Topic 3: Customs and Lifestyles during the Elizabethan Era
Elizabethan Diet
Water was not clean during that time, so people drank wine and ale. Honey was used to make an alcoholic drink called mead, consumed by both the rich and poor. Ciders and beers were also drunk then. Every day, the average Englishman consumes one gallon of low-alcoholic drinks.
Elizabethan food was purchased from small markets whereby each shop sold a particular food item, say vegetables or fruits. Meat is sold at large livestock markets.
Convenience foods include biscuits, pastries and also pies. Lower class workers consume simple lunches of bread and cheese, which is known as the “Ploughman’s Lunch”.
Cooking utensils used include pots, pans, kettles, skillets and even cauldrons, which most often associate with witches in our fairy tales when we were young. Baking trays are used instead of baking tins, and are referred to as “coffins”. The mortar and pestle are also used by the cooks who use nuts and spices in their food. The cooking methods are plentiful, like spit-roasting, baking, boiling, smoking, salting and frying, so it can be said that one food item can be cooked in many different ways during that time, just as it is in the modern-day world.
The visual effect of the food eaten by the nobles was extremely important during the Elizabethan era, and this included colours, method of presentation as well as some “props” like peacock feathers.
Elizabethan Dressing
The clothing during the Elizabethan era covered a wide variety; the gorgeous ones for the rich, and the raggedy ones for the poor. Men wore doublets and breeches, while women wore gowns and corsets. Both men and women wore hats, collars, ruffs, shoes and underclothes.
However, they were not allowed the freedom to wear whatever they wanted. Elizabethan clothing was governed strictly by the Elizabethan Sumptuary Laws, even colours. This claimed to ensure that the specific class structure was still maintained, so the punishments were extremely harsh, which went up to even execution.
Elizabethan Recreations
Who said that the people of old had no sense of entertainment and were always stern as ever? Recreations then included sports, music and of course, going to the theatres.
Elizabethans had sports tournaments, games, gambling, bear and bull baiting, hawking and hunting, fairs and festivals as sources of entertainment. Of course, the entertainment which is most renowned during the Elizabethan era and which is still fondly remembered today is the theatres and plays then, with Shakespearean plays being one of the more famous ones. Sports included archery, hammer-throwing, quoits, skittles and wrestling.
Team events were extremely significant during that time, whereby even card games included teams like in “Ruff and Honours”. Nonetheless, there were individual sports like fencing which attracted many bets and gambles.
Many of the sports played during the Elizabethan era are actually ancestors of modern-day games. “Battledore and Shuttlecock” is the ancestor of badminton, Elizabethan Bowls and Skittles those of ten-pin bowling, gameball is that of football, pall mall that of croquet, rounders that of baseball, stoolball that of cricket.
Music was extremely popular and important then. Ballads and simple songs relieved the monotonous tasks, especially amongst the lower classes. All Elizabethans went to church on Sundays, where hymns were sung. Music was also incorporated into plays, to emphasise and exude the mood of the play during that period of time.
Elizabethan Accommodation
The architecture of middle class houses was similar to traditional styles. Elizabethan Houses were framed with large vertical timbers, supported by diagonal timbers. The wattle walls were daubed with mortar and whitewash was then applied. Such houses had high chimneys, overhanging first floors, pillared porches, dormer windows and thatched roofs.
Resources:
Author Unknown. (Date Unknown). Queen Elizabeth I: “Elizabethan Life” http://www.elizabethan-era.org.uk/elizabethan-life.htm (Accessed 10 June 2011)
Best Regards,
Nathan :)
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