Various - Notes and Queries, Number 15, February 9, 1850

Running my eye accidentally through the household book of Sir Roger Twysden, from 1659 to 1670, it occurred to me to make a comparison between the relative prices of meat and wages, as there given, in order to ascertain the position of our peasantry in these parts, at the close of the 17th century. I send you a few extracts, by which it will be seen that, in Kent, at least, our agricultural labourers appear to have been in far better condition than those of the rest of England, who, in Mr. Macaulay’s brilliant work, are represented as living “almost entirely on rye, barley, and oats,” owing to the exorbitantly high price of meat, as compared with the ordinary scale of wages.

As to meat, I find the following entries:—

Through this period we have:—

“Cheese per load, i.e . 56 lb., at 14 s ., 11 s ., 10 s ., 4 d ., 9 s . 6 d .”

The wages of labourers through the same period are entered:—

A reference to the household-books of the Derings, in East Kent, gives the same results.

The wages given by Sir Roger Twysden to his household servants at this time were:—

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I have added, in most instances, the prices now paid to labourers in these parts, having obtained my information from the farmers of the neighbourhood.

The price of butchers’ meat at present, in this neighbourhood, is from 6 d . to 7 1/2 d . per lb.; by wholesale, 3 s . 6 d . or 3 s . 8 d . per stone.

As far, then, as the relative prices of wages and meat can guide us, the labourer, in these parts, was as well able to purchase meat in 1670 as he is now.

Unhappily for him, the imprudence of early marriage entailing upon him the charge of a family, he is precluded from the indulgence in fresh meat, except as an occasional treat. Cheese and bacon, however, are still within his reach. The improvidence of early marriage rarely occurred in former days, and palpably, if our Kentish labourers lived entirely on oats and rye, it was not of necessity that they did so. I am inclined to think that, in many of the instances given above, especially in haying and harvest, provisions of some sort were found by the employer, over and above the wages. When I have more leisure, I will endeavour to obtain correct information on this point; and meanwhile, send you the entries just as I find them. I observe an entry of “peas to boil for the men.” They had porridge then, at all events, in addition to their wages; and these wages, if they had so chosen, could further have purchased them meat, quite as well as at the present day; though, alas for our poor peasantry, this is not saying much for them; and even of that little smack of meat they will soon be debarred, if the present system—but I am intruding on sacred ground, and must leave the poor fellows to their hard work and scanty meals.

I regret that my communication (No. 13. p. 194.), on the subject of the authorship of The Taming of a Shrew , was too late to be of any avail for the already-published new edition of Marlowe’s works; and, had I been aware of such being the case, I should have waited until I had had an opportunity of seeing a work whose editor may entertain views in ignorance of which, to my disadvantage, I am still writing. It is, perhaps, a still greater disadvantage that I should appear to depend for proofs upon a bare enumeration of parallel passages; when I know that the space I should require for the purposes of stating the case fully and fairly, and, as I think, conclusively, would be utterly inconsistent with that brevity which must be with you an essential condition; while, at the same time, I know of no medium through which I am so likely to enlist the attention of a “fit audience” as your publication. Premising that my references are to The Taming of a Shrew in “Six Old Plays,” 1799, and to Marlowe’s Works, edit. 1826, I proceed to indicate such passages as a rapid glance through the respective works, aided by some previous acquaintance with the subject, and a not very bad memory, furnished. Some of the parallels will be found identical; in others, the metaphors will be found to be the same, with the expression more or less varied; and in others, again, particular expressions are the same, though the tenor of the phrase be different. It will be observed that the quotations of Marlowe are exclusively from Dr. Faustus and Tamburlaine . Of the longer passages I have given merely the first line for reference; and I have numbered them for the convenience of comparison:—

Leaving the question in this position for the present, I shall be glad of such information from any of your readers as may tend to throw a light on the date of Shakspeare’s Taming of the Shrew . I find Mr. Collier’s opinion expressed in the following words:—

“The great probability is that Hamlet was written at the earliest in 1601, and the Taming of the Shrew perhaps came from the pen of its author not very long afterwards.”

I am anxious to ascertain whether I am acquainted with all the circumstances on which the above opinion is founded; as those which I can, at this moment, recall, are to my mind hardly sufficiently conclusive. Rejecting the supposed allusion to Heywood’s Woman Kill’d with Kindness , which I see, by a note, Mr. Collier gives up as untenable ground, the facts, I believe, remain as follows:—

First: The Taming of the Shrew was not mentioned by Meres in 1598, whereupon it is assumed that “had it been written, he could scarcely have failed to mention it.” And,

Second: it must have been written after Hamlet , because the name Baptista, used incorrectly in that play as a feminine name, is properly applied to a man in this. And these, I believe, are all. Now, the first of these assumptions I answer, by asking, “Does it follow?” Of all Shakspeare’s plays which had then appeared, only three had been published before 1598, and not one comedy. Meres, in all probability, had no list to refer to, nor was he making one: he simply adduced, in evidence of his assertion of Shakspeare’s excellence, both in tragedy and comedy, such plays of both kinds as he could recollect, or the best of those which he did recollect. Let us put the case home; not in reference to any modern dramatist (though Shakspeare in his own day was not the great exception that he stands with us), but to the world-honoured poet himself, who has founded a sort of religion in us: I, for my part, would not be bound not to omit, in a hasty enumeration, and having no books to refer to, more important works than the