Food in Shakespeare: Early Modern Dietaries and the Plays by Joan Fitzpatrick

Abstract

526 Reviews youth culture. The author sums up the argument studying Nathan Field, called a child of the earlymodern theatrical institution' (p. 119). The firstproblem raised by the book is the use of children's playing companies', not boy companies. Lamb writes, 'in the companies' titles,playbooks and legal and financial documents, the players are sometimes referred to as boys and youths, but for themost part they are termed children' (p. 3). The use of children' blurs the significance of the boys' gender ambivalence. The author suggests a few examples of girl performers; however, theywere all for courtly household performances. The question of girls on stage would be interesting to investigate. Lamb goes further than E. K. Chambers, Andrew Gurr, and Richard Dutton, discussing the boys' ages, which she establishes ranged from six to thirteen in 1599-1600; in 1606 the company were calling themselves youths of Paul's', and Field was amember of the Queen's Revels until 1613, when he was aged twenty-six. She has an interesting discussion of the satire against James's Scots inEastward Ho and The Isle ofGulls (1606), and the case ofHenry Clifton, who lodged a complaint against theChildren of the Chapel for unlawfully taking his son.While Lamb offers only some new historical details on earlymodern theatre, her book is interesting. The book could be more thought-provoking if therewere more theoretical discussion of certain concepts. While Antonio and Mellida raises the possible connection between the boy and the eunuch, the author could further argue for its implications via Freud. Similar situations arise in the discussion of masculinity, femininity, effeminacy (p. 30), and hermaphroditism (p. 31); and of relationships between the sexual and the economic, or the connection of the boys' theatre with national identity. More could be said about the so-called distinctive youth identity,a concept which sounds possibly anachronistic. Finally, the subversiveness of theboys' theatre could be further considered, and its relation to both court and the city. Lingnan University Isaac Hui Food inShakespeare: EarlyModern Dietaries and thePlays. By Joan Fitzpatrick. (Literary and Scientific Cultures of Early Modernity) Aldershot: Ashgate. 2007. ix+i66pp. ?45. ISBN 978-0-7546-5547-3. In her article 'How Brecht Read Shakespeare' Margot Heinemann cited Nigel Lawson, then Chancellor of the Exchequer under Margaret Thatcher, who confi dently declared, 'Shakespeare was a Tory (see Heinemann inPolitical Shakespeare: Essays inCultural Materialism, ed. by JonathanDollimore and Alan Sinfield (Man chester:Manchester University Press, 1985), pp. 202-30 (p. 203)). Lawson, invoked as an example of the commandeering of Shakespeare by a conservative political tradition, is lesswell known now than his daughter, TV chefNigella, who provides some food for thought in a knowing aside about remembrance and bereavement in her cookbook Feast: Food That Celebrates Life (London: Chatto and Windus, 2004). Nigella focuses on comfort food in a section entitled 'Funeral Feast' when in the final recipe she gives the ingredients forRosemary Remembrance Cake, in memory of her grandmother (p. 458). Nigella's nod toHamlet?'There's rosemary, MLR, 105.2, 2010 527 that's for remembrance* (iv. 5. 173)?shows a greater awareness of cross-currents in Shakespeare studies than her father. The term 'foodie' is a recent coinage, like 'fashionista', but just as our early modern counterparts were clearly clothes-conscious, so theywere acutely aware of the discipline?and disorder?of eating. Diet, like dress, was a preoccupation that gave rise to a form of literature aimed at improvement, but also at a kind of fashioning through food. It is this contemporary dietary literature, an immensely popular and influential genre', that Joan Fitzpatrick uses as a sort of tin-opener to examine the contents of Shakespeare's pantry (p. 1). Building on work on food and physicality by Ken Albala and Jonathan Sawday, Fitzpatrick traces the passage of diet and itsmetaphors through the body of Shakespeare's plays, from Falstaff's feasting to famine in Coriolanus (about which, as Fitzpatrick acknowledges, Gail Kern Paster has already written with elegance and insight). Her conclusion, 'that we are perhaps more like the earlymoderns thanwe might think in our focus on moderation, the benefits of drinking wine, and themedicinal quantities ofmany herbs', is arrived at through some exotic...