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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... “dusky brown” in colour. They are prone to bad dreams and “Covetous, self-lovers, cowards fearful, careful, solitary stubborn, ambitious, envious”. They are advised to avoid excessive food and drink, 2 Food in Shakespeare.
... excessive food and drink, especially “meats hard of digestion” and it is recommended that they take much exercise, partly because it helps their sluggish digestion (Galen & Culpepper 1653, F4r-Frv). So too exercise is recommended for ...
... excessive consumption in Shakespeare. In 1 Henry 4, 2 Henry 4, and The Merry Wives of Windsor Sir John eats the kind of foodstuff that would have been familiar to most playgoers but in quantities that set him apart from the majority who ...
... Excessive consumption was denounced by early modern dietaries which focused on the harm over-eating did to the body, a tactic also often used by religious texts where the physical as well as the spiritual consequences of gluttony were ...
... excessive drinking as well as an excessive interest in food and so it is fitting that Spenser's Gluttony, “In greene vine leaues right fitly Familiar Extremes 13.
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 |