How to Behave Badly in Renaissance Britain

How to Behave Badly in Renaissance Britain

Giving the finger:

"Firstly, we must bid adieu to the two fingers formed into a V and used in an upward jerk. It just didn't exist as a recognized gesture this early. There is a popular myth that it developed around the time of the Battle of Agincourt when Welsh and English archers defiantly displayed their bow-pulling fingers to the French. But, sadly, it's only a myth. Evidence of the gesture before 1900 is severely lacking, and after that, it seems to have been confined to the working class in northern England until around 1930 and does not become an everyday expression in the rest of the Isles until the 1970s ... But do not despair: there were plenty of other rude gestures of equal potency, both homegrown and foreign."

I honestly don't know when Ruth Goodman sleeps. In addition to all of the documentaries she does, and the living history, she somehow finds time to write well written and well documented books. This book is not just a list of rude behavior, it's a history of why that behavior was rude, from contemporary sources. There is an entire chapter on how various groups of people walked and how that opened them up to ridicule on the streets and on the stage. Another chapter is on bowing and "taking the knee" and how one can be insulting while, at the same time, giving the required honorifics. How one could show contempt in the method on doffing one's hat or by using the wrong form of "you" when speaking to a superior. 

I highly recommend this book, as well as everything she has written.