The Elizabethan Underworld - Tapa dura

The Elizabethan world, so often recalled for its riotous love of life and bawdy sense of humour, was also a world of contrasts. The rich appeared enormously rich, indulging in extravagant luxuries, while the poor often languished in unthinkable squalor, turning to thievery and begging in order to survive.
In doing so, they joined a complex network of beggars and thieves who, along with a multitude of vagabonds and rogues, contributed to a vibrant and colourful underworld society. In the taverns, brothels and gambling dens of London, this motley band practised their carefully thought-out tricks and deceptions on the naive foreigner and respectable citizen of the day. Not just confined to the inner city, these underworld characters also sought their victims at the country fair and along the treacherous highways and thoroughfares, making travelling a hazardous venture.
Here Gamini Salgado describes that multifarious company who made up the Elizabethan underworld scene; strolling players and minstrels as well as witches, alchemists and astrologers. He considers the measures taken against those characters who, according to Elizabethan judgment, were in need of reform or correction. The prisons, workhouses and lunatic asylums of the sixteenth century are examined, as are the punishments meted out to those accused of witchcraft, sorcery and magic.
With over sixty illustrations, including contemporary pamphlets and manuscripts, this new edition portrays in vivid detail a fascinating underworld society, and will appeal to all with an interest in social history and the Elizabethan age.