in cockfighting; after dinner all the youths go into the fields to play at the ball. The schollers of every school have their ball (or bastion) in their hands; the ancient and wealthy men of the city come forth on horseback to see the sport of the young men and to take part of the pleasure in beholding their agility. Every Friday in Lent a fresh company of young men comes into the field on horseback, and the best horsemen conducteth the rest. Then march forth the citizens' sons and other young men with disarmed lances and shields, and there they practice feats of war. Many courtiers likewise, when the king lieth near, and attendants of noblemen do repair to these exercises, and while the hope of victory doth inflame their minds do shew good proof how serviceable they would be in martial affairs. In Easter holidays they fight battails Martial: Relating to war or [battles] on the waters: a shield is hanged upon a pole fixed in the midst of the stream, a boat is prepared without oars to be carried by violence of the water, and in the forepart thereof standeth a young man ready to give charge upon the shield with his lance; if so be he breaketh his lance against the shield and doth not fall, he is thought to have performed a worthy deed. If so be without breaking his lance he runneth strongly against the shield, down he falleth into the water, for the boat is violently forced with the tide; but on each side of the shield ride two boats furnished with young men which recover him that falleth as soon as they may. Upon the bridge, wharfs, and houses by the river's side stand great numbers to see and laugh thereat. In the holy days all sommer [summer] the youths are exercised in leaping, dancing, shooting, wrastling, casting the stone, and practicing their shields. The maidens trip it with their timbrels [tambourines] and dance as long as they can well see. In winter, every holy day before dinner the boars prepared for brawn [strength] are set to fight, or else bulls and bears are baited.
When the great fen or moor [later call Moorfields] (which watereth the walls of the city on the north side) is frozen, many young men play upon the ice; some, striding as wide as they may, do slide swiftly; others make themselves seats of ice as great as millstones; one sits down, many hand-in-hand do draw him, and one slipping on a sudden, all fall together; some tie bones to their feet and under their heels, and, shoving themselves by a little picked staff, do slide as swiftly as a bird flyeth in the air or an arrow out of a crossbow. Sometime two rub together with poles and, hitting one the other, either one or both do fall, not without hurt; some break their arms, some their legs, but youth, desirous of glory, in this sort exerciseth itself against the time of war. Many of the citizens do delight themselves in hawks and hounds, for they have liberty of hunting in Middlesex, Hartfordshire, all Chiltron, and in Kent to the Water of Cray. Thus far Fitzstephen of sports.
These or the like exercises have been continued till our time, namely in stage plays, whereof ye may read in anno 1391 a play to be play'd by the parish clerks of London at the Skinners' well besides Smithfield; which play continued three days together, the king, queen, and nobles of the realm being present. And of another play'd in the year 1409 which lasted eight days and was of matter from the creation of the world, whereat was present most part of the nobility and gentry of England, etc. Of late time, in place of those stage plays hath been erected. Also cocks of the game are yet cherished by divers [various] men for their pleasures, much money being laid on their heads when they fight in pits, whereon some be costly made for that purpose. The Meaner: Poorer. The ball is used by noblemen and gentlemen in tennis courts, and by people of meaner sort in the open fields and streets. The youths of this city, time out of mind, have left off to practice the disarmed lance and shield on horseback in the fields, but I have seen some few upon the river of Thames rowed in boats, with staves flat at the fore-end, running one against another, and for the most part either one or both overthrown and well ducked….

What happened next …

Some of the entertainments available to sixteenth-century Londoners caused controversy among religious leaders. Puritans disapproved of activities that distracted people from the serious business of serving God. They worried that pastimes such as dancing or theatergoing could lead people into sin, and they urged lawmakers to restrict entertainments on Sundays. Puritans objected to bear baiting, for example, not because it was cruel to animals but because it gave spectators enjoyment. Puritans also disapproved of dancing and gambling, and they objected to plays for several reasons, including the fact that male actors had to dress in women's clothes to play female roles. The fact that theaters were located in neighborhoods near taverns, bear gardens, and brothels only worsened the Puritans' opposition. In 1642 the Puritans took control of the government and ordered all playhouses in London to be closed. But the theaters reopened in 1660 when the monarchy was restored to power.

Many contemporary sports are quite similar to those played in Elizabethan times. Football was the most popular outdoor game in England in the sixteenth century; it was much like present-day soccer, but with fewer rules. Bandyball was an early form of field hockey; stoolball was an early form of cricket and baseball. Shuttlecock developed into the modern game of badminton. The modern sport of bowling evolved from an earlier game with many names: skittle pins, skittles, kittles, nine-pegs, and ten-pins. Among card games, Noddy was an early form of cribbage, and Primero developed into the modern game of poker.

Did you know …

The Thames River often froze during Elizabethan times, and winter festivals were held on the ice. These included ox barbeques, games, performing animals, and other attractions.
English law required every commoner to practice archery on a regular basis, in order to be prepared to defend the country in an emergency.
Elizabethans enjoyed jokes so much that books of them were printed and sold.
Music played a large role in daily life and in festivities. Most people made their own music, and musical ability was an expected social skill among the upper classes.
People from all levels of society gambled heavily on sports and games during Elizabethan times.
Bear baiting did not become illegal in England until 1835. It is now banned throughout the world.

Consider the following …

Many people in sixteenth-century England enjoyed playing active sports. Are amateur athletics still important today? How have attitudes toward sports changed since Elizabethan times?
Though public entertainments were quite popular in London, they often presented challenges to public safety. Pickpockets, for example, were attracted to the crowds attending the theater, and assaults in these neighborhoods were common. If you were in charge of reducing crime in sixteenth-century London, how would you deal with public entertainments?
People in the Elizabethan age had no access to recording technology; they either made their own music and other entertainments, or they attended live performances. Think about the ways in which modern recording technology has changed popular culture. How have these changes affected artists and performers? How have they affected audiences and consumers?