Dearth

I have been brooding, not happily, on John Vidal’s article ‘The looming food crisis’ in yesterday’s Guardian. In the past they had a word for what we’re facing: ‘dearth’. We use the word to mean things like ‘shortage’ and ‘famine’. But originally it meant ‘dearness’, ‘costliness’ – the effect of shortage, rather than the thing itself.

Shakespeare’s contemporary Thomas Dekker was a prolific writer of plays and pamphlets, yet seems to have lived at best a bare step away from poverty. He spent seven years of his life in debtors’ prison. In 1609 he published a remarkable pamphlet called Worke for armorours: or, The peace is broken, subtitled ‘Open warres likely to happin this yeare 1609: God helpe the Poore, The rich can shift.’. In 1607 a very hot summer, and drought, caused a poor harvest; it was followed by a bad winter, in which the price of wheat rose rapidly. The harvest of 1608 was again a poor one, and the price of wheat remained high into the following year. In 1609 the plague struck a population weakened by hunger.

Worke for armorours is built around the curiously modern-seeming conceit of a war between the forces of Poverty and those of Money:

Now to the intent that the whole world (as an indifferent Judge) may arbitrate the wrongs done betweene these two states, & by that meanes find out which of them both come into the field with unjust armes: you shal understand that Poverty being sundry waies deeply indebted to the kingdome of Money, as having beene from time to time relieved by her, and not being well able to maintaine herselfe in her owne dominions, but that Money hath sent her in provision, it had beene neither policy, neither could it stand with her honour, that Poverty should first breake the league, neither indeede hath she, but hath ever had a desire to be in amity rather with the excellent Princesse; then with any other Monarch whatsoever.* But the golden mines of the west & east Indies, (over which the other Empresse is sole Soveraigne, swelling up her bosome with pride, covetousnesse, and ambition, as they doe her coffers with treasure), made her to disdaine the miserable poore Queene, & in that height of scorne, to hate the holding of any confederacy with her,** that she on the soddaine, (most treacherously and most tyrannously) laboured by all possible courses, not onely to drive the subjects of Poverty from having commerce in any of her rich & so populous Cities but also wrought (by the cruelty of her own ministers, and those about her) to roote the name, not onely of that infortunate and dejected Princesse, from the earth, but even to banish all her people to wander into desarts, & to perish, she cared not how or where.

*[Marginal note:] Poore men fall not first out with the rich, but the rich with them.

** [Marginal note:] Rich men hate poore men. The poore may begge.

***[Marginal note:] O nostri infamiae Saeclis. [error for O nostri infamia saecli: ‘O infamy of our age’, Ovid, Metamorphoses, 8.97.]

******

Money orders her servants to conspire to raise the price of corn:

in three market daies, dearth was made Clearke of the market, the rich Curmudgeons made as though they were sorry; but the poore Husbandman looked heavily, his wife wrang her hands, his children pined, his hyndes grumbled, his leane over-wrought Jades bit on the bridle.* They who were in favour with Money, and were on her side, sped wel enough; but Poverties people were driven to the wal, or rather downe into the kennell:** for corne skipt from foure to ten shillings a bushell, from ten to twelve shillings, stones of beefe began to be pretious, and for their price had beene worne in rings, but that the stone cutter spoiled them in the grinding. Mutten grew to be deere, two crownes a buttocke of beefe, and halfe a crowne a wholesome breast of mutton, every thing (to say truth) riz, except desert and honesty, & they could find nothing to rise by.

*husbandman: subsistence farmer; hyndes: farm labourers; Jades: horses

**kennell: gutter

Thomas Dekker (c. 1572–1632)

from Worke for armorours (1609)


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