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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... modem scholars and most of this book was written there. I am thankful that the Royal Shakespeare Company had the courage and good taste to stage an outstanding production of Sir Thomas More in 2005, and for recent productions of the ...
... modems believed the consumption of specific food and drink capable of modifying one's 'type' and, perhaps surprisingly, that exercise as well as diet played an important part. Crucially, it is clear that the early modems had a ...
... modem theatre goers at London's Globe; surprisingly, it is not the vegetable's association with the Welsh which is the primary focus of its discussion amongst the dietary authors. A tension between familiarity and alterity is evident in ...
... modems believed we should consume with care (not all water was fit for drinking). Throughout the play feeding ... modem contrast between Rome's glorious past and its present moral decay as the centre of Papal power suggests anachronistic ...
... modems would recognize in their intents, if not their means. Then, as now, theories of food and drink and choices about eating and drinking encode economic circumstances, social aspirations, national identity, physical health, and self ...
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 |