Opening nights almost invariably brought in much bigger takings. Galiaso, for example (a play now completely lost to us), opened on 26 June 1594 and brought Henslowe £3 4s that night. Its next performance, on 12 July, produced £2 6s, and the third performance, on 23 July, garnered £1 11s. This was a common pattern.

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

Linen was considered to be especially effective at this job as it was absorbent, so it actively drew the grease and sweat away from the skin into the weave of the cloth, like a sponge soaking up a spillage. A change of underwear therefore not only removed the build-up of potentially dangerous waste products but could actively draw more out from the

Lady’s bedstraw, or Galium verum, was considered to be the finest. Not only is it very soft to sleep on, but it smells of freshly mown hay even when dry and old, and it helps to deter insects, in particular fleas and body lice.

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

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.

Andrewe Boorde, an ex-monk, traveller and physician writing some twenty years later, was more concerned with what you ate at breakfast. Bacon and fried eggs, such as labouring men ate, was not good for a gentleman, in his opinion. No, a gentleman should have his eggs poached. It is our earliest record of the full English breakfast, and already it

One of the many advantages of the apprenticeship system that people at the time commented on was the propensity for teenagers to behave better for other people than they did for their parents, and the willingness of non-parental authority figures to exert firm discipline. Youngsters put out to a master were not only learning valuable commercial

Joris Hoefnagel’s painting A Marriage Feast at Bermondsey (c.1569) has a group of five young people dancing. Two men and three women are dancing, to the music of a couple of fiddlers, in poses very reminiscent of the type of dance wherein participants dance singly and take it in turns to display their moves (in a similar way to break-dancing and