Tobacco in English Social Life 67 



panist, ' cannot in a more mannerly kind entertain 

 her lover than by giving him out of her fair hand 

 a pipe of tobacco.' 



Contemporary dramas abound with references to 

 the custom of smoking in the theatres and elsewhere. 

 The gallants sat on stools on the stage itself, paying 

 an extra price for this privilege. They provided them- 

 selves with their three sorts of tobacco, or, the supply 

 running short, more could be purchased in the theatre 

 or a boy sent out to get the gallant's favourite kind. 

 They lit their pipes at the footlights, handing the 

 matches about on the points of their rapiers, which 

 Jonson declared of some gallants was the only use to 

 which they dare put their swords. Prynne, inveighing 

 against the stage, says that ladies were offered and 

 accepted pipes in the theatre. A character in a play 

 of the period reveals the smoking habits of the fair 

 sex; recommending his tobacco as 'right pudding,' 

 he adds as a final commendation, ' a lady or two took 

 a pipeful or two at my hands and praised it, 'fore the 

 heavens.' 



It was amidst clouds of tobacco-smoke that the 

 plays of Shakespeare, Jonson, Decker, Marlowe, and 

 Beaumont and Fletcher were produced. The plays 

 of all but Shakespeare abound with references to 

 tobacco. This is the more remarkable as we know 

 that smoking was indulged in at the Globe, Shake- 

 speare's own theatre. 



The opening years of the seventeenth century 

 merited, indeed, the title of ' The Smoaking Age ' 

 imposed on it by James Braithwait in a book of 

 invective against and derision of the habit, already 



5—2 



