Elizabethan times...?

Question:I am doing a project on Elizabethan england...so my questions are...

1. What did the poor and the rich wear?

2. What did the rich diet consist of? The poor?

3. How was their livestile like?

4. What did the rich and the poor do for entertainment?

5. And any thing else that you can think of...

Thanks!

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: I am doing a project on Elizabethan england...so my questions are...

1. What did the poor and the rich wear?

2. What did the rich diet consist of? The poor?

3. How was their livestile like?

4. What did the rich and the poor do for entertainment?

5. And any thing else that you can think of...

Thanks!

Just a couple of ideas...

1.The poor probably wore clothes made out of wool, flax/linen and the rich wore furs, silks, damasks
2.The poor ate fattier cuts of meat, bread and whatever they cultivated on their farms like potatoes and the rich ate fruits/vegetables, better cuts of meat, sweet breads and rich desserts
3. The poor worked hard in servitude or farms and the rich were merchants, ship owners, politics (Royalty).
4. The rich entertained themselves with jousting, hunting, bear baiting, tennis and dancing. The poor attended local fairs and church functions.

You can google Elizabethian life yourself..there is a plethora of information on it.

1.High fashion in Elizabethan times became more and more extravagent as the years went by. Men's and women's garments were padded and quilted, stiffened with whalebone or buckram, lavishly embroidered and slashed to show an even richer lining or shirt. Such clothing was extremely heavy, restricting and expensive, but in dress, as in everything else, it was essential to make a fine show.

This sort of fashion was for the upper classes. The so-called 'sumptuary laws' were intended to prevent anyone below a certain rank from wearing the more costly furs and fabrics. Ordinary middle-class and working-class people wore far simpler and more practical clothes. Most clothes were made of wool or linen.

2.Cottages and labourers lived on a largely vegetarian diet of so-called 'white meats' - that is, milk, buttermilk, and whye, eggs, butter and cheese - with an occasional piece of bacon or a fowl. Bulk was provided by coarse rye or barley bread and porrage of peas, beans and oatmeal, turnips and cabbage - supplemented, of course, by a rabbit or a hare or whatever else could be scrounged or snared for the pot. In summer, too, the peasant could vary his rations with greenstuff, either growing wild or cultivated in his own plot, and with fruit and berries from the woods and hedgerows.

People of the 'middling sort' would have a more varied diet, with meat, fish, and game. A French writer called Claude Hollyband described a meal he ate at a the house of a London shopkeeper. They had salt beef with mustard, a leg of mutton stuffed with garlic, capons boiled with leeks, a shoulder of veal, a turkey cock, roasted chickens and a venison pasty. for desser they had roasted pears, apples, cold tarts, cake and cheese.

The gentry and nobility would have even more elaborate meals with many courses. They would also eat fine white bread rather than the coarse brown bread eaten by the poor. And they would finish their meals with elaborate confections made of sugar paste, candied fruits, and marmalade (often made very thick and cut into slices). An ability to make elaborate sugar confectionary was an important skill for ladies of the Tudor period.

People of all classes drank ale or beer rather than water, as water was not safe to drink. Ale was normally brewed by the housewife in three strengths, the weakest one 'small ale' would be the one that was for common everyday use.

Everyone who could afford it in elizabethan times ate a great deal of meat, foreign visitors often commented in amazement at the amount of beef eaten by english people.

3. Your lifestyle would depend on your station in life. Most people in the Elizabethan era still lived in the country and were engaged in agricultural labour, and would farm their own smallholdings, though that patern began to change as enclosures of land meant that many people lost their smallholdings as the reign progressed.

In towns, people could be engaged in a variety of different trades and crafts. Most people worked in small businesses, skilled craftsmen would belong to one of the Liveried companies that had succeeded the medieval guilds and were repsonsible for regulating trading practices and overseeing businesses and providing welfare to those who had fallen on hard times. a master craftsman would most likely be helped in his business by his wife and children, and would probably have apprentices too.

The members of the gentry and nobility would manage their country estates, and the men might spend some of their time at court. The wives of noblemen would be expected to run the family estate while their husbands were away. A few single ladies had positions at court as ladies in waiting to the Queen.

Women of all classes would be expected to manage their households, which required a lot of skills. As well as cooking and preserving food, women would brew the ale, make butter and cheese, make their own candles, and spin wool and flax into thread for making clothes. often women would produce items for sale as well as for home use, they would sell the wool they had spun into thread, or cheese and butter they had made in their dairies, or the surplus ale they had brewed.

Most people had large families, and children were quite strictly brought up and were expected to be respectful to their parents.

4. Music and dancing were popular with all classes, and most people would learn to sing and to play some kind of musical instrument. Cards, and board games like chess, draughts and backgammon were also popular with all classes. Bowls was a game that was also popular with everyone. Wrestling, running, throwing the hammer and running at the quintain were alll sports that men enjoyed. Football matches tended to be large and violent and were generally discouraged by the authorities, but they still took place sometimes.

The most universailly popular outdoor activity was hunting in its various forms, - stag-hunting, falconry, and hare-coursing with greyhounds. The bloodthirsty sports of bull and bearbating were also popular.

The theatre became a popular form of entertainment during the elizabethan period, despite the disapproval of the Puritan authorities.

Seasonal festivals that were popular in the Elizabethan period were christmas, which lasted for thirteen days until the 6th January, Easter, May Day, and Midsummer Eve. These holidays continued to be celebrated despite Puritan disapproval