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
Results 1-5 of 19
... Belly God: I Henry 4 Foils to Sir John: 2 Henry 4 The Gaping Grave 2 Celtic Acquaintance and Alterity Henry 5: Figs and Leeks Macbeth and Poisoned Nutrients 3 Strange Diets: Vegetarianism and the Melancholic As You Like It The ...
... Belly and Coriolanus warns against the desire to feed: like Antony (before his life in Egypt) he denies his bodily needs, caring little for physical comfort when honour is at stake. Coriolanus's abstinence, indeed abhorrence, of food ...
... belly was vp-blowne with luxury, And eke with fatnesse swollen were his eyne, And like a Crane his necke was long and fyne, With which he swallowd vp excessiue feast, For want whereof poore people oft did pyne; And all the way, most ...
... belly, swollen eyes (an allusion to the psalm “Their eyes stand out with fatness”, 73.7), and excessive sweating. Yet gluttony causes more than mere discomfort: Full of diseases was his carcas blew, And a dry dropsie through his flesh ...
... belly; and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple” (l6:18). Similarly Proverbs advises “Be not among winebibbers; among riotous eaters of flesh: / For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty: and ...
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 |