How to Behave Badly in Elizabethan England

A Guide for Knaves, Fools, Harlots, Cuckolds, Drunkards, Liars, Thieves, and Braggarts

By: Ruth Goodman

Narrated by: Jennifer M. Dixon

Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins

Publisher's summary

Every age and social strata has its bad eggs, rule-breakers, and nose-thumbers. As acclaimed popular historian and author of How to Be a Victorian Ruth Goodman reveals in her madcap chronicle, Elizabethan England was particularly rank with troublemakers, from snooty needlers who took aim with a cutting "thee" to lowbrow drunkards with revolting table manners. Goodman draws on advice manuals, court cases, and sermons to offer this colorfully crude portrait of offenses most foul.

Mischievous listeners will delight in learning how to time your impressions for the biggest laugh, why quoting Shakespeare was poor form, and why curses hurled at women were almost always about sex (and why we shouldn't be surprised). Bringing her signature "exhilarating and contagious" enthusiasm (Boston Globe), this is a celebration of one of history's naughtiest periods, when derision was an art form.

©2018 Ruth Goodman (P)2019 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Good to know

As a genealogist, I really enjoyed learning more about this time period. Some parts had me laughing out loud. The author is an incredible researcher. I can't even fathom how many hours she devoted to this wide array of human behavior. I really appreciate it. Thank you!

Perfectly explains weird Behaviors we cling to

This book goes into a lot of detail on how behaviors published hundreds of years ago still have an impact on how we act today. It's a great read for well-read history-loving feminists too.

Lots of fun

Once again, another enjoyable book by Ruth Goodman. The perfect resource if you're going to jump in the T.A.R.D.I.S. for a visit to the 16th Century. (Although, I'd suggest doing the OPPOSITE of this list.) I find it fascinating how much, and yet how little society has changed in 600 in years. From appearance, to manners, to what you can and cannot say to your neighbors, this book is a comprehensive look at the culture of Elizabethan England.

What an interesting cultural experience!

I really enjoyed listening to this as I was driving. I was able to learn a lot, as well as revisit some things that I already knew. In a new context. Definitely worth reading!

A Great Resource for Authors and Moviemakers

Ruth Goodman presents six packed chapters on how people annoyed their neighbors in Elizabethan England. It’s an excellent resource for novelists and moviemakers in its encyclopedic density. It’s not, however, easy reading. It really is like an encyclopedia—an important reference but not something I’ve tried to read cover-to-cover since I burned out in the first volume of Compton’s Encyclopedia during the third grade. That doesn’t mean this book isn’t good, it’s just not light reading.

A bit redundant and slow..

I enjoyed this book, there were a lot of points that were repeated throughout and parts of it dragged but it was fun enough. Nothing in it was shocking or surprising. but it went in depth into some behaviors and the feelings about them that kept the book interesting.

The narration was good, I have no complaints.

Not Quite What I Anticipated

I was hoping for more on the details of how people behaved in Elizabethan England, and less editorializing, particularly towards the end of the book. Still it was enjoyable.

Ruth

Once again Ruth has excelled as an educator and entertainer. This provides some really great insight into what has formed our thinking

Just fun to read

There are lots of books about how to act properly in different situations. At least in my generation, I remember often hearing about Emily Post’s book of manners, though I never actually saw a copy and later found that it was actually titled “Etiquette: the Blue Book of Social Usage.” Well, Ruth Goodman has written a book that is sort of the opposite, although you’d need to go back in time a few hundred years to find out (though there is still a lot that would probably still be considered to be, at least a bit out of place if not completely insulting). Yes, instead of going the normal route and writing about proper behavior during the Elizabethan Era, she has chosen to write about how to behave badly. And there is a lot that is quite interesting.
Actually, the book’s title, “How to Behave Badly in Elizabethan England,” is just a little bit misleading since it covers the period from 1550-1660, which extends on beyond into the reign of the Stuarts. She covers a broad range subjects. There is a review of clothing and what it represented. There is a discussion of their attitudes toward sexual relations in all its forms and how the rules were applied as well as how their attitudes affected law, insults, and family. And certainly there is much about insults and other subjects related to language including slang and swearing which leads to a discussion of gestures as well (and no, the common rude or insulting gesture at that time was not the middle finger). And when I think of manners, I especially think of mealtime, which she discusses in detail. Of course, any discussion of bad behavior must include those relating to our bodies, including farting, burping, spitting and what to do when you’ve just got to go in a day when there were no public toilets nor indoor plumbing.
It is interesting to note that she does not just discuss bad manners from the perspective of the elite but has extensively researched various sources (even death records listing what possessions are left behind after one has passed on) to discover what was important to the average person. She notes that even the poor who had very little to leave to their descendents often listed items related to cleanliness such as napkins.
There are parts that are quite funny and some that is a bit surprising. She even discusses different ways of walking and how bowing developed over the century.
This is not a book that will change your life. You probably won’t learn anything that you really need to know or that will be useful to you except in a trivia quiz. But it is fun and that is part of what reading is for.

So that's where it all came from…

(As posted in GoodReads)
What a fun and enlightening book! At 1st I thought it was primarily to demonstrate the differences between current society and norms, and those of years ago – and it is. But as such, it emphasizes the beginnings of current, oh I don't know, sexism and distastes that we still experience in the 21st-century.
She (the author) starts by pointing out that language and insults from the 16th and 17th centuries were not just highly amusing, but they were highly offensive at the time. Over the hundreds of years, said insults are less insulting, and it's possible to go with the humor. And it's nice to see that sexism per se from those days as lessened over the years even though it is still prevalent.
And the beliefs that men are allowed to be violent have a basis. It's not just the case that men are ALLOWED to be violent, but that used to be part of the definition of a well educated and well brought up man!
And our current beliefs about weaponry initiated back when all men of fighting age were expected to have swords. We are working on moving society to the 21st-century, including sexism, strained beliefs about men versus women; about homosexuals versus heterosexuals; about individual beliefs versus religious beliefs; about needs for self-defense versus desire to wipe out everyone who is not WE;...
I don't often give a book 5 stars, but this book deserves it for the opening of the mind and the need to assess and change our current society!