94 SHAKESPEARE ON TOBACCO. 



drinkers or sellers. It had now become so great a custom 

 and had increased so fast after the importation of Virginia 

 tobacco that it afforded them no insignificant theme for the 

 display of their genius.* The plays of Jonson, Decker, 

 Rowland, Heywood, Middleton, Fields, Fletcher, Hutton, 

 Lodge, Sharpham, Marston, Lilly (court poet to Elizabeth), 

 the Duke of Newcastle and others are full of allusions to 

 the plant and those who indulged in its use. Shakespeare,f 

 however, does not once allude to its use, and his silence on 

 this then curious custom has provoked much conjecture and 

 inquiry. Some affirm that he wrote to please royalty, but if 

 so why did he not condemn the custom to appease the wrath 

 of a sapient king. Others say he kept silence because he 

 was the friend of Raleigh, and though he would have gladly 

 held up the great smoker and his favorite indulgence, feared 

 to add to the popularity of the custom by displeasing his 

 royal master. Another class affirm that as the stories of his 

 plays are all antecedent to his own time, therefore he never 

 mentions either the drinking of tobacco, or the tumultuous 

 scenes of the ordinary which belonged to it, and which are 

 so constantly met with in his contemporary dramatists. Says 

 one: 



" How is it that our great dramatist never once makes 

 even the slightest allusion to smoking ? Who can suggest a 

 reason ? Our great poet knew the human heart too well, and 

 kept too steadily in view, the universal nature of man to be 

 afraid of painting the external trapping and ephemeral 

 customs of his own time. Does he not delight to moralize 

 on false hair, masks, rapiers, pomandens, perfumes, dice, 

 bowls, fardingales, etc? Did he not sketch for us, with 

 enjoyment and with satire, too, the fantastic fops, the pomp- 

 ous stewards, the mischievous pages, the quarrelsome revellers, 

 the testy gaolers, the rhapsodizing lovers, the sly cheats, and 

 the ruffling courtiers that filled the streets of Elizabethan 

 London, persons who could have been found nowhere else 



* "Never dirt nature produce a Plant that in a short Time became so universally used , f or It 

 was but a short while known in Europe, till it was taken almost everywhere, either chewed ; 

 smoked, or snuffed. A pipe of tobacco is now the general and most frequent companion of, 

 Mug. Bottle, or Punch-bowl."?'. Short. 



t Gifford has also remarked that Shakspeare is the only one of the dramatic writers of the 

 age of James who does not condescend to notice tobacco ; all the others abound in allusions 

 to it. In .Jonson we find tobacco in every pluce in Cob the waterman's house, and in the 

 Apollo Cluii-room. on the stage, and at the ordinary. The world of Londou was theu divided 

 into two classes the tobacco-lovers and the tobacco-haters. 



