How to Behave Badly in Elizabethan England

 Book 4 of my 2025 Reading Challenge

read from January 2 - 8

How to Behave Badly in Elizabethan England: A Guide for Knaves, Fools, Harlots, Cuckolds, Drunkards, Liars, Thieves, and Braggarts by Ruth Goodman

published 2018

Summary (excerpt from book jacket)

Drawing from advice manuals, court cases, and sermons, [Ruth Goodman] offers a veritable how-to guide for both the cheeky and the downright cunning. Social mores of the era are revealed in fascinating detail, including why it was bad form to quote Shakespeare; why nose-blowing was disgusting, but spitting was acceptable; [and] why curses hurled at women were almost always about sex (and why we shouldn't be surprised).

My Opinion

2 stars

I added this book to my list after seeing it on TikTok.  Bonus that my used copy was withdrawn from the Longwood Public Library in NY (I'm in Iowa).  Unfortunately it was mostly a miss for me.  There were interesting snippets but it wasn't 'pages and pages per topic' interesting for me.

The shortest "fun fact" I took away was that buttons and the color pink started out as things only for men's garments so according to Elizabethan England, we all could be accused of cross-dressing pretty much every day.

This had no affect on my rating but as a reader who skims, the number of times the author used "niggling" or "niggles" made me stop and double check every time to make sure I hadn't wandered into something racist.  I know they're words unrelated to race but they're not ones I see often so it jolted me.