Class Set!
Then and Now
Below are a list of things as they were during the Elizabethan
times. On your own paper describe the way things are now. Write “NOW” at the top of your list and make your answers correspond to the numbers below.
THEN
1. Breakfast was a snack of bread and a mug of beer.
2. Ladies’ dresses were long and either padded or worn over a frame
3. Bear baiting was a popular pastime.
4. Sir Walter Raleigh introduced tobacco into England, and even women and children smoked clay pipes.
5. Boar’s head and peacock pie were served for Christmas dinner.
6. People enjoyed dancing the pavane, the lavolta, and the galliard.
7. No one bothered to repair the roads, and the only way people traveled was on horseback, carts or coaches.
8. A guest was expected to bring his own knife to dinner and perhaps a soon, but no one used forks.
9. People accused of being witches were burned at the stake.
10. Meat and fish were salted in order to preserve them for winter; there was no way to keep fruits and vegetables.
11. Common people slept on a straw mattress, but the wealthy had feather mattresses laid on frames with woven ropes.
12. The name for sweets was “comfits”; “kissing comfits” were used for making the breath smell sweeter.
13. Only rich people had glass windows, and these had small panes, often diamond-shaped.
14. Acting companies consisted only of men, and boys played the women’s parts (since women were not allowed to perform on Elizabethan stage).
15. Audiences were loud and lively, playing cards and dice, shouting for food and throwing it on the stage when they were displeased.
16. People accused of crimes were tortured to make them confess (the rack was popular).
Idioms connected to the 1500s
v Baths equaled a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children including the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it. Hence the saying, “Don’t through the baby out with the bath water.”
v Houses had thatched roofs made of thick straw, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the pets, dogs, cats and other small animals lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof. Hence the saying. “It’s raining cats and dogs.”
v Lead cups were used to drink ale or whiskey. The combination would sometimes knock people out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of holding a “wake.”
v England is old and small, and they started running out of places to bury people. So, they would dig up coffins and would take their bones to a house and reuse the grave. In reopening these coffins, one out of 25 were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they thought they would tie a string on their wrist and lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night to listen for the bell. Hence on the “graveyard shift” they would know that someone was “saved by the bell” or he was a dead ringer.”