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 33
... focus is on Shakespeare and early modern dietaries, outlined below. Also outlined below is the early modern perception of Galen's model of humoral theory which dominated early modern thinking about how the body works and the role of ...
... focus on plays by Thomas Heywood, Thomas Middleton, John Fletcher and others—this book will focus on the social and moral implications of familiar and strange food (solid and liquid) and feeding in Shakespeare specifically. I have used ...
... focus especially on how depictions of ordinary and exotic food and feeding in particular Shakespeare plays relates to the preoccupation with moderation evident in the dietaries. It is, of course, important to respect genre: although the ...
... focus is specifically female and more analysis is required of how the phenomenon was represented by Shakespeare and the dietary writers who were his contemporaries. There is a general suspicion toward abstemious thin-men in ...
... focusing on spiritual solutions, he plays with materialist answers and the whole cycle of living, eating, and dying: the body is re-bom as clay (a holder of food and drink) or bait (a catcher of food). Moreover, Hamlet is alert to the ...
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 |