The Streets and people of Shakespeare's London

We are not sure exactly when Shakespeare came to London. It was at some stage between 1585 and 1592. But the London that Shakespeare came to was a London far removed from the London we know today. For a start it was a fortified city surrounded by a wall. It was a bustling noisy, vibrant city, the constant clatter of the horses hooves as they rolled over the cobbled stones, mixed with the shouts of the street vendors could be deafening.

The Streets of Shakespeare's London were not at all pleasant. You walked through them at your peril. Each morning the householders would open their windows and to the cry of 'Watch the water’, Or ‘watch below' they tipped their sewage into the streets. If you got out of the way quickly you avoided it. But if not then it all poured down upon your head and you had an incredibly unpleasant day ahead of you.

The citizens themselves were a riotous, reeking bunch, for whatever their station in life, most suffered with rotting teeth, constant stomach disorders, and numerous other afflictions. Rats scavenged in the streets and scurried through the gutters. Plague carrying rats. AS well as that streets were overrun with criminals - Coney Catchers, cutthroats, cut-purses, always willing to step out of the shadows and relieve the unwary of their possessions or even their life. Citizen or stranger it mattered not.

For most people, the only way to travel was on the river. Here the watermen plied their trade, the water taxis of their day who would row up and down crying 'Eastward Ho!' 'Westward Ho!', depending on which way they were going. Sometimes they would cry out 'Oars, Oars, anyone for oars?' causing embarrassment to more than one visitor to London, who misunderstood the service that the watermen were offering.

All that filth that was dumped into these streets from the chamber pots or the night's soil, poured out of the house windows, emptied eventually into that river. And from it the people took their drinking supply. They knew their water was polluted - that is why many of them turned to the best alternative form of sustenance - beer. They drank beer or Ale for breakfast; beer or ale for lunch; beer or ale throughout the afternoon and to send them into a peaceful sleep, beer as a bedtime draft.

The rigours and dangers of their everyday lives coupled with their constant state of intoxication meant that the average Elizabethan lived life for the moment. They loved any form of entertainment but if life in the present grew too arduous they could always attend a play and be taken back to a bygone age or spirited away to a far-off land.