How to read the Paston Letters #12
'Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?'
Welcome to our read-along of the Paston Letters, the correspondence of a fifteenth-century gentry family who lived through the Wars of the Roses, one letter at a time.
We started here; and you can find every instalment so far here. If you’d like to join us, please sign up here:
Romeo and Juliet opens in the middle of a Verona street. Two servants of the Capulet family, Sampson and Gregory, run into two men from the Montague household. For years there’s been a feud between the two families – we never find out why – and now the Capulet men want to pick a fight without getting the blame for starting it.
SAMPSON Let us take the law of our sides; let them begin.
GREGORY I will frown as I pass by, and let them take it as they list.
SAMPSON Nay, as they dare. I will bite my thumb at them, which is disgrace to them if they bear it.
[He bites his thumb]
ABRAM Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?
SAMPSON I do bite my thumb, sir.
ABRAM Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?
SAMPSON, aside to Gregory Is the law of our side if I say ‘Ay’?
GREGORY, aside to Sampson No.
SAMPSON No, sir, I do not bite my thumb at you, sir, but I bite my thumb, sir.
The brawl starts a few lines later.
Margaret Paston couldn’t, of course, have seen any Shakespeare, but then she didn’t need to. Today’s letter,1 written in the spring of 1448, opens in the middle of a Norwich street.
First, a few key members of the cast:
James Gloys, a young priest recently appointed chaplain to the Paston family
John Wyndham, a wealthy self-made gentleman and local rival of the Pastons
John Norwood and Thomas Hawes, servants to John Wyndham
Margery, Lady Hastings, widow of Sir Edward Hastings, now wife of John Wyndham
Otherwise, I’ll throw you straight into the whole text so that you can get the headlong feel of it. Margaret in Norwich is writing to her husband John in London, although there’s no address on the back of the letter, since that space is taken up with a lengthy PS dictated to a different clerk. (Watch out for the shift in spelling when you get to that point – it might suddenly look familiar from last time, a letter written for Margaret by the same man.)
Also look out for a gap in the text: it’s a hole in the paper that was made deliberately at some point after the letter was written. We’ll find out why, and what text is missing, once we get a sense of what on earth is going on.
As always, try reading out loud if you find yourself temporarily stumped.
Here we go.
