Roaring Boys by Judith Cook

either leads the way to the tavern ‘to seal up the match with a bottle of Hippocras, or straight way she takes him to some bad place’. But once the couple have got into bed and are ‘set to it’, there enters ‘a terrible fellow, with side hair and a fearful beard, as though he were one of Polyphemus cut, and he comes frowning in and says “What hast thou to do, base knave, to carry my sister, or my wife?” Or some such . . .’ The accomplice then turns on the woman saying she is no better than a whore, and threatens to call a constable immediately and haul them both before the nearest Justice. ‘The whore that has tears at command, immediately falls a-weeping and cries him mercy.’ The luckless lover, caught in the act, and terrified that his being brought publicly before the Justices will get back to his wife and family, or his lord or his employer, has no option then but to pay up whatever it takes to persuade the ‘husband’ or ‘brother’ to keep quiet. At least in Elizabethan London there was no photographer party to the set-up and at hand to take blackmail pictures.
    Greene also gives advice against card-sharpers and how they operate, how cards are marked, games fixed, though swiftly adding ‘yet, gentlemen, when you shall read this book, written faithfully to discover these cozening practices, think I go not about to disprove or disallow the most ancient and honest pastime or recreation of Card Play . . .’, which he could hardly avoid adding for he was a compulsive gambler, another reason why he was always in debt. Overall what his pamphlet shows is how little has changed. It is no surprise to learn, for instance, that the Three Card Trick, or Find the Lady, was as popular a way to part a fool and his money as it is now. He finishes on a warning note, pointing out that his stories of whores, gamesters, picklocks, highway robbers and forgers have been told merely to show how such behaviour leads only to the gallows. Heaven forfend that it might be thought he was writing his pamphlets only to make money.
    Dekker assumes the role of both narrator and instructor to his young visitor, one inference being that the young man in question is a would-be writer who has just arrived in town. As narrator he addresses both him and us as ‘you’ as we follow them through the day from getting up in the morning to falling into bed at night. We take it that his protégé has arranged to meet Dekker at his lodgings, arriving bright and early and eager for instruction. He is therefore somewhat surprised to find his guide and mentor still in bed. Quick as a flash, Dekker extols the virtues of sleeping in:
    Do but consider what an excellent thing is sleep. It is an estimable jewel, a tyrant would give his crown for an hour’s slumber. It cannot be bought. Of so beautiful a shape is it that even when a man lies with an Empress, he cannot be quiet until he leaves her embracements to rest with sleep. So indebted are we to this kinsman of death, that we owe the better tribute of half our lives to him. He is the golden chain that ties health and our bodies together. [However insomniacs must avoid doctors and their noxious potions for even] Derrick the Hangman of Tyburn cannot turn a man off his perch as fast as one of these breeders of purgation.
    After chatting on for some time, he finally gets out of bed and, as he reaches for his clothes and gets dressed, gives his advice on what to wear in order to make an impression.
    For it is well to try and dress in the fashion. For instance, one’s boots should always be as wide as a wallet and so fringed as to hang down to the ankles. One’s doublet of the showiest stuff you can afford. Never cut your hair or suffer a comb to fasten his teeth there. Let it grow thick and bushy, like a forest or some wilderness. Let not those four-footed creatures that breed in it and are tenants to that crown land, be put to death . . . Long hair will make you dreadful to your enemies, manly to