The king against the pipe
James I did not stop at general warnings. Was it not rudeness and filth, he asked, that at table, the place of manners, cleanliness and modesty, guests should pass a pipe around and puff smoke in each other's faces, fouling the dishes and the air? The habit had spread so far that many smoked against their inclination, ashamed to be out of step. Worse, in his view, husbands forced the habit on their gentle, healthy wives, who had either to taint their sweet breath or to suffer the stench. It troubled the nose, harmed the brain and damaged the lungs, and its black, stinking smoke was closer to the bottomless smoke of hell.
Despite this criticism and heavy taxes, London had, according to the book, seven thousand tobacco shops. Smoking did not displace conversation. Men and women spoke freely of matters that today are confined to the smoking room or the street corner, and women rivaled men in oaths that came close to blasphemy. The stage was equally frank, and double meanings were heard in even the greatest tragedies.
Courtesy, festivity and play
Manners were more formal than polite, and talk often ended in blows. Like morals, manners came from Italy and France, and handbooks of etiquette tried to turn nobles into courteous gentlemen and ladies into ladies. People greeted one another with effusive phrases and often kissed. Homes in this age, thanks to light and gaiety, were livelier than in the gloomy late Middle Ages or the later Puritan era. Festivals were frequent, any pretext served for a procession, and weddings, births and even funerals (at least for the food) became occasions of merriment. There were games and sport in house, field and on the Thames. Shakespeare mentions billiards and Florio cricket. People mocked strict laws; when the queen was so merry, why should her subjects not imitate her? Nearly everyone danced, even, in Burton's words, old men and women 'that had not teeth enough to speak' or as many as toes. Across England the sound of instruments and song could be heard.
English music, 1558 to 1649
Whoever knows only the age after the Puritans cannot grasp how cheerful and important music was under Elizabeth. It rose from houses, schools, churches, streets, theaters and the Thames, religious and secular: masses, motets, love songs, refrains and small lyrics of the kind used in the plays. Music was a major subject. Westminster School gave two hours a week to it, and Oxford founded a chair of music in 1627. Every well-bred Englishman was expected to read notes and play an instrument. Thomas Morley, in A Plain and Easy Introduction to Practical Music, tells of an uneducated man who, when the music book was brought to table after supper and he confessed with many apologies that he could not sing, saw the whole company stare and whisper, asking how he had been brought up. Barbershops kept instruments so waiting customers could amuse themselves.
Music of the Elizabethan age was largely secular. Some composers, Tallis, Byrd and Bull among them, stayed Catholic in spite of the laws and wrote for Catholic rites, though this music was not performed in public. Many Puritans objected that church music hindered piety, but Elizabeth and the bishops preserved it in England as Palestrina and the Council of Trent did in Italy. The queen supported the Chapel Royal and the masters who trained large choirs and wrote the official music for the royal chapel and the great churches. English composers set the Book of Common Prayer to fine anthems, and Anglican churches heard stately music much like that of other European churches. Even Puritans, following Calvin, approved the singing of psalms in church, though Elizabeth laughed at such 'Geneva jigs' (a reference to Calvin's Geneva).
Since the queen was thoroughly worldly and liked to be courted, it was fitting that the glory of her music should be the madrigal, song for several voices without accompaniment. Italian madrigals reached England about 1553 and took root. Morley imitated them, and a madrigal by John Wilbye for five voices shows the theme: a lover laments a cruel love that rules his life, his joys fly away one by one, and he is left to die for one who laughs at his tears.
William Byrd was the Shakespeare of music in Elizabeth's time, famed for his masses and for pieces for voices and instruments. Contemporaries called him a man never to be forgotten, and Morley said his name was never mentioned among musicians without respect. Orlando Gibbons and John Bull, organists of the Chapel Royal, lived as honorably and worked in many forms. With Byrd they produced the first English printed collection of keyboard music, Parthenia, written for the virginals. The English also kept their fame for songs for a single voice, and the street cries of their towns lived on in memory (this sentence in the book is garbled and is reconstructed here). John Dowland, a master of the lute, became famous for his songs, and Thomas Campion rivaled him; who does not know Campion's Cherry Ripe? Musicians formed a powerful guild, weakened under Charles I by internal disputes.
Instruments were as varied as today: lute, harp, organ, virginals, clavichord, harpsichord, flute, recorder, shawm, cornett, trombone, trumpet, drum and the many sizes of viol, which the violin would replace. The lute served for display and for accompanying song. The virginals, humble mother of the piano, was popular with young women, at least before marriage. Chamber music was written for sets of viols of different sizes, and for a masque for Queen Anne, wife of James I, Campion used an orchestra of flutes, harpsichord, cornetts and nine viols. Much instrumental music by Byrd, Morley and Dowland survives, mostly dance pieces in the Italian manner, with more charm and delicacy than power. Fugue and counterpoint developed, but their foundation did not change, and the music lacks chromatic harmony. Yet when modern life frays our nerves, Elizabethan music is a cleansing and healing thing. It has no exaggeration, no harsh sound and no thunderous climax; only the voice of an English girl or boy singing, in joy or sorrow, the timeless songs of unrequited love.