Our houses and apartments are much warmer than medieval castles, at any distance from the fireplaces, during the winter. Few buildings had potable water piped in, and, in almost all that did, the pipes were made of lead. There were no flush toilets until that late 18th century. Various methods were used to dispose of bodily waste: chamber pots were the indoor option of the householder and tenant. Castle walls were pocked with corbels, open at the bottom, that sent the waste either to a ditch that emptied into the nearest water source or simply onto the ground.1 The same was often the source of the castle's potable water. In London, and other large cities, professional water carriers carried large jars-full from locations of cleaner water, or from aquaducts to houses wealthy enough to afford to buy it.
Some “jakes” sat above indoor pits that smelled as might be expected. Inside the castle bailey were open-bottomed Porta-Johns that were used until they filled up and then were covered over with dirt and a new hole dug nearby. Litter was thrown everywhere within the walls and collected by garbage wagons every few months. Castle grounds wreaked of garbage and offal. Tenement blocks in populated towns and cities could smell every bit as bad.2
It took until the 19th century for London and Paris to grow desperate enough to stop the constant cycle of terrifying dysentery, typhoid, and cholera epidemics, which killed many tens of thousands, for the cities to build modern sewer systems. At about the same time, surgeons began in the habit of washing their hands before doing surgery. These two advancements have since saved more lives than all the subsequent medical advances until our day.
This subject could (and does) fill enormous libraries. This small sample will have to be sufficient for our present purposes.
One of the most ironic results of this is Shakespeare's washing machine. A considerable majority of Shakespeare's fellow playwrights were born into an England in which the word “Master” was rapidly transforming into “Mister”. Master had been the proper word for centuries with which to address noblemen and freemen of trade guilds. But England was rapidly becoming a trading empire. Skilled workers of every type were needed in plenty. The respect for their station was growing rapidly. Toward the end of the 16th century, any respectable head of household, tradesman, merchant, etc., was addressed as “Master”. The title was becoming our modern “Mister”.
The playwrights of the time were mostly drawn from this new class. And you can see it in their plays. Ben Jonson was a bricklayer's son. This did not prevent him from getting an excellent education in the premiere public school of his day.
In Jonson's plays there are house-wives, pewter being polished to a fine luster, laundry being done and much more. He is portraying the life of the new class to which he belonged. He showed his education, also, by references to, and plays about, classical history.
Another bricklayer's son who had access to a quality education and wrote exceptional plays and prose was Thomas Middleton. Middleton's works are chock full with laundresses, starchwomen, worsted stockings (what we call socks), six-penny ordinaries (which we might call greasy spoons... um...with gambling before and after the meals). Shop keepers are everywhere at their shop doors heard to cry “What d'ye lack?” at passersby and sending their sons to be educated at Cambridge and the Inns of Court.
And what is seen especially in Middleton is servants and tenants shaking their heads at the foolishness of their “betters”. The tables are turned. Sons of gentlemen are all but uniformly ridiculously dressed and unmitigated dolts. Once sons of mercers turn courtiers (and they do in profusion) all hope of a useful life is lost.
Jonson's and Middleton's works will be the model for Bertie and Jeeves stories for hundreds of years to come. At the behest of the likes of Thomas Cromwell and William Cecil, the nobility is being retired to their lands, where their ego and refusal to be educated will be allowed a steadily shrinking domain. The new government is made up of mercers' and drapers' sons graduating from the Inns of Court, of merchants' trading in spices.
As amusing as these works may be the details of world they depict are foreign to us. The irony of this is that we feel a much closer relationship to the works of Shakespeare. With the exception of a single play, he makes no mention whatsoever of laundry. In none does he mention starchwomen or a character doing his or her best to preserve a farthing candle.
He resemble us. Unlike Middleton, he never mentions suet under the assumption that we will understand how candles were made. When his characters read at night it is by light that he feels no need to explain just as we feel no need to specify that we turn on an electric light. When they attend a masque, in a great hall, no one lights scores of candles. As in our world, the chandelier is simply there making light. Presumably someone turned on the switch.
His characters travel by horse like we travel by car. They are equipped with saddles, reins and bits, like all our cars come with power windows and cruise control that we do not need to mention. Over roads that are dependable and well-kept. His silence on the matter, like our own, makes clear that, upon their return home, they park their horse in the garage just like we don't think to mention.
What we likely do not notice is that Windsor is the town that serves the Queen's primary palace. It is a place that the noble and the wealthy and hangers-on walk into as they pass out of the back gate of the palace.3 The laundresses can be seen there washing the laundry in Datchet Mead not far from the gate. The overflow of the palace servants and guests take rooms at the inns and houses, drink at the taverns. The residents of the town grow wealthy with the business of the wealthy. Their wives have servants that can be seen carrying the buck-baskets filled with dirty laundry as one goes in and out of the gate.
1See my “A Brief History of the Castle Jakes.” Virtual Grub Street, July 7, 2019. https://gilbertwesleypurdy.blogspot.com/2019/07/a-brief-history-of-castle-jakes.html
2See my “Livin’ Real at Windsor Castle with Queen Elizabeth.” Medieval and Tudor Topics, June 4, 2022. https://vgs-pbr-reviews.blogspot.com/2022/06/livin-real-at-windsor-castle-with-queen.html
3See my “Mr. Billington's Bluster: the Uncommon-ness of The Merry Wives of Windsor.” Virtual Grub Street, May 27, 2024. https://gilbertwesleypurdy.blogspot.com/2024/05/mr-billingtons-bluster-uncommon-ness-of_27.html
This page is in-progress.
Please check back soon.
Also at Virtual Grub Street:
- On the Possibility that Edward de Vere and Shakspere of Straford Shared a Beer in Southwark. February 9, 2026. "The Earl of Oxford would have taken this route in 1575, as would Michel Eyquem, Seigneur de Montaigne,"
- Du Bartas – Dinosaurs = Shakespeare's Gaunt Speech in Richard the Second. November 30, 2025. "After quite some time it was discovered that one John Eliot's French lesson book Ortho-epia Gallica included..."
- Sonnet 130: Shakespeare's Reply to a 1580 Poem by Thomas Watson. September 7, 2024. “Interesting to see our Derek Hunter debating with Dennis McCarthy, at the North group,...”.
- Rocco Bonetti's Blackfriars Fencing School and Lord Hunsdon's Water Pipe. August 12, 2023. “... the tenement late in the tenure of John Lyllie gentleman & nowe in the tenure of the said Rocho Bonetti...”
Check out the Shakespeare Authorship Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
- Check out the V.G.S. Oxfordian Shakespeare Poetry Page for many poems by Shakespeare together with historical context.
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