Food in Shakespeare: Early Modern Dietaries and the PlaysA study of common and exotic food in Shakespeare's plays, this is the first book to explore early modern English dietary literature to understand better the significance of food in Shakespearean drama. Food in Shakespeare provides for modern readers and audiences an historically accurate account of the range of, and conflicts between, contemporary ideas that informed the representations of food in the plays. It also focuses on the social and moral implications of familiar and strange foodstuff in Shakespeare's works. This new approach provides substantial fresh readings of Hamlet, Macbeth, As you Like It, The Winter's Tale, Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, Henry V, Titus Andronicus, Coriolanus, Pericles, Timon of Athens, and the co-authored Sir Thomas More. Among the dietaries explored are Andrew Boorde's A Compendyous Regyment or a Dyetary of Healthe (1547), William Bullein's The Gouernement of Healthe (1595), Thomas Elyot's The Castle of Helthe (1595) and Thomas Cogan's The Hauen of Health (1636). These dieteries were republished several times in the early modern period; together they typify the genre's condemnation of surfeit and the tendency to blame human disease on feeding practices. This study directs scholarly attention to the importance of early modern dietaries, analyzing their role in wider culture as well as their intersection with dramatic art. In the dietaries food and drink are indices of one's position in relation to complex ideas about rank, nationality, and spiritual well-being; careful consumption might correct moral as well as physical shortcomings. The dietaries are an eclectic genre: some contain recipes for the reader to try, others give tips on more general lifestyle choices, but all offer advice on how to maintain good health via diet. Although some are more stern and humourless than others, the overwhelming impression is that of food as an ally in the battle against disease and ill-health as well as a potential enemy. |
From inside the book
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... Appetite is good, their Digestion quick. As for their Conditions they are merry cheerful Creatures, bounteful, pitiful, merciful, courteous, bold, trusty, given much to the games of Venus . (Galen & Culpepper 1653, F2v-F3r) What the ...
... appetite is weak so is their digestion, a consequence of their slothfulness. The hair on their head is usually “flaxen or light brown”, although their body is hairless, and their skin pale and moist. They are advised “to use a very ...
... appetite was routinely denounced by early modern dietaries, which echoed the Elizabethan Homily Against Gluttony and Drunkenness in urging Christians to avoid intemperance. Sir John's gluttony is a visible way of asserting his concern ...
... appetites brings about his downfall, Pericles's benevolent feeding of the starving triggers divinely ordained retribution when his enemies are punished by the very citizens whose lives he saved with food. When Shakespeare takes his ...
... appetite is prouoked thereby to desyre more than it shoulde, or els it ouercommeth his stomacke, and fylleth all the bodye full of sluggyshnes, makes it vnlustye and vnfytte to serue either God or man, not nourshyng the body, but ...
Contents
11 | |
Celtic Acquaintance and Alterity | 37 |
Vegetarianism and the Melancholic | 57 |
Famine and Abstinence Class War and Foreign Foodstuff | 81 |
Profane Consumption | 105 |
Conclusion | 127 |
Index | 155 |