“Her features all as fresh above
       As is the grass that grows by Dove,
       And lythe as lass of Kent. 
       Her skin as soft as Lemster wool,
       As white as snow on Peakish Hull,
       Or swan that swims in Trent.

       “This maiden in a morn betime
       Went forth when May was in the prime
       To get sweet setywall,
       The honey-suckle, the harlock,
       The lily, and the lady-smock,
       To deck her summer hall.”

How late such a simple and pretty picture could have been drawn to life is uncertain, but by the middle of the seventeenth century the luxury of the town had penetrated the country, even into Scotland.  The dress of a rich farmer’s wife is thus described by Dunbar.  She had “a robe of fine scarlet, with a white hood, a gay purse and gingling keys pendant at her side from a silken belt of silver tissue; on each finger she wore two rings, and round her waist was bound a sash of grass-green silk, richly embroidered with silver.”

Shakespeare was the mirror of his time in things small as well as great.  How far he drew his characters from personal acquaintances has often been discussed.  The clowns, tinkers, shepherds, tapsters, and such folk, he probably knew by name.  In the Duke of Manchester’s “Court and Society from Elizabeth to Anne” is a curious suggestion about Hamlet.  Reading some letters from Robert, Earl of Essex, to Lady Rich, his sister, the handsome, fascinating, and disreputable Penelope Devereaux, he notes, in their humorous melancholy and discontent with mankind, something in tone and even language which suggests the weak and fantastic side of Hamlet’s mind, and asks if the poet may not have conceived his character of Hamlet from Essex, and of Horatio from Southampton, his friend and patron.  And he goes on to note some singular coincidences.  Essex was supposed by many to have a good title to the throne.  In person he had his father’s beauty and was all that Shakespeare has described the Prince of Denmark.  His mother had been tempted from her duty while her noble and generous husband was alive, and this husband was supposed to have been poisoned by her and her paramour.  After the father’s murder the seducer had married the guilty mother.  The father had not perished without expressing suspicion of foul play against himself, yet sending his forgiveness to his faithless wife.  There are many other agreements in the facts of the case and the incidents of the play.  The relation of Claudius to Hamlet is the same as that of Leicester to Essex:  under pretense of fatherly friendship he was suspicious of his motives, jealous of his actions; kept him much in the country and at college; let him see little of his mother, and clouded his prospects in the world by an appearance of benignant favor.  Gertrude’s relations with her son Hamlet were much like those of Lettice with Robert Devereaux.  Again, it is suggested, in his moodiness, in his college learning, in his love for the theatre and the players, in his desire for the fiery action for which his nature was most unfit, there are many kinds of hints calling up an image of the Danish Prince.