Illegal to be Beggar Lazarus in Shakespeare's England (Part 3)

The ghost in Shakespeare's Hamlet says that the poison Claudius poured in his ear made his skin all "lazar-like," referring to a gospel parable about a beggar with sores all over his skin. But if the parable from Luke 16 about the beggar Lazarus and the Rich Man had taken place in the Elizabethan England of Shakespeare's time, it would have been illegal to be the beggar Lazarus.

[Restored Frieze Panel, Lincoln Cathedral, UK (about 99 miles northeast of Shakespeare's home in Stratford Upon Avon): Originally dating from the 12th Century. The death of Lazarus (top) and Dives (the rich man) in Hell (below). © Copyright J.Hannan-Briggs and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons Licence.]

Otherwise, we might observe that the gospel story of a poor man lingering outside a rich man's gate could not have taken place in England, because the beggar Lazarus would likely be placed in stocks on display to be publicly humiliated, whipped, and sent back to his birthplace.

In England, sometimes whole villages and towns were lost because landowners were enclosing the commons, turning once-rented farmland into more profitable sheep pasture. If the law required that whipped and publicly humiliated beggars and vagabonds be sent back to their "hundred" or parish or village of birth, some no longer had villages to return to.

Due to natural and human causes, as much as a third of the population of England lived in poverty, and some estimate "that in 1570 about 10% of the population were still wandering around the country looking for work."

One might say that what the gospel parable portrayed as the personal choices of a selfish and neglectful Rich Man had become, at least by the English Tudor Era (if not sooner), a systemic evil, where landowners created more poor beggars and homeless vagabonds, and the government, which viewed growing numbers of the poor as a threat to those with power and wealth, put in place a system by which the poor were humiliated, punished, and kept out of sight and out of mind of the Rich Man, and less of a risk to riot or organize a revolt.

Compared to Shakespeare's Biblical allusions to the Genesis creation story of Adam, Eve, Cain and Abel, the allusion to Lazarus in Hamlet is much more subtle, in part because in the one explicit reference (lazar-like"), it is phrased immediately as an analogy. Later contrasts in the play between the rich and beggars or poor are never again explicitly named as allusions to the gospel parable.

Why? Perhaps at least in part because Shakespeare's patrons included the rich and powerful whose families were either among those creating the poor and outlawing beggars, or because they were part of the same class?

I do not claim to be an expert on all of the possible causes of poverty in England during and before Shakespeare's lifetime, but these included not only human-caused poverty such as the loss of the commons, but also poverty from natural causes, such as climate-related crop failures that lead to increases in the cost of grain, and food shortages.

LOSS OF THE COMMONS
For those interested in the loss of the commons in England, I highly recommend the book, Common as Air, by Lewis Hyde. For a shorter treatment of the same topic, see "Fencing off ideas: enclosure & the disappearance of the public domain," published in Daedalus, March 22, 2002, by James Boyle. The problem of the loss of the commons began long before Shakespeare's lifetime, and continued long after. Hyde and Boyle both mention Sir Thomas More's comments about the loss of the commons in his Utopia, and both include what Boyle identifies as a popular folk rhyme (perhaps from the 19th Century or earlier?) that addresses the subject:

The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from off the goose.

The law demands that we atone
When we take things we do not own
But leaves the lords and ladies fine
Who take things that are yours and mine.

The poor and wretched don't escape
If they conspire the law to break;
This must be so but they endure
Those who conspire to make the law.

The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
And geese will still a common lack
Till they go and steal it back.

Yet another (related) quote from Common as Air:
[W]itness the following exchange of letters. The date is 1824, and a commoner complains to his landlord: "Should a poor man take one of your sheep from the common, his life would be forfeited by law. But should you take the common from a hundred poor men's sheep, the law gives no redress." To which the landlord replies: "As your language is studiously offensive I must decline any further communication with you." - Lewis Hyde

For very brief and basic descriptions of the loss of the commons, see this web page at Spartacus Educational. There is also a section on Tudor Enclosure at Wikipedia, part of a larger article on "Enclosure" (another term for the landowner stealing the commons), and another section on "Enclosure riots" here.

CROP FAILURES, DEARTH & FAMINE DURING THE LITTLE ICE AGE
Enclosure of the commons was not the only large cause of poverty during Shakespeare's lifetime. Another major factor was not simply human-caused, but a combination of natural causes and human responses to it: This involved what scientists call "the Little Ice Age." Crop failures due to a colder climate led to poverty and famine, but sometimes climate was not a direct cause: A great deal of farmland had already been lost to enclosure, so when cold years resulted in poor or failed harvests, speculation and rising prices for grain resulted in food being too expensive for many of the poor to afford.

Scott A. Mandia of Sunysuffolk.edu has a good web page on the Little Ice Age in Europe, where he shares the following graph, "Dearth and famine in Scotland during the LIA. (Source: Lamb, 1995)" (dearth being shortage of food, famine being extreme) in Scotland, during years that overlap with the lifetime of Shakespeare:

For more reading on the effects of the Little Ice Age, see "A Climate of Change: How the Little Ice Age ushered in the modern world," by Philipp Blom, published in Lapham's Quarterly.

For more reading on the influence of the Little Ice Age on Shakespeare, see "Summer’s Lease: Shakespeare in the Little Ice Age" by Robert Markley, published in Early Modern Ecostudies (pp 131-142).

Also see Gerald Stanhill on "Shakespeare's Tempest, Witchcraft, and the Little Ice Age," 08 April 2016, in the journal of the Royal Meteorological Society.

Because of crop failures caused by what scientists call the Little Ice Age, as much as a third of England lived in poverty.

But the government and the wealthy viewed beggars and vagabonds looking for work as a possible threat. If too many people are poor and starving, they are more likely to turn to crime, or even to riot and overthrow the government. What's a government to do?

TUDOR POOR LAWS: VAGABONDS & BEGGARS
Tudor poor laws made it illegal to be a beggar or vagabond. During the reign of Henry VII, the English Parliament passed the Vagabonds and Beggars Act, which stated that "Vagabonds, idle and suspected persons shall be set in the stocks for three days and three nights and have none other sustenance but bread and water and then shall be put out of Town. Every beggar suitable to work shall resort to the Hundred where he last dwelled, is best known, or was born and there remain upon the pain aforesaid."

[Image: Stocks, Unlike the pillory or pranger, restrain only the feet. Public domain via Wikipedia.]

So if you were the poor beggar Lazarus at a rich Englishman's gate, you could be arrested, put in the stocks, whipped, and sent back to your town, village or parish of birth. If you were a member of a group of traveling players and were not wanted, you might risk similar treatment.

Spartacus Educational notes that for a second offense, a beggar's ear might be cut off, and for a third, they might be executed.

English Poor Laws of 1572 and 1597-1598
From 1572 through 1598, Poor Laws or Vagrancy Laws established a mandatory tax, to be used to help support the poor who were unfit for work in their areas of origin: This is often seen as a good thing, a generous thing for a state to arrange for the care of the poor. Some view it as "an early precursor to the modern welfare state."

But it was a tax, not charity from the riches of the crown, and it was in the English government's own interest to provide for the poor: In an article called "A Climate of Change: How the Little Ice Age ushered in the modern world," Philipp Blom (also mentioned above) notes,

"Shakespeare’s tragedy Coriolanus, set in ancient Rome, opens with a bread riot, like those breaking out across London during the Great Frost of 1608, when he was likely writing the play. Such riots became more frequent as urban populations suffered from the rapid inflation of grain prices due to failing harvests."

Consider: After frequent crop failures, the price of grain and flour goes up, people can't afford to feed their families, and on top of all of that misfortune, people are dying of plague and small pox.

Then they make it illegal to be a vagabond-beggar, illegal even to go looking for work outside one's own village. One might feel like a prisoner in one's town of birth, unable to go look for work, unable to beg.

Hamlet says something similar in his first conversation with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern:

HAMLET: What have you, my good friends, deserved at the hands of Fortune that she sends you to prison hither?

GUILDENSTERN:Prison, my lord?

H: Denmark's a prison.

ROSENCRANTZ: Then is the world one.

H: A goodly one, in which there are many confines, wards, and dungeons, Denmark being one o'th' worst.

R: We think not so, my lord.

H: Why, then 'tis none to you, for there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison.
(2.2.1285-97)

We might imagine a similar conversation between a constable and a vagabond he has arrested, who was placed in the stocks and whipped, then prepared to be returned to his place of birth. The vagabond may protest that his home town is a prison, and the constable, like Rosencrantz, might complain that this cannot be so, but the vagabond may know better than the constable.
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INDEX OF POSTS IN THIS SERIES ON THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS:
See this link:
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2021/02/index-series-on-rich-man-and-beggar.html


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Hamlet quotes: All quotes from Hamlet (in this particular series on The Rich Man and Lazarus in Hamlet) are taken from the Modern (spelling), Editor's Version at InternetShakespeare via the University of Victoria in Canada.
- To find them in the first place, I often use the advanced search feature at OpenSourceShakespeare.org.

Bible quotes from the Geneva translation, widely available to people of Shakespeare's time, are taken from an internet source somewhat close to their original spelling, from studybible.info, and in a modern spelling, from biblegateway.com.
- Quotes from the Bishop's bible, also available in Shakespeare's lifetime and read in church, are taken from studybible.info.
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Disclaimer: If and when I quote or paraphrase bible passages or mention religion in many of my blog posts, I do not intend to promote any religion over another, nor am I attempting to promote religious belief in general; only to explore how the Bible and religion influenced Shakespeare, his plays, and his age.
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