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And it is no small patience which the natural imbecility of the female sex requireth you to prepare. Except it be very few that are patient and manlike, women are commonly of potent fantasies, and tender, passionate, impatient spirits, easily cast into anger, or jealousy, or discontent; and of weak understandings, and therefore unable to reform themselves. They are betwixt a man and a child: some few have more of the man, and many have more of the child; but most are but in a middle state.

Ability, in some women, why extraordinary: although Man, from the dominion given him in Paradise, may style himself superior and boast of his wonderful abilities, looking on those in women much inferior, yet let us mind him that he frequently runs into mistakes...

We...therefore must be apt to think that men, having gotten the upper hand and engrossed the power, will, right or wrong, have women to be no wiser than they will have them to be and then to be sure they will not allow them to be so wise as themselves...We must allow it is in men to endeavour as much as in them lies to keep the fair sex in ignorance that they may reign the more securely without control...

Restoration Drama (Social Background): Attitudes to Sex

Not only was the Court of Charles II vulgar in its behaviour, it was also vulgar in its speech. Even the "well bred" King used many vulgar words and Lord Rochester's works mirrored the language and behaviour of his fellow courtiers.

This knowledge was now being spread by the numerous broadsheets, the first gossip publcations...

Normal middle-class behaviour before the nineteenth century is exemplified by Samuel Pepys, who can be taken as the prototype of middle-class behaviour and language. He frequented whore-houses and ale-houses and sang the bawdy songs of his peers--a particular favourite was a ballad which contained the stanza "Shitten-come-Shite the Way to Love is!" His sense of humour was lavatorial and his attitude towards the women who "obliged" him was cavalier--he haggled over payment of the smallest sums...

The new coffee-houses were beginning to be places of assignation, provoking a spate of pamphlets and petitions against coffee. One of the best is that of 1674, The Women's Petition Against Coffee! It complained that, "it eunuched our Husbands' because of the "heathenish abhominable liquor called coffee...crippled our Gallants...men come with nothing Stiff except their Joints..."

A bandstring-seller sold maidenheads--demonstrating that the legal fraternity preferred maidens--what Ivan Bloch later described as "the defloration mania--an English Vice!." Maidenheads were frequently restored--astringents were known from earliest times.

E. J. Burford and Joy Wotton: from PRIVATE VICES--PUBLIC VIRTUES: bawdry in London from

Elizabethan Times to the Regency (published by Hale)

[When, in 1688, Queen Mary returned to her home country after her long sojourn in calm, sedate Holland, she] thought England was full of debauchery and profanity. As regent [in William's absence] she issued proclamations ordering the proper observance of the sabbath and urged magistrates to clamp down on drunkenness and swearing...The moral tone of the Court improved dramatically after the open sexuality of Charles II's time...The 1690s saw a reaction agianst the easy-going obscenity of the Restoration period, which found expression in the numerous societies for the reformation of manners and in tracts like Jeremy Collier's Short View of the Immorality and Prophaneness of the English Stage (1698).

John Miller, from THE LIFE AND TIMES OF WILLIAM AND MARY (George Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd)

Prostitutes in an infinite variety of forms were omnipresent in seventeenth-century England, something taken for granted even by a Puritan counsellor like William Gouge, who suggested that a husband might be driven to visit them if a wife did not perform her marital duties. Cases of prostitution and scandalous lewdness, having been in the control of the church, gradually developed into indictable offences under the common law as the century progressed...

Antonia Fraser, from THE WEAKER VESSEL: Woman's Lot in Seventeenth-Century England (George Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd)

Half-crown-chuck-office:
The practice of a prostitue who would stand on her head "with the vulva gaping wide, and allowing the assembled gentleman to chuck in half-crowns...." Burtford points to The Wandering Whore, "a series of broadsheets published in 1660," as the source for this description. He is obviously citing the first pamphlet in the series:"...a Cunny being the deerest piece of flesh in the whole world, witness Priss Fotheringham's Chuck-office, where upon sight thereof, French Dollars, Spanish Pistols, English Half-crowns are as plentifully pour'd in, as the Rhenish wine was into the Dutch wenches two holes till she roar'd again, as she was showing tricks upon her head with naked buttocks and spread legges in a round ring, like those at wrestling neer the Half-crown-chuck-office, call'd Jack-a-newberries-six windmills."

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Restoration Drama (Social Background): In Front of the Servants

LAWRENCE STONE: excerpts from ROAD TO DIVORCE: England 1530-1987

Physical cruelty by the husband towards his wife could not be concealed from the servants, for the sounds of blows and screams were inevitably heard in nearby rooms in the house. Nor could the sight of bruises easily be concealed. In such cases all the female servants, and most of the male, nearly always sided with the victim, and there are countless stories of servants intervening actively to protect a wife from gross physical abuse by her husband. Only very occasionally did the servants join in the abuse...

Since the only two causes for judicial separation were adultery or life-threatening cruelty, servants were always the most crucial witnesses: they alone were in a position to testify about what exactly had gone on in the relative privacy of the home...

They knew everything because they were alwys either present or within earshot. Employers were culturally trained to be helpless, and to rely for all their physical needs--even dressing and undressing--upon servants...In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it was normal for the valet to sleep in a closet adjoining the bedroom of his master, and the waiting-maid in a closet adjoining that of her mistress...

An endless succession of servants were constantly entering bedrooms and private apartments. They came in the morning, some to open the shutters and light the fires, others to bring the breakfast or help their master and mistress to dress. Later they would remove the slops from the close-stools and chamber pots, make the feather beds, and clean the rooms. In the afternoon they came back to bring tea and more fuel for the fires. In the evening they came in again to close the shutters, light the candles and replenish the fires. Late at night they brought up warming pans to warm the beds, and returned a little later to help their master and mistress to undress. All through the day they carried messages to and fro. There was thus no moment in the day or night when servants were not coming and going in the private apartments at unpredictable times...

The only occasions when this lack of privacy became irksome, and even dangerous, was when the employer had something to hide. If a pair of adulterous lovers did not lock the doors, they risked being caught in flagrante delicto by a servant coming into the room on a routine chore. If they locked the doors...this would immediately arouse the suspicions of the household...

The internal lay-out and construction of eighteenth century houses also made privacy very difficult, if not impossible. For one thing, corridors were still a rare novelty before the late eighteenth century, and most rooms were built en suite. To enter one room, one had therefore to pass through others. Moreover many of the internal partitions were far from sound-proof, being made of thin lathe and plaster, or simply deal wainscotting. Keys were still very clumsy, and key-holes consequently large, which often provided the inquisitive with a good viewpoint...

Whenever the servants either suspected or knew that the mistress of the house was committing adultery, they were thrown into a state of great moral confusion, since it was not clear where their duty lay. The situation called into question the validity of the traditional ideology of paternalism, loyalty, and fidelity. What was the moral obligation of servants who detected their master's wife in adultery? Should they warn her to stop, and themselves keep silent, thus saving the marraige and preserving the household? Or should they tell their master and bring the whole household down in ruins? Or should they look after their own best interests, and sell the information to the highest bidder: to the mistress to keep their mouths shut, or to their master to reveal the truth?

...If they played their cards well, they might be able to sell their information, or their silence, for a great deal of money and some promotion...But if they played their cards badly, they could easily find themselves dismissed for impertinence, out of a job and without a reference...

Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press

Jonathan Swift, from DIRECTIONS TO SERVANTS

In some Families the Master often sends to the Tavern for a Bottle of Wine, and you are the Messenger: I advise you, therefore, to take the smallest Bottle you can find; but however, make the Drawer give you a full Quart, then you will get a good Sup for yourself, and your Bottle will be filled. As for a Cork to stop it, you need be at no Trouble, for the Thumb will do as well, or a Bit of dirty chewed Paper...

Never wear Socks when you walt at Meals, on the Account of your own Health, as well as of them who sit at Table; becuase as most Ladies like the Smell of young Mens Toes, so it is a sovereign Remedy against Vapours...

When you carry Dishes or other Things out of the Room at Meals, fill both your Hands as full as possible; for although you may sometimes spill, and sometimes let fall, yet you will find at the Year's End, you have made great Dispatch and saved abundance of Time.

If you Master of Mistress happens to walk the Streets, keep on one Side, and as much on the Level with them as you can, which People observing, will either think you do not belong to them, or that you are one of their Companions; but, if either of them happen to turn back and speak to you, so that you are under the Necessity to take off your Hat, use but your Thumb and one Finger, and scratch your Head with the rest.

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Restoration Drama (Social Background): Makeup

During the first half of the seventeenth century, the change from deceptive to permissive face painting had taken place; and by the Restoration, obvious make-up was frimly established among women, particularly at court...

Just as there were, in the seventeenth century, some clergymen who set themselves up as moral arbiters of men's fashions, there were others who appeared to derive equal satisfaction from doing the same thing for women. One of these was Robert Codrington, who wrote what was surely intended to be the definitive work on the subject...published in London in 1664... [of which the following is an extract]:

"...The very name of a painted Face doth destroy the Reputation of her that useth it, and doth expose Her to all manner of Reproaches. It ought therefore altogether to be eschewed...There is no Person but may conclude that if God threatens to punish strange Apparrel, he will not spare to punish strange Faces."...

Men were also using cosmetics. From about 1680 to 1710, according to Carrington, men of fashion used makeup openly. In the National Portrait Gallery in London there is a portrait, painted about 1680, of the elegant, painted Judge Jeffreys, Chief Justice of the King's Bench and Lord Chancellor, notorious for his brutality, especially during the Bloody Assizes...

[Meanwhile, Cordrington also warned] his readers of the danger of seeing too many plays and tells of a young woman who went to the theatre every night and as a result (he implies) fell ill, had fits of madness, and died. Young ladies are also warned to be wary of strangers, servants, privacy, vanity, idleness, licentious pamphlets, idle songs and ballads, and being seen too often in public.

Richard Corson, from FASHIONS IN MAKEUP (Peter Owen Ltd)

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