Throughout history, there have always been different social norms and rules of etiquette that people have followed.
I’d say one that seems to apply to our present day, is the phone rule. Back in the day, people used to call each other all the time. But nowadays, a ringing phone is more scary than exciting. People like us millennials tend to have the unspoken social norm of not calling and texting instead.
But if you look back on the different eras, there are some pretty interesting etiquette rules, and some of them can be quite strange or rigid, such as the ones that if the Elizabethan era during the 16th and 17th centuries.
Weird History has gone through the different rules that people abided by back then and created a whole video detailing the history of these social norms. Most of them were applicable to the upper class and those who lived at court – the Queen in particular.
As the video states, “In the latter half of the 16th century, under the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, England emerged as the world’s first real superpower. Elizabethan England also saw the birth of an aristocratic etiquette so bizarre it makes even the most stringent and alien rituals of historical decorum seem totally reasonable by comparison.”
Much like today, going against the social rules would result in getting canceled, but it was much riskier back then, as failing to follow the rules could result in absolute chaos and catastrophe to a person’s name as well as potentially their income.
As the video further adds, “In Elizabethan society, receiving praise for good manners was the highest compliment that could be paid. And if word got around that you had bad manners, it meant being ostracized from proper society… It was a fate that brought not only shame, but real social and economic consequences.”
Did you know this about Elizabethan society?
Watch the video down below:
What do you think of these etiquette rules? Would you want to see any of them brought back around? Let us know!