Historic Romance Strange Stories Author:William Andrews General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1883 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million book... more »s for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER VI. ENGLISH LIFE AND MANNERS IN THE TIME OF SHAKESPEARE. COULD we be transported, with all our bodily senses, back to the days when Shakespeare moved among men, and read and wrote their characters, we should, in spite of all that histories tell us, be startled at the immense difference in every phase and circumstance of life and manners we should discover between that distant past and our busy present. Let us lead the compliant reader, in fancy's chain, back to that period, brushing off the dust of centuries from the successive pictures we will present to his inquiring eye, and piecing together the tattered records from which he may read the story of the sixteenth century. Here is a picture of London as Shakespeare knew it. It has no straggling suburbs, but we see it surrounded by walls, with numerous gates -- Ludgate, Bishopsgate, Moorgate, Cripplegate, and others -- which, if it were night, we should see closed at the sound of the bells of Bow, and guarded by a regular watch. The Towerpresents an animated appearance ; Whitehall is white ; Crosby Hall, once a palace of Richard III., is the house of an alderman ; and Bridewell, a palace of Edward VI., is a workhouse. Here is the Royal Exchange, the city's boast, with its many and varied arcades and shops. Every trade has its " Hall," and every " Hall" its gardens and bowling-greens. Oxford Street is not to be seen except as "a muddy country road leading to Tyburn." Pimlico is a village to which on Sunday the honest citizen permits himself to stroll to regale on " pudding pies." The Courts are for the most part out in the country, Tottenham C...« less