Page:A short history of social life in England.djvu/196

176 doth the poor workman bear away!" Words that might be uttered to-day as well as three hundred years ago, yet they are not surprising if we examine for a moment the elaborate dress of the Elizabethan era. Artificiality reigned supreme. No regard was paid to the natural form of the body, but the whole figure was deformed by means of steel and whalebone. There were no more loose and flowing sleeves, no more trailing skirts with tight-fitting bodies, as in the past—all was rigid and stiff and uncomfortable as artifice could make it. And this was greatly admired by Englishmen in the sixteenth century:—

The vanity of the Queen herself was proverbial, and the three thousand dresses found at her death bore witness to it. She would endure no criticism, and when the Bishop of London preached before her on the "vanitie of deckinge the bodie too finely," she remarked sternly, "If the Bishop held discourse on such matters she wolde fitte him for heaven, but he sholde walke thither without a staffe and leave his mantle behind him."

Such being the case, fashions became more