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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... specifically the sliding scale from the most ordinary to the most exotic manifestations of food and feeding, and most clearly engage with some of the other things being written about the subject prior to and during the early modern ...
... specifically. I have used the term 'early modern' because some of the dietaries considered were published before the reign of Elizabeth and some after the reign of James. Among the dietaries considered will be Boorde 1547; Langton 1545 ...
... 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 Shakespeare's ...
... and within contemporary accounts of the Irish diet in colonial prose writings. The play's rioting Londoners claim that foreigners harm the economy (specifically causing inflation), have strange culinary Introduction 7.
Early Modern Dietaries and the Plays Dr Joan Fitzpatrick. foreigners harm the economy (specifically causing inflation), have strange culinary practices, and that their “strange roots” import disease, a belief reinforced by the dietaries ...
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 |