Foods and Class in Shakespeare’s Plays
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Due to Elizabethans believing in hierarchy in all areas of life and thought, the majority envisioned an hierarchy based on blood quality. Certain writers of this period reflected such beliefs through their interests in and demonstrated a certain knowledge of blood and medicine. This knowledge was prompted by the influence of Hippocratic and Galenic teaching, and was constantly being scrutinized for harmony with Biblical teachings. This paper insists that food was classified on the basis of eugenic capability, inasmuch as diet in some measure determined the quality of one’s blood, and blood regulates, to a certain extent, characterization, plotting, and, in some cases, theme in Shakespeare’s plays. Certain foods are categorized primarily by Elizabethan doctors and writers, and separated into two classes, “gentle” and “base”: wine, ale and beer, beef, mutton, pork, goat, birds, chicken, fish, milk, white and brown bread, herbs, fruits, and others. Beef, for example, was in the anomalous position of being rejected as flesh of gentle by conservative medical theory, while at the same time being eaten by all classes. Interestingly, human milk was regarded as blood in another form. This paper, then, applies this division of foods to Shakespeare’s plays, for they are rich with examples of how foods were regarded by the attitudes and beliefs of the Elizabethans: The Taming of the Shrew, Titus Andronicus, Pericles, Prince of Tyre, and about 12 other plays. Jack Cade, in 2 Henry VI, for example, shouts that when he is King of England, “I will make it felony to drink small beer” and “of the city’s cost, the pissing conduit [shall] run nothing but claret wine this first year of our reign.” He is vowing to improve the health of his base followers as well as contributing to their advancement in enjoying the higher range of gustatory sensations, advancing them socially.
Abstract
Due to Elizabethans believing in hierarchy in all areas of life and thought, the majority envisioned an hierarchy based on blood quality. Certain writers of this period reflected such beliefs through their interests in and demonstrated a certain knowledge of blood and medicine. This knowledge was prompted by the influence of Hippocratic and Galenic teaching, and was constantly being scrutinized for harmony with Biblical teachings. This paper insists that food was classified on the basis of eugenic capability, inasmuch as diet in some measure determined the quality of one’s blood, and blood regulates, to a certain extent, characterization, plotting, and, in some cases, theme in Shakespeare’s plays. Certain foods are categorized primarily by Elizabethan doctors and writers, and separated into two classes, “gentle” and “base”: wine, ale and beer, beef, mutton, pork, goat, birds, chicken, fish, milk, white and brown bread, herbs, fruits, and others. Beef, for example, was in the anomalous position of being rejected as flesh of gentle by conservative medical theory, while at the same time being eaten by all classes. Interestingly, human milk was regarded as blood in another form. This paper, then, applies this division of foods to Shakespeare’s plays, for they are rich with examples of how foods were regarded by the attitudes and beliefs of the Elizabethans: The Taming of the Shrew, Titus Andronicus, Pericles, Prince of Tyre, and about 12 other plays. Jack Cade, in 2 Henry VI, for example, shouts that when he is King of England, “I will make it felony to drink small beer” and “of the city’s cost, the pissing conduit [shall] run nothing but claret wine this first year of our reign.” He is vowing to improve the health of his base followers as well as contributing to their advancement in enjoying the higher range of gustatory sensations, advancing them socially.
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