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Tobacco History:

The Social History of Smoking

by George Latimer Apperson

First published 1914

Chapter 2 Part 2

TOBACCO TRIUMPHANT:
SMOKING FASHIONABLE AND UNIVERSAL

It may be noted, by the way, that the gallant had no hesitation about smoking in the presence of ladies. Gostanzo, in Chapman's "All Fools," 1605, says:

And in Ben Jonson's "Every Man out of his Humour," 1600, Fastidious Brisk, "a neat, spruce, affecting courtier," smokes while he talks to his mistress. A feather-headed gallant, when in the presence of ladies, often found himself, like others of his tribe of later date, gravelled for lack of matter for conversation, and the puffing of tobacco-smoke helped to occupy the pauses.

When our gallant went to the theatre he loved to occupy one of the stools at the side of the stage. There he could sit and smoke and embarrass the actors with his audible criticisms of play and players.

says a versifier of 1599, who did not like smoking in the theatre and so abused the quality of the tobacco smoked—though admitting its medicinal virtue. Dekker suggests, probably with truth, that one reason why the young gallant liked to push his way to a stool on the stage, notwithstanding "the mewes and hisses of the opposed rascality"—the "mewes" must have been the squeals or whistles produced by the instrument which was later known as a cat-call—was the opportunity such a prominent position afforded for the display of "the best and most essential parts of a gallant—good cloathes, a proportionable legge, white hand, the Persian lock, and a tolerable beard." Apparently, too, serving-boys were within call, and thus lights could easily be obtained, which were handed to one another by the smokers on the points of their swords.

Ben Jonson has given us an amusing picture of the behaviour of gallants on the Elizabethan stage, in his "Cynthia's Revels." In this scene a child thus mimics the obtrusive beau: "Now, sir, suppose I am one of your genteel auditors, that am come in (having paid my money at the door, with much ado), and here I take my place, and sit downe. I have my three sorts of tobacco in my pocket, my light by me, and thus I begin. 'By this light, I wonder that any man is so mad, to come to see these rascally tits play here—they do act like so many wrens—not the fifth part of a good face amongst them all—and then their musick is abominable—able to stretch a man's ears worse than ten—pillories, and their ditties—most lamentable things, like the pitiful fellows that make them—poets. By this vapour—an't were not for tobacco—I think—the very smell of them would poison me, I should not dare to come in at their gates. A man were better visit fifteen jails—or a dozen or two hospitals—than once adventure to come near them.'" And the young rascal, who at each pause marked by a dash had puffed his pipe, no doubt blowing an extra large "cloud" when he swore "by this vapour," turns to his companions and says: "How is't? Well?" and they pronounce his mimicry "Excellent!"

Smoking was not confined to the auditors on the stage, who paid sixpence each for a stool. There was the "lords' room" over the stage, which seems to have corresponded with the modern stage boxes, the price of admission to which appears to have been a shilling, where the pipe was also in full blast. Dekker tells how a gallant at a new play would take a place in the "twelve penny room, next the stage, because the lords and you may seem to be hail fellow, well met"; and Jonson, in "Every Man out of his Humour," 1600, speaks of one who pretended familiarity with courtiers, that he talked of them as if he had "taken tobacco with them over the stage, in the lords' room."

Among the general audience of the theatre smoking seems to have been usual also. The anti-tobacconists among those present, few of whom were men, must have suffered by the practice. In that admirable burlesque comedy by Beaumont and Fletcher, "The Knight of the Burning Pestle," 1613, the citizen's wife, addressing herself either to the gallants on the stage, or to her fellow-spectators sitting around her, exclaims: "Fy! This stinking tobacco kills men! Would there were none in England! Now I pray, gentlemen, what good does this stinking tobacco do you? Nothing, I warrant you; make chimneys a' your faces!" But many women viewed tobacco differently, as we shall see in the chapter on "Smoking by Women." Moreover, this good woman herself, in the epilogue to the burlesque, invites the gentlemen whom she has before abused for smoking, to come to her house where she will entertain them with "a pottle of wine, and a pipe of tobacco."

Hentzner, the German traveller, who visited London in 1598, speaks of smoking being customary among the audience at plays, who were also supplied with "fruits, such as apples, pears and nuts, according to the season, carried about to be sold, as well as ale and wine." He was struck with the universal prevalence of the tobacco-habit. Not only at plays, but "everywhere else," he says, the "English are constantly smoking tobacco," and then he proceeds to describe how they did it: "They have pipes on purpose made of clay, into the further end of which they put the herb, so dry that it may be rubbed into powder; and putting fire to it, they draw the smoak into their mouths, which they puff out again through their nostrils, like funnels, along with it plenty of phlegm and defluxions from the head." This suggests that the unpleasant and quite unnecessary habit of spitting was common with these early smokers, a suggestion which is amply supported by other contemporary evidence.

Tobacco was smoked by all classes and in almost all places. It was smoked freely in the streets. In some verses prefixed to an edition of Skelton's "Elinour Rumming" which appeared in 1624, the ghost of Skelton, who was poet-laureate to King Henry VIII, was made to say that he constantly saw smoking: