ing towns in this year of
grace, and remember how much we know of the best tradition of municipal
work, can we say that, _mutatis mutandis_, the advantage is altogether
with us? Plague and fire and flood have been overcome, but men and women
live lives entirely undisciplined. Little or nothing binds the citizen
to the State, and the adulteration of food has become so common that
pure bread and pure beer are the exception, and the supervision of those
who prepare the necessities of our daily life is much less strict than
it was when old John Shakespeare, the poet's father, was Stratford's
ale-taster, empowered to see, _inter alia_, that every baker sold a
whole loaf of true weight for one penny.

But if the corporation ruled Stratford strictly in Elizabethan times,
it encouraged all kinds of sport, to some of which the poet makes
reference in his plays. Young and old knew the Maypole. Nine Men's
Morris was another popular game, and Falstaff, referring to his
treatment when he escaped from Ford's house disguised as the fat woman
of Brentford, says, "Since I plucked geese, played truant, and whipp'd
top, I knew not what it was to be beaten, since lately." Goose-plucking
was a particularly barbarous pastime. We know that hockey and football
were played in Elizabethan England, and that the corporation of
Stratford kept a bowling-alley at the municipality's expense for the
free use of the town. Cock-fights were among the less reputable sports
of the time, and bears or bulls were baited. Hunting, hawking, coursing,
fishing, and the rest beguiled the leisure hours of those who had any,
and the harvest festivals would have played their part. There were great
fairs and open markets held at certain seasons of spring and summer.
Within doors, cards and shovel-board would seem to have been the only
kind of amusement that were not directly associated with social
ceremonies.

Christening, marriage, and burial were all allied in the poet's time to
more public exhibitions than obtain to-day, the wedding being preceded
by a public betrothal ceremony, and the marriage itself being associated
with a great many quaint customs if the contracting parties had the
money wherewith to carry them out. Removed from touch with the outside
world, seeing little of the life of big cities for themselves, the
citizens of Stratford managed to get no small measure of simple and
harmless enjoyment out of life, though even among the town council there
were