Tobacco In Early Modern England

Para1The introduction of tobacco to the European continent took early modern society by storm. This controversial herb quickly became incorporated into an average English person’s life by the 17th century. Some believed it was a panacea, the cure to illnesses within the body. Others warned of its evils and claimed the devil himself was the first to discover tobacco.

The Introduction of Tobacco

Para2Tobacco was new for Europeans, first imported into England by Sir Walter Ralegh in 1586. Since Europeans did not have words to describe the act of smoking, it was often called drinking tobacco or drinking smoke. Tobacco soon became a staple in England with 25,000,000 pounds being sent yearly from North America to England by the 1680s.

The Effect of Print and Popular Opinion

Positive Views on Tobacco

Para3Print was a key player when it came to the tobacco market in early modern England. Some writers during this period used print to advertise the many wonders the herb offered. Spanish physician Nicholas Monarde was a top advocate for tobacco, stating it could fix men’s and women’s health imbalances. Physicians came forward, including Roger Marbecke, who concluded it could cure dropsies, and waterish diseases, and rheumes, and scurvies, and cold, and weak stomackes (Romaniello 161).

Negative Published Opinions

Para4One of the most influential published works against tobacco was by King James the I of England. His 1604 pamphlet, A Counterblaste to Tobacco claimed many downfalls of tobacco, such as the use of it by Native Americans (who were believed to be savages). He claimed that by smoking tobacco Englishmen might as well deny god and adore the devill as they doe. He also claimed that smoking was lothesome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black and stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.
Para5Even with such an influential voice taking a stand,ntobacco did not stop spreading throughout this period.

Social Rules Surrounding Tobacco

Smoking Tobacco

Para6English people developed etiquette and laws regarding smoking. In Norwich, smoking in public was outlawed. In other places, when men and women mixed in social settings, it was expected that a man wait for women’s permission to smoke or ask if it was acceptable. Tobacco was also not to be smoked around any royal figure.
Para7In some parts of London such as Ram Alley, which was known for its criminal presence, tobacco use was prevalent. It was reported that men would be up all-night wreaking havoc on their neighbours with the stench of tobacco and illegal sales of the leaf.

Snuff

Para8Snuff is a ground-up and treated tobacco that is ingested orally or nasally. Using snuff was more widely accepted than smoking tobacco since it could be enjoyed anywhere without impacting others. By the 18th century, snuff was widely integrated into elite society in England. Additionally, during this time, it was considered bad manners to refuse someone’s offer of a pinch of snuff. Elaborate snuff boxes, often works of art or encrusted with precious stones, became a status symbol.

Tobacco’s Influence in Early Modern Drama

Para9Tobacco is represented in poetry and drama in the early modern period. One poem by Raphael Thorius in a book titled Hymnus Tabaci notes
Of harmlesse Bowles I mean to sing the praise,
And th’Herb which doth the Poets fancy raise […]
Fill me a Pipe (boy), of that lustie smoke
That I may drink the God into my brain
And so inabled, write a buskin’d strain.

The Roaring Girl

Para10Within early modern drama, tobacco was used as a symbol of risk and questionable morals. A great example occurs in the 1611 play by Thomas Dekker and Thomas Middleton, The Roaring Girl. Tobacco is used to emphasize Mary Frith’s oddities and disobedience to society’s expectations. Mary Frith, known as Moll Cutpurse, breaks social boundaries with her smoking habit, as it was common in other plays for women to express strong aversions to men smoking tobacco.
Para11Tobacco is used to show not only Mary Frith as morally suspect, but also as a cause to question the morality of the other characters, such as the young men who plot alongside her. Sir Davey Dapper is concerned about his son Jack Dapper’s actions and comments on the type of activities that go on alongside smoking tobacco:
A noise of fiddlers, tobacco, wine, and a whore, […]
these horse leeches suck
my son. He being drawn dry, they all live on smoke.
(3.3.59–66).

Key Print Sources

Cannon, J. A. Ralegh, Sir Walter. The Oxford Companion to British History. Oxford University Press, 2009.
Mancall, Peter C. Tales Tobacco Told in Sixteenth-Century Europe. Environmental History, vol. 9, no. 4, 2004, pp. 648–678. doi.org/10.2307/3986264.
McShane, Angela. Tobacco-Taking and Identity-Making in Early Modern Britain and North America. The Historical Journal, vol. 65, no. 1, 2022, pp. 108–129.
Middleton, Thomas, and Thomas Dekker. The Roaring Girl. Ed. Kelly Stage. Broadview Press, 2019.
Romaniello, Mathew P. Who Should Smoke? Tobacco and the Humoral Body in Early Modern England. Social History of Alcohol and Drugs: An Interdisciplinary Journal, vol. 27, no. 2, Summer 2013, pp. 156–173.
Craig Rustici. The Smoking Girl: Tobacco and the Representation of Mary Frith. Studies in Philology, vol. 96, no. 2, 1999, pp. 159–179.
Working, Lauren. Tobacco and the Social Life of Conquest in London, 1580–1625. The Historical Journal, vol. 65, no. 1, 2022, pp. 30–48.

Key Online Sources

Introduction of Tobacco to England. Historic UK, https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/Introduction-of-Tobacco-to-England/. Accessed 7 Feb. 2023.
Watson, Jacqueline, and Joey Takeda. Ram Alley. The Map of Early Modern London, v.7.0, 5 May 2022, https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/edition/7.0/RAMA1.htm.

Image Sources

Middleton, Thomas. The Roaring Girle. Or Moll Cut-Purse. 1627. Folger Digital Collections. https://digitalcollections.folger.edu/img46618. Accessed 25 Jan. 2026.

Prosopography

Janelle Jenstad

Janelle Jenstad is a Professor of English at the University of Victoria, Director of The Map of Early Modern London, and Director of Linked Early Modern Drama Online. With Jennifer Roberts-Smith and Mark Beatrice Kaethler, she co-edited Shakespeare’s Language in Digital Media: Old Words, New Tools (Routledge). She has edited John Stow’s A Survey of London (1598 text) for MoEML and is currently editing The Merchant of Venice (with Stephen Wittek) and Heywood’s 2 If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody for DRE. Her articles have appeared in Digital Humanities Quarterly, Elizabethan Theatre, Early Modern Literary Studies, Shakespeare Bulletin, Renaissance and Reformation, and The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. She contributed chapters to Approaches to Teaching Othello (MLA); Teaching Early Modern Literature from the Archives (MLA); Institutional Culture in Early Modern England (Brill); Shakespeare, Language, and the Stage (Arden); Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate); New Directions in the Geohumanities (Routledge); Early Modern Studies and the Digital Turn (Iter); Placing Names: Enriching and Integrating Gazetteers (Indiana); Making Things and Drawing Boundaries (Minnesota); Rethinking Shakespeare Source Study: Audiences, Authors, and Digital Technologies (Routledge); and Civic Performance: Pageantry and Entertainments in Early Modern London (Routledge). For more details, see janellejenstad.com.

Kate McPherson

Kate McPherson is Professor of English and Honors Program Director at Utah Valley University (Orem, UT, USA). In 2015, she began working to redevelop Shakespeare’s Life and Times, created by Michael Best, into the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Her other publications include commentary on Pericles and The Comedy of Errors for the New Oxford Shakespeare (2016); the co-edited volumes Stages of Engagement: Drama and Religion in Post-Reformation England with James Mardock (Duquesne University Press, 2014) and Shakespeare Expressed: Page, Stage, and Classroom in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, with Kathryn M. Moncrief and Sarah Enloe (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2013). With Kathryn M. Moncrief, Kate has also two edited collections, Performing Pedagogy in Early Modern England: Gender, Instruction, and Performance (Ashgate, 2011) and Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate 2008). She has also published numerous articles on early modern maternity in scholarly journals. Kate participated in the 2008 National Endowment for the Humanities Institute, Shakespeare’s Blackfriars: The Study, the Stage, the Classroom, at the American Shakespeare Center. She also served as Play Seminar Director, a public humanities position, for the Utah Shakespeare Festival in 2017 and 2018.

Leah Hamby

Leah Hamby is the primary encoder for the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Aside from encoding, she also works as an editor for the project and contributed several articles of her own. She has been working on the EMEE since February 2023. As of February 2026, she is soon to graduate with honours from Utah Valley University with a major in history and a minor in creative writing. Her other work with the LEMDO program includes remediating William Kemp’s Kemp’s Nine Day’s Wonder for the Digital Renaissance Editions.

Melissa Walter

Melissa Walter is Associate Professor of English at the University of the Fraser Valley. Her research focuses on early modern English drama and English and European prose fiction. She is the author of The Italian Novella and Shakespeare’s Comic Heroines (U of Toronto, 2019), and co-editor, with Dennis Britton, of Rethinking Shakespeare Source Study: Authors, Audiences, Digital Technologies (Routledge, 2018). Her work on English theatre and the European novella has appeared in several edited collections, including Transnational Exchange in Early Modern Theater (Ashgate, 2008), and Transnational Mobility in Early Modern Theater (Ashgate, 2012). She has also written about Translation and Identity in the Dialogues in English and Malaiane Languages (Indographies, ed. Jonathan Gil Harris. Palgrave 2012). At the University of the Fraser Valley, she is a lead coordinator of UFV’s Shakespeare and Reconciliation Garden.

Michael Best

Michael Best is Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria, BC. He founded the Internet Shakespeare Editions in 1996, and was Coordinating Editor until 2017, contributing two editions to the ISE: King John and King Lear (the latter also available in print from Broadview Press). In print, he has published editions of works of Elizabethan magic and huswifery, a collection of letters from the Australian goldfields, and Shakespeare on the Art of Love (2008). He contributed regular columns for the Shakespeare Newsletter on Electronic Shakespeares, and has written many articles and chapters for both print and online books and journals, principally on questions raised by the new medium in the editing and publication of texts. He has delivered papers and plenary lectures on electronic media and the Internet Shakespeare Editions at conferences in Canada, the USA, the UK, Spain, Australia, and Japan.

Taya Velikajne

Taya Velikajne was a student at Utah Valley University.

Orgography

LEMDO Team (LEMD1)

The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators, encoders, and remediating editors.

University of Victoria (UVIC1)

https://www.uvic.ca/

Metadata

Authority title Tobacco In Early Modern England
Type of text Critical
Publisher University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform
Series Early Modern England Encyclopedia
Source
By Taya Velikajne, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions
Editorial declaration This document uses Canadian English spelling
Edition Released with Early Modern England Encyclopedia 1.0a
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Early Modern England Encyclopedia

Anthology Leads: Kate McPherson and Kate Moncrief.
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Funder(s) Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
Mitacs Globablink Research Internship
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