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  • Food in Shakespeare: Early Modern Dietaries and the Plays
  • Timothy J. Tomasik
Joan Fitzpatrick. Food in Shakespeare: Early Modern Dietaries and the Plays. Literary and Scientific Cultures of Early Modernity. Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2007. ix + 166 pp. $89.95, £45.00 (978-0-7546-5547-3).

Joan Fitzpatrick’s recent study of food in Shakespeare offers a fresh approach to the Bard’s plays through the prism of dietetic treatises, or dietaries. Fitzpatrick begins by briefly sketching representations of Galen’s humoral theory in contemporary English dietetic treatises, suggesting that such discourses discuss food not only as a salutary necessity but also as a barometer for social and moral values. The remainder of the introduction outlines how the five main chapters of the book will examine Shakespeare’s use of ordinary and exotic comestibles in light of contemporary views of gluttony, vegetarianism, abstinence, culinary depravity, and the early modern preoccupation with moderation. [End Page 392]

Chapter 1 focuses on Falstaff’s well-known gluttony. Although his comic hedonism emerges from excessive consumption in Part 1 of Henry IV, Falstaff’s gluttony portends darker contemplations of selfishness, lust, and disease in Part 2 of Henry IV and The Merry Wives of Windsor. Though we might assume that the supporting evidence of the dietaries merely echoes assumptions about Falstaff’s corporal and moral decline, Fitzpatrick goes on to illuminate how these plays engage lesser known dicta from the dietaries such as the dietetic superiority of wine over beer.

In chapter 2, Fitzpatrick demonstrates how these same dietaries challenge traditional readings of Henry V and Macbeth. She argues that Fluellen’s attack on Pistol with a leek may not have been seen as comic by contemporary spectators (as is the case for their modern counterparts). Rather than invoking the association of leeks with the Welsh, the dietaries warn of the dangers of leeks, particularly when eaten raw. Likewise, in addition to discussions of cannibalism and poisoned foods in Macbeth, Fitzpatrick offers a new reading of the weird sisters’ line “Double, double, toil and trouble” as a reference to double double beer, which not only bubbled and frothed but, according to a number of contemporary texts, caused social unrest.

Dietetic descriptions of melancholy form the basis for analysis of As You Like It and The Winter’s Tale in chapter 3. In the former play, Jacques’s sorrow at the death of a deer appears hypocritical, as the venison he has eaten is shown by the dietaries to produce melancholy. Likewise, in the latter play, Leontes’s melancholy stems from his courtly excess, which can only be cured by Perdita’s sober vegetarian banquet. The bear that eats Antigonus is also explained by dietetic discourses as both the cause of (bear meat) and remedy for (bear fat) melancholic affliction. For Fitzpatrick, these two plays illustrate an uncommonly positive view of early modern vegetarianism.

Chapter 4 treats famine and abstinence in lesser known plays such as Sir Thomas More, Coriolanus, and Pericles. Vegetables eaten out of necessity are depicted as strange and dangerous in Sir Thomas More, Coriolanus alludes to cannibalistic practice, and Pericles denounces gluttony in favor of the more moderate bread consumption lauded by dietetic treatises. Chapter 5 continues discussion of strange foods and cannibalism by analyzing references to each in Hamlet, Timon of Athens, and Titus Andronicus.

Though scholars of the history of medicine and culinary historians will find much of interest in Food in Shakespeare, some may be disappointed with the somewhat spare treatment of the dietetic treatises themselves. Given the slim nature of the volume (a modest 130 pages of text), an additional chapter devoted to an exposition of the English tradition of dietetic treatises (and perhaps more references to the already widely researched continental tradition) would have been most welcome. Indeed, in chapters 4 and 5, references to dietetics tend to drop out as the argument shifts from actual foodstuffs to abstract or symbolic representations of the same. Shakespearean scholars may find these latter chapters more illuminating precisely because the plays are privileged over dietetics. These relatively minor criticisms aside, Fitzpatrick should be hailed for inaugurating [End Page 393] a promising approach not only to Shakespeare...

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