Even in the
houses of the middle classes the furniture was rich and comfortable, and
there was an air of amenity in the chambers and parlors strewn with sweet
herbs and daily decked with pretty nosegays and fragrant flowers. Lights
were placed on antique candelabra, or, wanting these at suppers, there
were living candleholders. "Give me a torch," says Romeo; "I'll be a
candle-holder, and look on." Knowledge of the details of luxury of an
English home of the sixteenth century will make exceedingly vivid hosts
of allusions in Shakespeare.
Servants were numerous in great households, a large retinue being a mark
of gentility, and hospitality was unbounded. During the lord mayor's term
in London he kept open house, and every day any stranger or foreigner
could dine at his table, if he could find an empty seat. Dinner, served
at eleven in the early years of James, attained a degree of epicureanism
rivaling dinners of the present day, although the guests ate with their
fingers or their knives, forks not coming in till 1611. There was mighty
eating and swigging at the banquets, and carousing was carried to an
extravagant height, if we may judge by the account of an orgy at the
king's palace in 1606, for the delectation of the King and Queen of
Denmark, when the company and even their majesties abandoned discretion
and sobriety, and "the ladies are seen to roll about in intoxication.
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