Pre-cooked food was available for sale from bakers, hot meat shops and alehouses. London had a row of all-night hot meat shops on the south side of London Bridge from at least the thirteenth century ready to serve travellers, those heading for the capital’s markets and locals alike.

The first permanent theatre was built in 1576, in Shoreditch, by James Burbage and four of his fellow actors from the Earl of Leicester’s professional acting troupe.

Ben Jonson’s introduction to the printed version of his play The New Inn (1631), which offered the following rebuttal to those who had criticized it: ‘What did they come for, then? thou wilt aske me. I will as punctually answer: To see, and to bee seene. To make generall muster of themselves in their clothes of credit: and possesse the Stage,

That which you see enacted in film and television dramas is of necessity the rather tame, simple stuff that actors can learn within rehearsal times. The impression that many people get, therefore, is that all historical dancing was the calm and stately stuff that opened an evening’s entertainment, the pavans and basse dances suitable for serious

Fashion at court changed rapidly, and that which had cost the equivalent of a large town house to buy could appear upon the back of the most ambitious only a handful of times before appearing passé. For those like Robert Dudley, patron of one of the acting companies, handing on such clothes could form part of his financial support package, perhaps

The expenses also mentioned items for four separate rehearsals: three fairly low-cost events, perhaps just with the main protagonists in the play, and one ‘general’ rehearsal, later on, which was a much more pricey affair. With twenty-four such plays being staged simultaneously in a town of scarcely 6,000 inhabitants, there can have been few who

In his inventory of the Admiral’s Men’s possessions in 1598, Henslowe lists cloth-of-gold gowns, coats, venetians, and hose; a cloth-of-silver coat, jerkin, pair of venetians and pair of hose; and a scarlet cloak with two broad gold laces and gold buttons. Since cloth of gold and cloth of silver could only be made with long thin strips of the

Elizabeth’s reign saw the nobility involved as patrons of troupes of professional players. Over twenty such patrons are recorded,

An ox or cockerel slaughtered at the end of its useful life was thus thought to be indigestible unless in the frenzy of fury the blood were to once again rush around its body, softening and moistening its flesh. By baiting an old beast, people believed themselves to be making the most of the resources God had given them. There was even a system of