anse merchants were located in great numbers in the
neighborhood of the steel-yard in Lower Thames Street.

Foreigners as well as contemporary chronicles and the printed diatribes
against luxury bear witness to the profusion in all ranks of society and
the variety and richness in apparel. There was a rage for the display of
fine clothes. Elizabeth left hanging in her wardrobe above three thousand
dresses when she was called to take that unseemly voyage down the stream,
on which the clown's brogan jostles the queen's slipper. The plays of
Shakespeare, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, and of all the dramatists,
are a perfect commentary on the fashions of the day, but a knowledge of
the fashions is necessary to a perfect enjoyment of the plays. We see the
fine lady in a gown of velvet (the foreigners thought it odd that velvet
should be worn in the street), or cloth of gold and silver tissue, her
hair eccentrically dressed, and perhaps dyed, a great hat with waving
feathers, sometimes a painted face, maybe a mask or a muffler hiding all
the features except the eyes, with a muff, silk stockings, high-heeled
shoes, imitated from the "chopine" of Venice, perfumed bracelets,
necklaces, and gloves--"gloves sweet as damask roses"--a
pocket-handkerchief wrought in gold and silver, a small looking-glass
pendant at the girdle, and a love-lock hanging wantonly over the
shoulder, artificial flowers at the corsage, and a mincing step. "These
fashionable women, when they are disappointed, dissolve into tears, weep
with one eye, laugh with the other, or, like children, laugh and cry they
can both together, and as much pity is to be taken of a woman weeping as
of a goose going barefoot," says old Burton.

The men had even greater fondness for finery. Paul Hentzner, the
Brandenburg jurist, in 1598, saw, at the Fair at St. Bartholomew, the
lord mayor, attended by twelve gorgeous aldermen, walk in a neighboring
field, dressed in a scarlet gown, and about his neck a golden chain, to
which hung a Golden Fleece. Men wore the hair long and flowing, with high
hats and plumes of feathers, and carried muffs like the women; gallants
sported gloves on their hats as tokens of ladies' favors, jewels and
roses in the ears, a long love-lock under the left ear, and gems in a
ribbon round the neck. This tall hat was called a "capatain." Vincentio,
in the "Taming of the Shrew," exclaims: "O fine villain! A silken
doublet! A velvet hose! A scarlet cloak! And