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CHAPTER X - ROGUES AND VAGABONDS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2010

John Dover Wilson
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Summary

There are cozeners abroad; therefore it behoves men to be wary.

The Winter's Tale, iv. iii. 256

My traffic is sheets; when the kite builds, look to lesser linen. My father named me Autolycus; who being, as I am, littered under Mercury, was likewise a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles. With die and drab I purchased this caparison, and my revenue is the silly cheat. Gallows and knock are too powerful in the highway: beating and hanging are terrors to me: for the life to come, I sleep out the thought of it.

Ibid. iv. ii. 23–31

To have an open ear, a quick eye, and a nimble hand, is necessary for a cut-purse: a good nose is requisite also, to smell out work for the other senses. I see this is the time that the unjust man doth thrive…. Every lane's end, every shop, church, session, hanging, yields a careful man work.

Ibid. iv. iii. 686–704

Rogues and the law

[The law referred to below is the famous statute of 1572. It will be noticed that it includes players among other classes of vagrants, and the passage was constantly quoted with glee by puritan opponents of the theatre.

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Life in Shakespeare's England
A Book of Elizabethan Prose
 , pp. 232 - 249
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009
First published in: 1911

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