ABSTRACT
The elites of early modern England viewed their own approaching old age with horror, dread, and denial. Not surprisingly, Shakespeare would not allow the “glass” to “persuade me I am old”, for it was common knowledge that old men seldom grew into their prescribed condition of oracles of truth and pinnacles of wisdom.1 Instead, it was thought, old men chased after the young wives of others, argued unreasonably with their families, boasted long and often about past feats of youth2, and, of course, indulged in their particular vice of drinking too much wine.3 The older woman was just as bad, having “rent her face with painting” and “so bedeckte with gems all over, displaying her crop and bubbys” in foolish attempts to lure the favours of pretty young men, who, for their part, “cannot laugh need but think of an old woman that wears false locks”.4 That was, remember, the elite’s view of their own old age. When commenting on the ageing process of others, especially the aged poor, literary men spared few details in describing the effects of “time’s injurious hand” and “age’s cruel knife”.5 Toothless and stinking, begging and grasping, the elderly poor were viewed as an open, draining sore on the otherwise healthy leg of society. Even the characteristically taciturn Statutes of the Realm vividly reflect this idea of the diseased and loathsome aged poor whose “comminge to gither and making a nomber do then fill the Stretes or high waies of divers Cities Towns markettes and fayres”, sapping both the strength and the finances of many urban parishes.6
