No place to hide

"O, what a rash and bloody deed is this!"

                                                            Hamlet      III, iv


Shakespeare's Queen Gertrude is mortified, as well she should be: her son Hamlet has just stabbed her chief advisor Polonius while the old man was eavesdropping from behind an arras (a tapestry or wall hanging). And as if that weren't enough: the hole in the arras might
make the room quite a bit more drafty, always a problem in icy northern climes like Denmark.

Many of the finest tapestries of Shakespeare's day came from the Flemish town of Arras, now in northern France, making the town's name synonymous in England with the wall hangings produced there. There was considerable English envy of the thriving Flemish tapestry-making industry, which did use much English wool for its raw material. During the latter years of the reign of James I and into his son's reign as Charles I, considerable effort was made to establish a tapestry-producing concern on the Thames west of London at Mortlake.

Pictured above, on the far wall of Agecroft's Great Hall, is a seventeenth-century tapestry from Mortlake, depicting a hunting scene. Such wall hangings were valued in the Elizabethan and Jacobean period not only for their beauty but as well for keeping rooms warm in a time without central heating.

While their wool was regarded as the best, the English did find, perhaps to their reluctance and consternation, that Flemish weavers were indeed the most adept at tapestry-making, and so more than a few were lured over to Mortlake to help the fledgling enterprise. The scenes depicted in many of the tapestries produced in both Flanders and England were from classical mythology and legend, subject matter for which the English and their continental brethren did not seem to tire.

It is also worth noting that before, during and after Shakespeare's lifetime, Flemish immigration in general was a sore subject with many of the English, who felt that jobs were being taken and their livelihoods threatened by the influx from across the Channel. Many took to rioting in the streets on occasion, sometimes with deadly consequences.

The divisive issue of immigration did not arise just yesterday, and it won't be leaving the world's stage first thing in the morning.