ferred from a handicraft to one of the twelve merchant companies. They aspired to become more than mere shopkeepers; they aimed at becoming merchants on a large scale, as Shakespeare's Antonio or Heywood's Gresham. Thereafter it was their ambition to become aldermen, mayors, and perhaps knights. The Lord Mayor of London was elected from one of the twelve companies, but local mayors were often members of smaller guilds.18

We have thus far spoken of the boy as an apprentice. Girls also were apprenticed to craftsmasters and mistresses, although rarely.19 Women might become independent mistresses of a craft, but this also was rare. As early as the 14th century there were cases of girls being apprenticed. But few of those apprenticed, either then or in the late Renaissance, ever became independent mistresses of a craft.20 The female apprentice was often occupied with helping the craftsman's wife in domestic work rather than with learning a trade. Her father would, in most cases, not pay the expenses (slight though these were) of apprenticing her, but hired her out as a maid of all work. This was much to the disadvantage of a girl; she had long hours and sometimes heavy work, with no such compensating qualities as the male apprentices had who learned one thing well.

Both before and after the Statute of Apprentices, the wives and daughters of craftsmen frequently helped them at their work. A woman who had assisted

18 In Middleton's Mayor of Queenborough Simon the tanner is made mayor.

1 Phillis Flower; e. g., in The Fair Maid of the Exchange was a sempstress's apprentice.

her husband at his work for seven years, might, on his decease, take up his trade.21 Seven years was the minimum term for women as well as for men, according to the Statute of Apprentices.22 Thus we find women in the silk-weaving, dyeing, sewing, spinning, and brewing crafts. Inasmuch, however, as a woman's time was frequently divided between household duties and the shop, she could seldom hope to become as efficient at a craft as a man who devoted his whole time to it. But her industry and solicitude for her husband's success, as presented in 16th and early 17th century literature often arouse our interest.2

Something deserves to be said about the dress of the craftsman's or merchant's wife, since it is associated with her increasing pride in the 17th century, her aspirations toward the courtly class, and her emergence as the social equal of her husband.24 In 1570 the citizen's wife wore plain but colored clothing and linen caps. But by the 17th century, fashionable ruffs, farthingales, and elaborate aprons appeared. Stubbes, in The Anatomy of Abuses, 1583, complains of the number of artificers' wives who wear velvet caps daily, and of the merchants' wives who wear French hoods. Women of these classes also wore exquisite imitation jewels.

After this cursory historical introduction to the crafts in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, brief Dunlop, p. 143.

21

22 One of the poor laws of Elizabeth gave commands to the poor to apprentice their girls until the age of twenty, and the boys until the age of twenty-four.

23

Deloney's sketch of Eyre's wife or Rowley's Cicely are

instances.

24 This is illustrated in Massinger's City Madam, 1632.

attention will now be given to some of the literature of these periods that relates to craftsmen.

The Middle Ages may be hastily surveyed by a consideration of the work of one writer who reflects many phases of medieval literature, Chaucer. In the prologue to his Canterbury Tales are a number of artisans, the haberdasher, carpenter, weaver, dyer, upholsterer25 and wife of Bath (clothworker) 26 being especially substantial, prosperous, and proud. In a number of his tales, moreover; e. g., in the cook's fragmentary story of a riotous apprentice and in the miller's and carpenter's tales there are good presentations of artisans.

In the 16th century, preceding Elizabeth, literature was both satirical and idealistic. Cheating devices of craftsmen are represented in Skelton's poem, The

25

"An Haberdassher and a Carpenter,

A Webbe, a Dyere, and a Tapicer,

Were with us eek, clothed in o liveree,
Of a solempne and greet fraternitee.

Ful fresh and newe hir gere apyked was;*
Hir knyves were y-chaped noght with bras,

But all with silver, wroght ful clene and weel,
Hir girdles and hir pouches every-deel.
Well semed ech of hem a fair burgeys,
To sitten in a yeldhalle on a deys.
Everich, for the wisdom that he can,
Was shaply for to been an alderman.
For catel hadde they y-nogh and rente,
And eek hir wyves wolde it wel assente;
And elles certein were they to blame,
It is ful fair to been y-clept 'ma dame,'
And goon to vigilyes al bifore,

And have a mantel royalliche y-bore.”

The Prologue, lines 360-380.

* The privilege of wearing silver instead of brass was reserved for persons of a certain social eminence.

See E. P. Kuhl's Chaucer's Burgesses in Transactions of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters, vol. 18.

26 Chaucer's treatment of the Wife of Bath anticipates Massinger's treatment of the city wife in his City Madam.

Tunning of Elynour Rumming, Barclay's Ship of Fools, Cocke Lorell's Bote, and Powell's Wyll of the Devyll; More's Utopia, however, translated into English in 1551, contains praise of certain crafts.

In the following chapters representative works from the time of Queen Elizabeth's coronation to about 1642 will be carefully considered. A certain change in literary attitude is roughly paralleled in all the literary forms (excepting the Lord Mayor's Show) that we consider: prose, verse (including ballads2"), and drama. Time and political vicissitudes alter literary themes: the Cavalier poetry introduces a different attitude; Deloney's idealistic writing in the late 16th century is supplanted by Rowlands' harsh and satiric presentation of artisans in the first two decades of the 17th century; Dekker's and Rowley's kindly attitude in their shoemaker plays of the late 16th and early 17th century respectively is supplanted by satire and harsh realism in the work of later dramatists like Fletcher, Middleton, and Shirley.

27 Confusion between the old traditional type of ballad and the Elizabethan may be obviated by a consideration of the words of F. B. Gummere:

"On the whole, aside from remoter origins, the ballad under Elizabeth, so far as it had any literary meaning, evidently covered on the one hand poems of love or satire which more or less vaguely suggested the French type, and, on the other, poems independent of such influence, pointing back to the traditional ballad, with its refrain, its tune, and its hints of the dance. But any occasional poem, grave or gay, which appeared as a broadside could take the name unchallenged."

F. B. Gummere's Old English Ballads, p. xxiii.

CHAPTER I

THE CRAFTSMAN AS A HEROIC FIGURE

As depicted in the literature under consideration, artisans are extremely fond of spectacular shows, exhibitions, and parades of various kinds. This is well illustrated in the Lord Mayor's Show, a ceremony in which are often represented former patriotic and philanthropic mayors who rose from the craftsmen's ranks.

The novels of Thomas Deloney are rich in heroic craftsmen. In Jack of Newbury, the weaver, Jack, brings two hundred and fifty of his own workmen to Queen Katherine to fight against the Scots at Flodden Field. In the same author's Thomas of Reading, the clothiers provide King Henry I. with soldiers to fight against Lewis, the French king.

A craft which is best represented in this respect is the so-called Gentle Craft or shoemakers' guild, the popular guild of the late 16th century. In the second part of Deloney's Gentle Craft, Stukeley and Strangwidge, sea-captains, visit the shop of Peachy, the shoemaker, and are insolent to the shoemakers, who defend themselves with their tools. Peachy and his men defeat the two sea-captains. It afterwards becomes the custom for two of Peachy's men at a time to whip Stukeley and Strangwidge, so that the latter dread shoemakers and repent their former insolence. The feud is finally 1 Jack of Newbury, chap. 20.