It was customary for a man to carry a case of pipes about with him.  In a play of 1609 ("Everie Woman in her Humour”) there is an inventory of the contents of a gentleman’s pocket, with a value given for each item, which displays certainly a curious assortment of articles.  First comes a brush and comb worth fivepence, and next a looking-glass worth three halfpence.  With these aids to vanity are a case of tobacco-pipes valued at fourpence, half an ounce of tobacco valued at sixpence, and three pence in coin, or, as it is quaintly worded, “in money and golde.”  Satirists of course made fun of the smoker’s pocketful of apparatus.  A pamphleteer of 1609 says:  “I behelde pipes in his pocket; now he draweth forth his tinder-box and his touchwood, and falleth to his tacklings; sure his throat is on fire, the smoke flyeth so fast from his mouth.”

It may be noted, by the way, that the gallant had no hesitation about smoking in the presence of ladies.  Gostanzo, in Chapman’s “All Fools,” 1605, says: 

    And for discourse in my fair mistress’s presence
    I did not, as you barren gallants do,
    Fill my discourses up drinking tobacco.

And in Ben Jonson’s “Every Man out of his Humour,” 1600, Fastidious Brisk, “a neat, spruce, affecting courtier,” smokes while he talks to his mistress.  A feather-headed gallant, when in the presence of ladies, often found himself, like others of his tribe of later date, gravelled for lack of matter for conversation, and the puffing of tobacco-smoke helped to occupy the pauses.

When our gallant went to the theatre he loved to occupy one of the stools at the side of the stage.  There he could sit and smoke and embarrass the actors with his audible criticisms of play and players.

It chaunc’d me gazing at the Theater, To spie a Lock-Tabacco Chevalier Clowding the loathing ayr with foggie fume Of Dock Tobacco friendly foe to rhume—­

says a versifier of 1599, who did not like smoking in the theatre and so abused the quality of the tobacco smoked—­though admitting its medicinal virtue.  Dekker suggests, probably with truth, that one reason why the young gallant liked to push his way to a stool on the stage, notwithstanding “the mewes and hisses of the opposed rascality”—­the “mewes” must have been the squeals or whistles produced by the instrument which was later known as a cat-call—­was the opportunity such a prominent position afforded for the display of “the best and most essential parts of a gallant—­good cloathes, a proportionable legge, white hand, the Persian lock, and a tolerable beard.”  Apparently, too, serving-boys were within call, and thus lights could easily be obtained, which were handed to one another by the smokers on the points of their swords.