With the great multiplicity of new fashions, in novelties in customs and in costumes, in manners and even in morals, there came into vogue, from the East, hot, or, as they were called, "sweating baths." They became very common throughout England, and the places where they were to be gotten were commonly called "hothouses," although their Persian name of _hummums_ was also preserved. Ben Jonson represents a character in the old play _The Puritan_ as saying in regard to a laborious undertaking: "Marry, it will take me much sweat; I were better to go to sixteen _hothouses_." They became the rendezvous of women, who resorted to them for gossip and company. The rude manners of the age were not conducive to the preservation of these places from the illicit intrigues which made them notorious, and caused the name "hothouse" to become a synonym for "brothel." It was their acquired character that probably led eventually to their disuse. They were not necessarily vicious, and they furnished a convenience for the sex, who did not have the shops and clubs of to-day as places for meeting and the interchange of small talk. It must be remembered that the taverns supplied this need for the men, but, excepting in the case of the lower orders of society, the women had no similar place for such social intercourse as was secured to the men by their tavern clubs. The hothouses were not simply bath houses of the modern Turkish type, but were restaurants as well. While seated in the steaming bath, refreshments and lunch were served on tables conveniently arranged for the purpose, and, after ablutions, the women remained as long as they cared to, in conversation. The picnics which had formerly taken place at the tavern were transferred to the hot bath, each of the women carrying to the feast contributions which were shared in common. This practice, which began with the servant maids, passed to their mistresses and on up the scale of society, and became fashionable for the ladies of the higher circles. In the absence of the modern newspaper, these places became the distributing centres for the news of the day and the talk of the town. The tavern served the same purpose for the men.
Dancing was indulged in by all classes of society, and the variety and curious names of the new styles which were introduced during the Elizabethan era are well set forth in the following quotation from a festal scene in Haywood's _Woman Kilde with Kindnesse_: