Brad's Suggested Reading List
Two books I think every Ren-Faire peasant should read
Lost Country Life, by Dorothy Hartley
How English country folk lived, worked, threshed, thatched, rolled fleece, milled corn, brewed mead... by Dorothy Hartley. The best source I've found for details of everyday life, including farming and housekeeping. Drawing from sources ranging from Roman times to the 19th C.; it's not always clear which reference is from when, but...
Daily Life in Elizabethan England, by Jeffery L. Singman
I know, you've read plenty of daily-life books, but this one's better. To start with, it was published in 1995 and well researched, so it's accurate and up to date. Also Singman is a re-creationist writing for other re-creationists. He doesn't just talk about clothing, food, games: he gives patterns, recipes, rules, etc...
More Books
The Forgotten Crafts, by John Seymour
Well-illustrated, how-to articles of one-to-three pages each on various British rural skills. Includes: making wooden clogs, tool handles, hay rakes, pitchforks, cart wheels, thatching, brick-making, hedge trimming, dry-stone walling, leather tanning, spinning, weaving, basketry, soap making- sixty-one crafts in all. A few of these techniques may not be exactly how things would have been done in the 16th Century, but...We faux peasants must use the best sources we're given. There is also a women's work companion volume, Forgotten Household Crafts, but alas, even less of it is relevant to our period (but it's great if you're into the 19th C).
The Common Stream, by Rowland Parker
Traces the history of a Cambridgeshire village from ancient times to the present. The medieval and renaissance chapters use quotes from manor court and parish documents to give vivid insight into the lives of the villagers.
The Elizabethan Underworld, by Gamini Salgado
Discusses: Elizabethan crime and punishment, the various types and tricks of beggars, thieves, con-men, whores, gypsies and other members of the under-classes. Contains period woodcut illustrations and a glossary of criminal slang.
All the books mentioned above may be in your local library (Marin Co. has all but Parker's). The books below may be a bit harder to come by. You can find them used online; Laslett's book can be found for as little as $10. In the case of Hoskins' book the cheapest copy I've seen was about $30. Being a tight wad, I recommend hanging out for a few hours reading them in a university library (check on-line for library catalogues and hours before you go).
The Midland Peasant The Economic and Social History of a Leicestershire Village, by W.G. Hoskins
Like Parker's book it follows a village through history, only where Parker was a layperson writing for a popular audience, Dr.Hoskins was a British history professor writing a SERIOUS WORK of HISTORY. Still his writing style isn't too murky, as history professors go, and the level of detail he gives in the chapter on the 16th C. is amazing.
The World We Have Lost, by Peter Laslett
If you really want to get into the demographics of early modern England in detail, their implications and how they were arrived at, by one of the leading scholars in the field, this is the book. Not a casual read, Dr.Laslett is a Cambridge professor who writes like one.
Primary Source Reading
Reading what the Elizabethans wrote is the best way to get a feel for the period, its people, and how they spoke- all at the same time. For decades now, Ren-Faire language workshops have told us to read Shakespeare and the King James Bible, which is good advice to a point. They are brilliant and inspiring examples of Elizabethan prose, perhaps a bit too brilliant. I suspect that the reason more Faire workers don't speak in accent, is that they are daunted by looking at Shakespeare and King James, saying to themselves, “They want me to talk like that?” RELAX. Everyday people never talked like Hamlet or the Bible. When choosing among period plays (Shakespeare's or other's) a good rule of thumb is that comedies usually have much more natural dialogue than serious plays. Below are some plays that, while not nearly as brilliant as Shakespeare, are favorites of mine for language practice.
Part of the reason Shakespeare and King James have been so often recommended over the years is that copies are easy to come by. The advent of the Internet now offers us both free online texts and online shopping for rare, special interest books that might not be in your local book store. The down side of the free online texts of more obscure period plays is that they usually don't contain explanatory notes or glossaries. Some of them are printed in the original spelling, which is cool, but beginning Faire actors struggling with the language may not be ready for that. Printed hard-copy editions of these plays are available used and, in some cases, new; most editions provide notes, but some don't. Sometimes they can be found bound alone under the play's title, otherwise you can find them in books with titles like 'Plays of the English Renaissance' or ‘Tudor Drama'. Don't forget to poke around in the drama section of your local library and used bookstores (while they still exist).
Comedies:
Bartholomew Fair, by Ben Johnson
A very early 17th C. play about a bunch of characters running around a fair and interacting with each other. It has mongers, booth owners, customers, whores, cutpurses, puritans, civic officials, a madman, a puppeteer and others. Need I say more?
The Alchemist, by Ben Johnson
Two con-men and a prostitute set up shop as an alchemist and his assistants in a London house abandoned during an outbreak of plague. Whackiness ensues. Beyond these two plays, most of Johnson's comedies are worth a read (I'll admit it, I've never made it all the way through one of his tragedies).
The Shoemaker's Holiday, by Thomas Dekker
A young upper-class man disguises himself and gets a job as a journeyman shoemaker to dodge the draft and woo his beloved without her disapproving father finding out. True love prevails (Oh, I spoiled it!).
Gammer Gurton's Needle, by Mr. S, Master of Arts (who chooses to be oh so mysterious)
The second oldest existent English comedy (1530s or maybe 50s) is the only period play I know of where peasants (or any lower class people) are the main characters. A couple of the characters speak a dialect that is so strange that if you were to use it at Faire no one, including me, would understand you. Still there are lots of great words and phrases to be gleaned from it that would be intelligible. It also gives us a look into how peasants might have interacted with one another; as interpreted by Mr. S who was probably a Oxford Don and not a peasant, but ... If you do end up having to use a copy that doesn't provide vocabulary notes, feel free to email me and I'll give you a few hints towards understanding the freakier aspects of the dialect.
Compilations:
Elizabethan Popular Culture, ed. by Leonard R.N. Ashley
Excerpts from various examples of period popular literature: crime stories, recipes (hog's liver pudding!), humorous tales, wise sayings and much more.
The Elizabethan Journals, Being a Record of Those Things Most Talked of During the Years 1591-1597, ed. by G.B. Harrison
Read of: Spanish plots! Court gossip! The depraved acts of atheists in Kent! True crime tales! All that, and the invention of bottled beer!
Rogues, Vagabonds & Sturdy Beggars, ed. by Arthur F. Kinney
During the Elizabethan and early Stuart periods pamphlets about the criminal under-classes were a sort of minor literary genre; a cheap, trashy and dubiously accurate genre. This book contains seven of those pamphlets reproduced in full. It also has a great glossary of thieves' cant (criminal slang) and other Elizabethan terms.
Farming:
The Book of Husbandry, by Fitzherbert
We're not sure which Fitzherbert. Seriously, historians argue about this stuff. Anyhow, it's an early Elizabethan book on farming. Enough said.
A Hundred Good Points of Husbandry, by Tomas Tusser
An other Elizabethan book on farming, this one's in doggerel verse! It was so popular in our period, that a few years later he came out with Five Hundred Good Points of Husbandry (honest, I don't make this stuff up). Lost Country Life (above) contains a substantial chuck of this work with explanatory notes.