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Contents Preface xi Acknowledgments xv Evaluating and Interpreting Primary Documents xvii Introduction: Shakespeare’s England xix Chronology xxxiii Chapter 1 Society and Family 1 1. “It Was Ordained for a Remedy against Sin”: The Marriage Ceremony as Mandated by the Book of Common Prayer (1559) 1 2. “Give Yourself to Be Merry”: Sir Henry Sidney’s Advice to His Son, Philip Sidney (c. 1566) 6 3. “They Have Invented Such Strange Fashions”: Philip Stubbes’s Description of Elizabethan Barbers (1583) 9 4. “Sorrows Draw Not the Dead, to Life, But the Living to Death”: Sir Walter Raleigh’s Letter of Comfort to Sir Robert Cecil upon the Death of Cecil’s Wife (1597) 11 5. “One Sharp and Discrete Word Is Suffi cient”: John Dod and Robert Cleaver on Proper Household Relations between Husbands and Wives, Masters and Servants (1598) 14 Chapter 2 Economy and Work 21 6. “That Certain Abuses Might Be Suppressed”: Regulating the Trade of Cloth in the Town of Beverley (1561) 21 7. “A Convenient Proportion of Wages”: Parliament Enacts a Uniform Labor Code—the Statute of Artifi cers (1563) 24 8. “How Our Maltbugs Lug at This Liquor”: William Harrison on Grain Buying in Country Markets (1577) 28 9. “They Will Not Buy Any Thing of Our Country-Men”: The Economic Impact of Immigration on the London Economy (1593) 31 10. “Is Not Bread There?”: The Anger over Monopolies (1601) 35 Chapter 3 Politics and Parliament 39 11. “A Place of Free Speech”: Freedom of Debate in Parliament (1562, 1576) 39 12. “His Word Is a Law”: Sir Thomas Smith Describes the Power and Position of the English Monarch (c. 1565) 42