Besides the graver matters of study which claimed their attention, the women of England were devoted to music, needlework, and dancing, which were the favorite fashionable pastimes. Erasmus speaks of them as the most accomplished in musical skill of any people. Early as the reign of Henry VIII., to read music at sight was not an uncommon accomplishment, while those who aspired to the technique of the subject were students of counterpoint. Musical literature was scanty; the principal instruments were the lute, the mandolin, the clavichord, and the virginals.
Notwithstanding its literary flavor and its identity with the great themes of modern knowledge, the age of Elizabeth can hardly be called a serious one from the point of view of the spirit and manners of the people. Amusement was sought for its own sake, without regard to its character or quality. The spirit of enjoyment was hearty and unrestrained, and lacked discrimination and refinement. The society of the age, like its culture, was a reflex of the personality of the powerful queen, who stamped her character and her tastes upon her people. The queen, as well as her courtiers, could restrain herself upon occasion; but neither she nor her subjects felt that there was any moral or conventional need to place a check upon the expression of their emotions, and in consequence their manners were often unbecoming. It did not offend the sense of personal dignity of Elizabeth to spit at a courtier, the cut or color of whose coat displeased her, just as she might box his ears or rap out at him a flood of profanity. When Leicester was kneeling to receive his earldom, the dignity of the occasion was entirely destroyed by the volatile queen bending over to tickle his neck. As it was a case of like queen, like people, a man who could not or who would not swear was accounted "a peasant, a clown, a patch, an effeminate person." The _sine qua non_ for obtaining the queen's favor was to be amusing. It mattered nothing at all at whose expense, or how personal the witticism, or how sensitive the one who was made the butt of amusement; if the queen enjoyed it, and the boisterous laughter of the court sycophants was evoked, the sufferer had to appear gratified at the honor of his selection for his sovereign's entertainment. Coarse manners were but the expression of coarser morals; even men of the cleanest characters and highest intelligence did not shrink from any allusion, however gross, and felt no impulse to check their words either in speech or in writing. Nor were women a whit more regardful of the proprieties of expression. Ascham blamed the degradation of English morals in part on the custom of sending abroad young men to Italy to finish their education, and alleged that the corruption which they underwent at the "court of Circe" was responsible for the spread of vicious manners in English society. He writes: "I know divers that went out of England, men of innocent life, men of excellent learning, who returned out of Italy, not only with worse manners, but also with less learning." He complains of the introduction of Italian books translated into English, which were sold in every shop of London, by which the morals of the youth were corrupted, and whose venom was the more insidious because they appeared under honest titles and were dedicated to virtuous and honorable personages. As there was no public opinion to censure the reading of the women, or standards to control their conversation, they did not feel the impropriety of acquainting themselves with such works and of openly discussing them. Indeed, the women of the nobility felt themselves freed from all the restraints which the modest of the sex normally cherish for their protection.