Falstaff: The first literary foodie?

A few posts back, when I was still on the Middle Ages, I wrote about Geoffrey Chaucer's innovative literary creation of a cook as a storyteller - see  http://pagetoplate.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/food-for-stories.html  Now that I've moved onto Shakespeare, I wonder if there's another literary first here, namely the first foodie in English literature, Sir John Falstaff. 

Admittedly, one of Chaucer's pilgrims, the Franklin (a landowner, but not of noble birth), is described as a man who finds delight in food and drink; describing him in the General Prologue, the narrator writes "It snewed [snowed] in his hous of mete [food] and dryke / Of alle deyntees [delicacies] that men koude thynke" (lines 345-46).  However, there are just a few lines of description and, when the Franklin starts talking and telling stories, food is nowhere to be found. 

However, Shakespeare's Falstaff - a character thought to be based on the real historical figure of Sir John Oldcastle, a leader of the Lollards (a proto-Protestant religious movement), who was executed in 1417 following  a failed rebellion against his former friend, King Henry V - is quite another matter.  Falstaff appears in three of Shakespeare's plays, Henry IV Part One (c. 1597), Henry IV Part Two (c. 1598) and The Merry Wives of Windsor (c. 1597) and is referred to in a fourth, Henry V (c. 1599), in which he dies.  In all these plays he is associated with food and drink, with his gluttony being a key aspect of his character: it defines his physical appearance, permeates his speech and his actions and also highlights his moral character.  

Falstaff examining his recruits by William Hogarth (1730)

 Falstaff's gluttony makes him fat, and his bulk provokes much humour.  In Henry IV Part One he jokes, when told to lie down on the ground by Prince Hal (the future Henry V), that he will only do so if there are "any levers to lift [him] up again" (II, 2, 33).  In turn Hal calls him a "huge hill of flesh" (II, 4, 239) and in the same scene another character addresses him as "fat paunch" (139). 

Food and drink also permeate Falstaff's speech and behaviour.  It is no coincidence that in Henry IV Parts One and Two Falstaff is frequently found at the Boar's Head Tavern in Eastcheap, a place where food and drink are readily available, and where he frequently calls for food and drink: "Hostess, my breakfast" (H IV Part One III, 3, 202); "Give me a cup of sack, boy" (H IV Part One II, 4, 112).  Sack was a strong, dry white wine from southern Spain and, in Henry V, the hostess confirms that Falstaff called for sack whilst on his deathbed.  In Henry IV Part One much merriment is provoked by the discovery of a bill, about Falstaff's sleeping person, itemising all the money he owes the tavern:

                                               

                                                Item a capon ......................................2s 2d

                                                Item sauce..............................................4d

                                                Item sack two gallons...........................5s 8d

                                                Item anchovies and sack after dinner......2s 6d

                                                Item bread................................................ob  (II, 4, 520-524)

"Ob" is an abbreviation of 'obolus' meaning "half-penny", as Prince Hal notes: "O monstrous!  But one halfpennyworth of / bread to this intolerable deal of sack?" (II, 4, 525-26). 

Whilst the disproportionate amount of alcohol to food is amusing, Hal's reaction also points to the way Falstaff's gluttony shapes his moral character.  As well as being amusing and jovial, Falstaff is lazy, cowardly and deceitful; he even takes the credit for killing Hotspur, Hal's arch-nemesis, at the end of Henry IV Part One.  And the two parts of Henry IV trace Prince Hal's gradual distancing of himself from his old friend and surrogate father as he prepares to become King Henry V.  At the end of Richard II the new King Henry IV (Hal's father) complains that he hasn't seen his "unthrifty son" for "three months" and that he is known to be frequenting the London taverns with "unrestrained loose companions" (V, 3, 1-7), and at the beginning of Henry IV Part One we discover that Falstaff is one of these reprobates.  However, early on in the play Hal tells the audience that he is intending to reform and that, owing to his dissolute behaviour, his transformation will be that much more impressive.  Hal's eventual estrangement from Falstaff is foreshadowed in a comic role-play he and Falstaff engage in, in which Hal plays his father and Falstaff plays Hal.  Reprimanding his 'son' for his relationship with Falstaff, Hal - as Henry IV - refers disparagingly to his physical excesses, calling him "that trunk of / humours, that bolting-hutch of beastliness, that swollen / parcel of dropsies, that huge bombard of sack, that stuffed / cloak-bag of guts, that roasted Manningtree ox with the / pudding in his belly..." (II, 4, 437 - 441).  At the end of Henry IV Part Two comes one of the most moving scenes in Shakespeare when the newly crowned King Henry V, as he processes out of Westminster Abbey, snubs Falstaff who is waiting to greet him, saying "I know thee not, old man ... Leave gormandising" (V, 5, 51-58). 

I doubt Falstaff would ever be able to leave 'gormandising' and, in honour of this great dramatic creation, I have used two of his favourite items - capon and sack (namely chicken and white wine) - to make Falstaff's Fricassee, my version of the "white ffrigasy" found in Mrs Sarah Longe her Receipt Booke of 1610 and reproduced in Andrew Dalby and Maureen Dalby's The Shakespeare Cookbook (British Museum Press, 2012). 

FALSTAFF'S FRICASSEE (serves 2 - 3)

Ingredients:

1 onion (finely chopped)

1 clove of garlic (finely chopped or crushed)

1/2 red pepper (chopped into small pieces)

300g cooked chicken (in pieces)

6 mushrooms (quartered)

100ml dry white wine

1 tablespoon plain flour

salt and pepper

100ml creme fraiche

chopped parsley - handful

Method:

Fry the onion in olive oil over a moderate heat until translucent.  Then add the garlic and red pepper; fry for another 10 minutes to soften.  Add the mushrooms and chicken and cook for a few minutes.  Stir in the tablespoon of flour and cook for a couple of minutes; then add the white wine and cook for 10 minutes.  Stir in the creme fraiche and warm through; add salt and pepper to taste.  Sprinkle with a handful of chopped parsley. 

Tip: on the second day I used this as a filling for a chicken pie using ready-made puff pastry; yum!

Writing about writing

No recipes or musings on food in literature from me this week; instead, a post about my writing.  A couple of weeks ago I was emailed by a good friend – we’ve known each other since we were 11 - and fellow-blogger, Lucy Marcovitch.  Lucy is a freelance writer who has had two books published for children (they’re great, as my niece and nephews, plus assorted friends’ children will testify).  She also writes short stories, articles and guest blogs, as well as her own blog about writing for children and children’s reading – see www.lucymarcovitch.wordpress.com  Lucy invited me to take part in the “Writing Process Blog Tour”: bloggers answers four questions about how they write and, at the end, introduce up to three fellow-bloggers who, the following week, write their own post about their writing, introduce some more writers and so on, resulting in a string of writing-related blogs.  This week it’s my turn. 

Question 1:  What am I working on? 

This blog – From Page to Plate - is my writing focus at the moment.  I started it in January 2014, publishing my first post on New Year’s Day.  My two big loves are cooking and reading, and last spring I thought of an idea that would enable me to combine them.  I would research references to food in English Literature, to see where they appear and the extent to which they change over time, and then I would devise a 21^st century culinary homage to the literary reference in my North London kitchen.  It took me a while to get going, as I initially thought that it would be a book (well, I can but dream), but when a couple of friends suggested a blog, that provided the impetus to get going.  In January I was blogging about Anglo-Saxon literature; after a couple of weeks I moved onto the Middle Ages and now I’ve just embarked on Shakespeare.  I think it’s going to take me a while to get to the 21^st century!  But I’m already thinking of where else I could go with this: French literature (Proust’s madeleines), children’s literature... this could be a lifetime enterprise! 

Question 2:  How does my work differ from others of its genre?

There are a myriad of fantastic blogs on the history of food which gather together recipes from old cookery books, describe the cultural history of food and sometimes include accounts of cooking these recipes in a 21^st century kitchen.  My blog is not really about the history of food.  What I am interested in is exploring how food is written about in literature, how this changes over time (I’m adopting a chronological approach) and also why the way it is written about changes.  There are books and blogs about food in literature – e.g. the British Museum publications The Shakespeare Cookbook, The Jane Austen Cookbook - but I am not aware of anyone actually tracing the changes in the way food is depicted in literature over time.  Also, what I think is different about my writing is that the recipes in my blog are a creative response to the literature, rather than an attempt to reconstruct the food as it actually appears in the poem, novel or play.  So, whilst I might consult an old recipe, that will be a starting point for my own more imaginative response. 

Question 3:  Why do I write what I do? 

I think I’ve already answered this:  because I love cooking and because I love reading.  Will that do?!

Question 4:  How does my writing process work?

Oh, if only I had more time... I work full-time, teaching English in a secondary school, so there is limited time to write, particularly in term-time.  I’m not sure I have a writing process; it’s all a bit piecemeal.  I’m writing this on a Sunday afternoon, aware that there is a pile of A Level coursework essays in my school bag that need marking ... I don’t feel guilty at the moment as I did a lot of marking yesterday (it’s a horrible time of year where marking is concerned!), but guilt about schoolwork can impede the writing process.  That said, on a normal term-time weekend I try and set aside a couple of hours for writing, usually on a Sunday afternoon; ideally this is supplemented by an hour or two in the week.  Of course the holidays do provide longer periods of time to write and I take advantage of that, though I don’t really have a regular pattern to my writing or how I use my time. 

And of course this blog is not just about writing.  It begins with reading – usually re-reading, so sometimes skimming suffices – then thinking about what I could cook, then cooking it (and whilst sometimes a recipe works first time, sometimes, as I’m experiencing at the moment as I try to devise a Seville orange drizzle cake for Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, it’s a lengthy process – I’m 3 cakes down and not there yet; anyone want a piece of cake?) and then only finally do I write.  So, it takes time, but it’s great fun and I’m loving it!  I’m intending to publish my next post – on Shakespeare’s gourmand Falstaff – in the next couple of weeks (the coursework marking will be over by the end of the month!) so please do come back and visit it. 

Coming up next week – on March 31^st - are these three very varied but equally inspiring writers.  Do check out their sites. 

Jane Kelleher is a mother, history teacher, amateur genealogist and yarn enthusiast.  Born in London she is now living in the Fens.  Her site is the Postans Family Tree Project | A voyage of family discovery. http://postansfamilyproject.wordpress.com/

Mary Ann Mhina is a writer and storyteller who recently published a collection of elder women's stories entitled Listening to our Grandmothers. With her friend Beverley she co-creates a regular story telling event in London called The Story Party. Mary Ann also teaches Nia, a sensory-based movement practice, and believes that this practice supports her to be a better writer. You can read about all this and more on her blog http://maryannmhina.co.uk/blog/

Sam Scott is a busy working mum to two beautiful girls - the inspiration behind her blog http://mookandlulusblog.com  Mookandlulus offers fresh ideas and tips on party styling, party food, and craft activities for children's parties. Sam tries out all the suggestions on her blog and captures the results with her photos. She lives in Devon.  

Breakfast in Shakespeare

Rereading Henry IV Part One to find about the eating habits of Sir John Falstaff, Shakespeare’s rotund food-loving comic character, I noticed a number of references to breakfast.  In Act III, Scene 3, Falstaff – who will be the focus of a future post – urges Mistress Quickly, the hostess of the Eastcheap tavern that is his regular haunt, to bring him breakfast: “Hostess ... go make ready breakfast “ (lines 168-69); “Hostess, my breakfast, come!” (line 202).  Whilst no details are given of what Falstaff wants to eat for breakfast, earlier in the same play the Chamberlain of a tavern in Rochester reports that some travellers are up early and have called for “eggs and butter” (II, 1, 60) before they depart.  It’s not stated what was done with these two ingredients – a hardboiled egg accompanied by butter on bread? An egg fried in butter?  An omelette?  Scrambled eggs?  I opted for the latter, making scrambled eggs without the milk that I usually add – which made a very rich buttery dish; surely just what greedy Falstaff would like. 

This got me thinking about breakfast in Shakespeare – and more generally in literature – a meal that I would suspect (though I may be proved wrong when I move onto later literature) is a rarely-mentioned meal in drama, poetry or fiction.  As Andrew and Maureen Dalby write in The Shakespeare Cookbook, breakfast would have been eaten very early – soon after dawn – in Shakespeare’s time and would have been very light.  Falstaff says elsewhere in Henry IV Part one that grace does not need to be said before breakfast, suggesting it was deemed a less important and substantial meal than other meals.  As with breakfasts nowadays we can probably assume that breakfast would have been repeated with little variation day after day, making it an uninteresting meal to comment on in literature.  Breakfast is also usually eaten within the privacy of the home, and there are “no invitations to breakfast in Shakespeare”.[1]  Where meals do appear on the stage in Shakespeare they are – as with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (see http://pagetoplate.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/festivities-at-medieval-court.html) - usually banquets and feasts, set pieces that gather together a number of characters, often to allow something dramatic to happen.  Examples of this in Shakespeare would include the exiled Duke Senior’s banquet in the Forest of Arden in As You Like It (c. 1599) which is interrupted by the play’s hero, Orlando, who, fleeing for his life from his wrathful brother, Oliver, and overwhelmed by hunger threatens the courtiers at knife point.  

Orlando interrupts Duke Senior's banquet: As You Like It Act II, Scene 7 by Frederick William Davis (1902)

A far more sinister feast occurs at the end of Titus Andronicus (c. 1594), where the eponymous protagonist serves up to his enemy Tamora, a pie containing her own dead sons, as revenge for their rape and mutilation of his daughter, Lavinia.  So breakfast seems pretty tame and uninteresting in comparison!

Arguably the handful of mentions of breakfast in Shakespeare have a symbolic function, rather than telling us anything of significance about what people ate for breakfast in the late 16^th and early 17^th centuries.  Falstaff’s repeated demand for breakfast serves to characterise him as a man whose every thought and action is dominated by food and drink.  In Antony and Cleopatra (c. 1607), Shakespeare’s tragic retelling of the doomed love affair between two powerful leaders of the classical world, a reference to breakfast is used to symbolise the decadence of the Egyptian world (as opposed to the restraint of Rome, a dramatic conflict that runs throughout the play).  Enobarbus, Antony’s right-hand man who has been spending time in Egypt with his love-sick superior, tells his Roman counterparts about the life he has been leading in Cleopatra’s country.  A Roman, Maecenas, asks him to verify the rumours he has heard about the Egyptian diet:  “Eight whole boars roasted whole at a breakfast and but twelve persons there.  Is this true?”  (II, 2, 191-2).  Enobarbus says this is an understatement: “We had much more monstrous matter of feast” (II, 2, 193-4).  In fact Shakespeare’s source for this detail – Sir Thomas North’s 1579 translation of Plutarch’s Life of Mark Antony – says the food was eaten in the evening.  By changing it to breakfast Shakespeare creates humour and further highlights the extravagances of Egypt. 

And so to pancakes – which seems appropriate timing since Shrove Tuesday was only a few days ago.  In the comedy As You Like It which I mentioned above, the fool Touchstone tells a rather obscure and confusing story of a knight who “swore by his honour” that the pancakes were “good” when in fact they were nothing of the kind (I, 2, ll. 50-51), but because the knight had no honour, he did not commit perjury when he lied about the pancakes.  Well, the knight’s pancakes may not have been any good, but these ones are; a recipe passed onto me by a Canadian friend (courtesy of http://therepressedpastrychef.com/2008/09/14/buttermilk-pancakes/) the buttermilk creates a rather thick consistency, ideal as in Shakespeare’s time the word ‘pancake’ could refer to either a pancake as we know it or a fritter.  

BUTTERMILK BREAKFAST PANCAKES – makes between 6 and 8

Dry Ingredients:

1 ½ cups plain flour

3 tablespoons caster sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1 teaspoon salt

Wet ingredients:

1 ½ cups buttermilk

3 tablespoons melted butter

2 eggs

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

Method:

Combine the dry ingredients and the wet ingredients in separate bowls.  Then pour the wet ingredients into the dry; stir to combine but do not overbeat.  Leave to rest for anywhere between 30 minutes and overnight. 

Spoon heaped tablespoonfuls of the batter onto a heated oiled frying pan over a moderate heat.  After a minute or so, when bubbles begin to form on the surface, use a fish knife or palette knife to turn over the pancake and cook for another minute or so on the other side.  Serve warm with maple syrup, or fried bacon, or whatever takes your fancy. 

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[1] Dalby & Dalby, The Shakespeare Cookbook (London: British Museum, 2012), p. 14.