The Shakespeare Cookbook by Andrew Dalby and Maureen Dalby.

Sometimes, just sometimes, I cry in supermarkets. This shouldn’t surprise regular readers who’ll know my emotion gland can be overwhelmed by the simplest of things. There’s a three-fold complexity to my feelings about supermarkets. Firstly, it’s the rudeness of fellow shoppers with barging tendencies unable to understand those like me with weak decision making skills. Secondly it’s my lack of decision making skills and wanting to taste everything despite there only being three meals in a day and seven of those days between shopping trips.

But thirdly, and primarily it’s what supermarkets represent. Weeping in the cheese aisle amongst the crumbly varieties with county names, the Lancashires, Cheshires, Cheddars. I thought about the history of those cheeses, the heritage and how centuries of tradition now sit wrapped in plastic for our convenience with labels designed to attract us with an idealised version of the history, the heritage, the centuries of tradition. The answer is to purchase such at farmers markets, but supermarkets are convenient, which also make me inadequate.

Unfortunately The Shakespeare Cookbook by historian Andrew Dalby and cook Maureen Dalby goes some way to increasing that inadequacy, since although I’m not necessarily a terrible cook I’m an unpractised one which means there’s little chance of the recipes listed being anything like the mental pictures they conjure (another reason for the supermarket tragedy). Luckily then, it’s much more than that, the authors utilising a number of contemporary sources to offer a taste (sorry) of eating habits and favourite dishes in the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods.

The Shakespeare connection involves ransacking the plays and their sources for food references and extrapolating those out into explanations for the surprisingly large variety of dishes which were available in the period, some of which are now available in supermarkets but many entirely alien to our tastebuds, though it’s almost disappointing Baxters don’t produce a tinned variety of Swan Chauder. As well as quoting from a variety of cookbooks (most of them now available online), the authors also provide contemporary equivalents for modern chefs to try.

For Hamlet, that’s the feast Hamlet refers to when question Horatio on his appearance in Elsinore, “Thrift, thrift, Horatio. The funeral baked meats / Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.” The Dalbys aren’t sure if the prince is speaking literally but we’re quickly introduced to the food he’s referring to, “cooked meats” being pies, the pastry cases before filling fittingly, given the themes of the play, called “coffins”. We’re then provided with recipes for hot water crust pastry and shortcrust pastry neither of which seem that complicated even though they undoubtedly are.

Given my culinary inadequacy I’m probably not the best judge of whether this works as a cookbook. Structurally it’s unusually set out, with chapters themed around various plays with a short introduction focusing on various textual victuals, either metaphoric or consumed on stage followed by short pieces explaining these various elements, some more tenuous than others. Would a serious foody want these recipes to be more conventionally clustered around the usual headings, starters, meat dishes, fish dishes, deserts and drinks?

But if the book has a particular strength its that it doesn’t just rely on Shakespeare for illustrative quotes featuring when necessary works by his contemporaries, with Middleton’s The Witches allowing us to see what may have been on the Macbeth’s table during Banquo’s visitation and a rousing speech from Maid Marion in Jonson’s unfinished Robin Hood play The Sad Shepherd providing a glimpse of the Bohemian sheep-shearing feast in A Winter’s Tale. And when that fails they quote from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, which shows an eclectic attention to detail.

Whether any of this will improve or deteriorate further my ability to visit supermarkets without it becoming some great personal tragedy will be hard to tell. Perhaps the trick will be to select a recipe at random, wait a moment, yes, hodgepot, gather the ingredients and make an attempt. The authors replace marigold flowers with saffron so that seems perfectly doable. Perhaps I’ll report back. But until then at least when I see marchpane, or rather marzipan on the shelf, I’ll know it’s always been a convenience food, even in Shakespeare’s day.

The Shakespeare Cookbook by Andrew Dalby and Maureen Dalby is out now from the British Museum Press.  RRP £10.99.  ISBN: 978-0714123356.  Review copy supplied.

Angels and Ducats: Shakespeare's Money and Medals by Barrie Cook.

Even before the Euro, there were many units of currency which travelled across national borders, one of which was the ducat. The ducat was first minted in Sicily in the 1140s but would eventually spread across the continent for the next eight hundred odd years. Eurosceptics will be pleased to hear that Britain stuck with pounds, shillings and pence, but it still became one of Shakespeare’s most used currencies as a way of conveying extreme wealth. Ducat appears four times in Hamlet, most memorably in the prince's cry as he accidentally runs Polonius through as a reminder that he believes he’s killing his father-in-law.

But the ducat is just one of dozens of units of currency which crop up in Shakepeare’s plays as they span history and geography and in Angels and Ducats: Shakespeare’s Money & Medals, Barrie Cook, the curator of Medieval and Early Modern Coinage at the British Museum utilises this national collection to explain some of the history of these now obscure units of commerce and their meaning within the texts.  The book's published to coincide with a display opening in April which like the Summer exhibitions, relates the objects to the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, in theatrical economies of scale and the portrayal of royalty on the coins.

As Cook explains, for all the apparent obscurity that some of the language has now, Shakespeare was always concerned with making his stories lucid even if they were set in an earlier time and so although there was enough knowledge available to offer an accurate portrayal, he was unafraid to employ anachronisms as an aid to understanding. The Comedy of Errors, set in the ancient Mediterranean world pinions on the movement of “angels” and “ducats”. But they also provide a useful element of punning and allusion, “nobles” and “crowns” appearing in all the history plays both in plain speech and as a way of conveying satirically the authority being fought for.

But those of us perhaps slightly more interested in theatrical history will find most useful the chapter on how the business of acting was financed.  Cook has compiled a chart itemising the cost of visiting the theatre in Shakespeare’s day and production budgets. What’s surprising is that theatre goers preferred comfort over visibility, the yard nearest the action (albeit standing) far cheaper than the upper galleries some way away from the stage, the exact opposite of the charging mechanics in modern theatres and concert halls were the cheap seats are at the very back, which in some older auditoriums might as well be in the pub next door.

The well chosen illustrations demonstrate that the physical nature of the currency hasn't changed that much across the centuries and almost always feature some monarch on one side, an indication of the denomination on the other. Cook also briefly touches on medals and they too follow a similar format which explains why they’re thought of as such an important part of our history. Some of the only illustrations we have of the notable Romans are the profiles which appear in archaeological discoveries, references to which are another way that Shakespeare is able make these ancient times and peoples more tangible.

Angels and Ducats: Shakespeare's Money and Medals by Barrie Cook is published by the British Museum.  2012.  RRP:  £9.99 paperback.  ISBN: 9780714118215.  Review copy supplied.

Shakespeare's Britain by Jonathan Bate and Dora Thornton, with Rebecca Allen.

Perhaps sensing that some visitors to their Shakespeare: staging the world exhibition would rather have a more visual keepsake rather than a larger academic study, the British Museum have also published a much smaller, more focused distillation of the exhibition’s themes. Also authored by Jonathan Bate and Dora Thornton with additional work by Becky Allen the exhibition’s project co-ordinator, Shakespeare’s Britain concentrates on high quality images of the objects and shorter, punchier explanations for their relevance to Shakespeare’s story.

One of the consequences of the distillation is that focuses on the more distasteful elements of the exhibition, the engravings depicting executions, reliquaries containing disembodied eyes and torture devices for witches not to mention once of the lanterns reputedly used in the Gunpowder plot. We’re also reminded of how limited the medieval view of the world could be, with the native peoples from other parts of the world treated as curiosities, something Shakespeare himself referenced in The Tempest when Trinculo suggests he could display Caliban in London for profit.

Of the two, assuming you have the money, I’d still recommend the much larger catalogue which collects almost all the objects in the exhibition plus a few more and whose textual real estate is something which can be dipped in and out of in conjunction with a more general study of the plays. But Shakespeare’s Britain would probably the perfect gift for a curious teenager (assuming they still exist) who’s already somewhat aware of his biography but aren’t quite ready for a full blown academic study.

Shakespeare's Britain by Jonathan Bate and Dora Thornton, with Rebecca Allen is published by the British Museum. 2012. RRP: £9.99 paperback. ISBN: 9780714128269. Review copy supplied.

Shakespeare: staging the world by Jonathan Bate & Dora Thornton.

Pirates! What’s often forgotten about Hamlet is that amongst the psychological introspection and political intrigue, the prince’s mortality is delayed by the left of field plot device of joining a band of pirates. But what’s all the more remarkable that for all the indignation contemporary Horatio actors include in their performance when reading this ludicrous tale, it’s not there in the text. That's because for Shakespeare and so presumably his audience it was a fairly normal occurrence. In that period there was a spate of incidents in which bored or bankrupt nobles “turned Turk” and joined a Mediterranean pirate ship. We might even wonder if, since some of the most notorious cases happened over a decade after Hamlet was premiered, the play actually promoted piracy as a valid lifestyle choice.

Opening in July, the British Museum’s summer exhibition, Shakespeare: staging the world (which is their contribution to Cultural Olympiad) seeks to illuminate objects from the collection like the robes of a Mediterranean pirate through the prism of his plays, his life and his world. As with any cultural achievement, Shakespeare's work will have been understood by a specific collective memory and while most of us non-academics are able to gain a sense of the words and stories, even if we’re particularly familiar some of the plays there will still be certain specific references beyond our understanding. By presenting the visitor with the things which would have been familiar to the people of the period, the British Museum hopes we'll a greater understanding of the more curious aspects of the texts.

In this accompanying catalogue exhibition curator Dora Thornton and her Shakespearean consultant Jonathan Bate provide even greater context for the objects either because they’re specifically mentioned in the text, are directly related to Shakespeare biography in some way or as is most often the case are thematically connected to the plays. To extent this is a natural progression from the chapter in Bate’s Soul of the Age, which forensically reconstructed Shakespeare’s library based on the sources he must have read. This is a selection of objects that would or at least could have been equally inspirational, even indirectly. Some selections might initially seem tenuous but keep with it and connections fire off in all directions.

The book is packed with explanations as interesting as Hamlet’s brief naval dalliance.  When Othello mentions the kind of Spanish rapier he's utilising as his means of his suicide, Shakespeare isn’t simply providing colour, he’s still telling us something about the kind of man the moor is, as interested in fashion as the ability to defend oneself. When he says that's constructed from ‘ice-brook’s templar’ he’s indicating that a cheap dagger simply isn’t good enough to bring him down (and even in texts when it's read as “Insbrook” also a source of good quality metal). On the opposite page is a more traditional Turkish sword with its familiar banana shape, which is fine and with a simple hilt and broad, bland blade, still deadly but without the panache or sleek, smooth shape of Othello’s death bringer.

Unlike Soul of the Age, the catalogue lacks a single argument as such, preferring instead to choose single topics (witchcraft) or a geographical locations (Venice or The Tempest’s unnamed island) and provide case study which oscillates between general and specific, submerging the reader in the mountain of facts and anecdotes perhaps in an attempt to mimic the experience of travelling through the exhibition.  Ours eyes shift curiously from a bear skull to Horary quadrant the woollen cap which was compulsory for people over the age of six on Sundays and holidays in the 1570s.  The effect is bewildering and requires some effort on the part of the reader to reorientate themselves as the authors shift us back and forth through centuries at the turn of the page, from Richards II to III in an instant.

But it’s always rewarding. The book is strongest when considering those Histories in the context of what would have been for him the contemporary monarchy. A portrait of Richard II by an unknown artist is shown to be the reason for Elizabeth I’s oft repeated quote “I am Richard know yet not that?” rather than an “illegal” performance of the play as is commonly thought having been found “fastened to the backside of a door of a base room” in the Palace of Westminster and put in a more prominent position on the Queen’s orders. Its structure, the monarch bolt upright in his throne, orb and sceptre in hand, also influenced the coronation portrait of Elizabeth also included (and perhaps this shot of Ben Wishaw as Richard II in the new BBC adaptation of Shakespeare’s play).

There’s certainly an argument to be made for a more structured approach and that in some respects the text is justifying the inclusion in the exhibition of some gorgeous objects not often given the opportunity for exhibition that only have a tangential connection to Shakespeare. But in other senses it doesn’t matter given how memorable they are. Each page is filled with surprising objects and although some, like the Murano jug reputedly blown by writer Thomas Coryat on his grand tour aren’t done justice in photography, there’s still some excitement in seeing a painting of some anonymous noble and then an adjacent photo of the very tunic he’s wearing still in pristine condition.  Those of you able to see the actual exhibition when it opens will be very lucky indeed.

Shakespeare: staging the world by Jonathan Bate & Dora Thornton is published by the British Museum. 2012. £25 in paperback, ISBN 9780714128245. £40 in hardback, ISBN: 9780714128283. Review copy supplied.