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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... John Heminges a taphouse attached to the Globe playhouse. Food and drink were part of the theatre experience and it ... John's gluttony is a visible way of asserting his concern with feeding his body with sack and capons rather than ...
... John. Shakespeare's Belly God: 1 Henry 4 In his delineation of Sir John, Shakespeare's debt to the morality tradition ... John's gluttony is evident in these allusions to the morality tradition, he shares with Spenser's Gluttony a focus ...
... John produce “not only emaciation but a temperament opposite to sanguinity with its heat and moisture—the qualities of youth” (Shakespeare 1987b, 190n238). As noted by J. Dover Wilson, the foodstuffs mentioned by Hal to describe Sir John's ...
... John's gargantuan proportions, and the foodstuffs that have contributed to his belly, occur against the backdrop of the robbery at Gad's Hill. Sir John and his cohorts bind and rob travellers and are in turn robbed of their booty by Hal ...
... John as all belly—“there's no room for faith, truth, nor honesty it is all filled up with guts and midriff” (1:3.3.154 ... John's casual lack of regard for the welfare of his fellow-man, an effect of gluttony mentioned in the Elizabethan ...
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 |