The whole Bankside, with its taverns, play-houses, and worse, its bear pits and gardens, was the scene of roystering and coarse amusement.  And it is surprising that plays of such sustained moral greatness as Shakespeare’s should have been welcome.

The more private amusements of the great may well be illustrated by an account given by Busino of a masque (it was Ben Jonson’s “Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue”) performed at Whitehall on Twelfthnight, 1617.  During the play, twelve cavaliers in masks, the central figure of whom was Prince Charles, chose partners, and danced every kind of dance, until they got tired and began to flag; whereupon King James, “who is naturally choleric, got impatient, and shouted aloud, ’Why don’t they dance?  What did you make me come here for?  Devil take you all, dance!’ On hearing this, the Marquis of Buckingham, his majesty’s most favored minion, immediately sprang forward, cutting a score of lofty and very minute capers, with so much grace and agility that he not only appeased the ire of his angry sovereign, but moreover rendered himself the admiration and delight of everybody.  The other masquers, being thus encouraged, continued successively exhibiting their powers with various ladies, finishing in like manner with capers, and by lifting their goddesses from the ground . . . .  The prince, however, excelled them all in bowing, being very exact in making his obeisance both to the king and his partner; nor did we ever see him make one single step out of time—­a compliment which can scarcely be paid to his companions.  Owing to his youth, he has not much wind as yet, but he nevertheless cut a few capers very gracefully.”  The prince then went and kissed the hand of his serene parent, who embraced and kissed him tenderly.  When such capers were cut at Whitehall, we may imagine what the revelry was in the Bankside taverns.

The punishments of the age were not more tender than the amusements were refined.  Busino saw a lad of fifteen led to execution for stealing a bag of currants.  At the end of every month, besides special executions, as many as twenty-five people at a time rode through London streets in Tyburn carts, singing ribald songs, and carrying sprigs of rosemary in their hands.  Everywhere in the streets the machines of justice were visible-pillories for the neck and hands, stocks for the feet, and chains to stretch across, in case of need, and stop a mob.  In the suburbs were oak cages for nocturnal offenders.  At the church doors might now and then be seen women enveloped in sheets, doing penance for their evil deeds.  A bridle, something like a bit for a restive horse, was in use for the curbing of scolds; but this was a later invention than the cucking-stool, or ducking-stool.  There is an old print of one of these machines standing on the Thames’ bank:  on a wheeled platform is an upright post with a swinging beam across the top, on one end of which the chair is suspended over the river, while the other is worked up and down by a rope; in it is seated a light sister of the Bankside, being dipped into the unsavory flood.  But this was not so hated by the women as a similar discipline—­being dragged in the river by a rope after a boat.