he various feasts of the year and the bridal
occasions were celebrated with great festivity, and it was the custom
for each guest to contribute one or more dishes.

"Sham" is the keynote to an understanding of Elizabethan society; the
Virgin Queen herself, with all her undoubted worth and abilities, was
the embodiment of the vanity and pretence of her age. Young unmarried
women loved "to show coyness in gestures, mince in words and speeches,
gingerliness in tripping on toes like young goats, demure nicety and
babyishness," and when they went out, they had silk scarfs "cast about
their faces, fluttering in the wind, or riding in their velvet visors,
with two holes cut for the eyes." The visors here mentioned bring
to mind Hamlet's "God hath given you one face, and you make yourself
another; you jig, you amble, you lisp, you nickname God's creatures,
and make your wantonness your ignorance." The general use of masks in
public places toward the close of Elizabeth's reign did not improve
the moral status of the higher classes. The pretentiousness and the
superficiality of the times are laid bare by Harrington, the favorite
godson of the queen, whose arraignment is in unsparing terms: "We go
brave in apparel that we may be taken for better men than we be;
we use much bombastings and quiltings to seem better framed, better
shouldered, smaller waisted, and fuller thighed than we are; we barb
and shave oft to seem younger than we are; we use perfumes, both
inward and outward, to seem sweeter, wear corked shoes to seem taller,
use courteous salutations to seem kinder, lowly obeisance to seem
humbler, and grave and godly communication to seem wiser and devouter
than we be."

The dress of the women of the Elizabethan era shows the same
extravagance that is apparent in all the exaggerated social phases
of the time. Philip Stubbs, who wrote at the close of the sixteenth
century a book entitled _The Anatomy of Abuses_, appears to have
been a choleric and gloomy observer of current manners, but, with due
allowance for the spirit in which he writes, a very clear picture can
be gotten of the style and excesses of dress of the several classes of
society. He affirms that no people in the world were so hungry after
new-fangled styles as were those of his country. After having dilated
on the large amounts spent for dress, he digresses in order to
moralize, and adds that the fashionable attire of the day is unsuited
to the actual needs of