View of London from Southwark c 1630 based

View of London from Southwark, c. 1630; based on Claes van Visscher’s ‘Panorama of London’ (1616)

Shopping malls in London in the seventeenth century

Inigo Jones’s design for the façade of the New Exchange

• Shop Boy. • What do you lack? What is’t you buy? Very fine China stuffs of all kinds and qualities? China chains, China bracelets, China scarves, China fans, China girdles, China knives, China boxes, China cabinets, caskets, umbrellas, sundials, hourglasses, looking-glasses, burning-glasses, concave glasses, triangular glasses, convex glasses, crystal globes, waxen pictures, ostrich eggs, birds of paradise, musk-cats, Indian mice, Indian rats, China dogs and China cats? Flowers of silk, mosaic fishes? Waxen fruit and porcelain dishes? Very fine cages for birds, billiard balls, purses, pipes, rattles, basins, ewers, cups, cans, voiders, toothpicks, targets, falchions, beards of all ages, vizards, spectacles? See, what you lack? • (From ‘The Entertainment at Britain’s Burse’ by Ben Jonson, performed 11 April 1609 to James I, Anna of Denmark and Prince Henry)

The town is at this present very empty and solitary, there being nothing thought on, by reason of the sickness but fugae et formidines [flights and terrors]. 8 June 1609, London

Nathan Field, actor and playwright (1587 -1619/20) ‘Impressed’ to act with the Children of the Chapel Royal at the Blackfriars Theatre 1600; performed in both Epicoene and Bartholomew Fair

When his play of a Silent Woman was first acted, ther was found verses after on the stage against him, concluding that the play was well named the Silent Woman, ther was never one man to say Plaudite to it. January 19, 1619. Conversations with William Drummond of Hawthornden …then to the King’s playhouse and there saw The Silent Woman; the best comedy, I think, that was ever wrote; and sitting by Shadwell the poet, he was big with admiration of it. Samuel Pepys, Diary, 19 September 1668 The Intrigue of it is the greatest and most noble of any pure unmix'd Comedy in any Language: you see it in many persons of various characters and humours, and all delightful…I shall not waste time in commending the writing of this Play, but I will give you my opinion, that there is more wit and acuteness of Fancy in it then in any of Ben. Johnson's. Besides, that he has here describ'd the conversation of Gentlemen in the persons of True-Wit, and his Friends, with more gayety, ayre and freedom, then in the rest of his Comedies. John Dryden, Of Dramatick Poesie (1668)

What a deal of cold business doth a man misspend the better part of life in! in scattering compliments, tendering visits, gathering and venting news, following feasts and plays, making a little winter-love in a dark corner. There cannot be one colour of the mind, another of the wit. If the mind be staid, grave, and composed, the wit is so; that vitiated, the other is blown and deflowered. Do we not see, if the mind languish, the members are dull? Look upon an effeminate person, his very gait confesseth him. If a man be fiery, his motion is so; if angry, it is troubled and violent. So that we may conclude wheresoever manners and fashions are corrupted, language is. It imitates the public riot. The excess of feasts and apparel are the notes of a sick state, and the wantonness of language of a sick mind. Ben Jonson, Timber, or Discoveries, made upon men and matter, as they have flowed out of his daily readings

Costume for Lady Bedford as the Amazon queen, Penthesilea, in The Masque of Queens (1609) Lucy Russell, Countess of Bedford (probably)

Jacobeans in drag The Law of God very straightly forbids men to put on womens garments, garments are set downe for signes distinctiue betwene sexe & sexe, to take vnto vs those garments that are manifest signes of another sexe, is to falsifie, forge, and adulterate, contrarie to the expresse rule of the word of God. Which way I beseech you shall they be excused, that put on, not the apparrell onely, but the gate, the gestures, the voyce, the passions of a woman? Stephen Gosson, Playes confuted in fiue actions prouing that they are not to be suffred in a Christian common weale (1582)