How to Behave Badly in Renaissance Britain

Historian and popular TV presenter Ruth Goodman offers up a history of offensive language, insulting gestures, insolent behaviour, brawling and scandal in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries – with practical tips on just how to horrify the neighbours.


‘Ruth is the queen of living history – long may she reign!’

Lucy Worsley


From royalty to peasantry, every age has its bad eggs, those who break all the rules and rub everyone up the wrong way. But their niggling, anti-social and irritating ways not only tell us about what upset people, but also what mattered to them, how their society functioned and what kind of world they lived in.


In this brilliantly nitty-gritty exploration of real life in the Tudor and Stuart age, you will discover:


- how to choose the perfect insult, whether it be draggletail, varlet, flap, saucy fellow, strumpet, ninny-hammer or stinkard

- why quoting Shakespeare was very poor form

- the politics behind men kissing each other on the lips

- why flashing the inside of your hat could repulse someone

- the best way to mock accents, preachers, soldiers and pretty much everything else besides


Ruth Goodman draws upon advice books and manuals, court cases and sermons, drama and imagery to outline bad behaviour from the gauche to the galling, the subtle to the outrageous. It is a celebration of drunkards, scolds, harridans and cross dressers in a time when calling a man a fool could get someone killed, and cursing wasn’t just rude, it worked!