A city of young people

An earlier posting mentioned the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games in London; we'd be remiss not to add a note of Shakespeareana at the conclusion of the Games, since the opportunity was all but handed to us, gratis.

It was difficult not to notice that the catwalk-like stage at the closing ceremony was covered with numerous large newspaper-style headlines, large enough to be read by television viewers as performers danced back and forth over them during the course of the evening. But rather than news headlines, they all seemed to be quotes and phrases that have become iconic in English literary culture. Two of the most prominently displayed were both lines from Shakespeare's Hamlet: "To Be or Not To Be" and the Dane's dying words, "The Rest is Silence."

But more importantly, the youthful vigor that characterized London's Olympics, if we let it, might give us the opportunity to imagine for a moment the London of four centuries ago, the London of Shakespeare.

So many of London's people at that time were young. Visceral. Quick to laugh, quicker to drink, quickest to fight if honor or enough alcohol were thrown into the mix. Men weren't wearing swords to clean their fingernails. Shakespeare's great young rival Christopher Marlowe was stabbed and killed in a quarrel, supposedly over a tavern bill, in 1593. The playwright Ben Jonson had killed an actor, Gabriel Spencer.

It was a world where you either looked out for yourself or oftentimes suffered the consequences.

The population of London in 1600 has been estimated to have been about two hundred thousand or so, making it Europe's most burgeoning city. Young people, many flocking to London from the countryside or from smaller towns, came to the city to try and make their way in life: scholars believe that by the early 17th century roughly half of London's population was below the age of 20. Like Shakespeare, many came to the city at least in part because they wanted to have a go at a life less tedious, with success or failure lying just down the next alley. Perhaps this was all a reflection of  events in the world at large: an enormous New World was being explored. How could that not have a stimulating effect on the national psyche?

A short life expectancy greatly contributed to London's youthful demographic profile. Men in the city on average died in their early 40's, while the average woman in the city didn't make it past 35 or 36. There was plague and a host of other diseases that might befall a Londoner; violent crime killed off more than a few. Women often died in childbirth, and infant mortality rates, even for the upper classes, were horrendous. A series of bad harvests in the mid-1590's drove up the price of bread; riots over food and labor issues became commonplace.

For many young people, that type of dangerous yet vibrant atmosphere must have given life an urgency and an immediacy that would be hard to match in our more sedentary age. There were plenty of ways to die young in Shakespeare's London, but also plenty of ways to live life on the edge and let the tavern bill fall where it may.

Pictured above is a copy of an engraving of London by Claes Janz. Visscher of Amsterdam, c.1616, which is also the year of Shakespeare's death.