ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with an early modern literary text that reveals a clear sense of continuity with the medieval past: Edmund Spenser’s allegorical epic poem The Faerie Queene, the first three books of which were first published in 1590, with the next three complete books published in 1596. Spenser’s poem is self-consciously archaic and while his debt to Chaucer and the classical world means he looks back to the past, his Faerie Land is rooted in early modern Protestant England under the governance of Queen Elizabeth. Also considered in this chapter are a number of plays by Shakespeare, with particular attention given to Shakespeare’s depiction of Sir John Oldcastle (Falstaff ), his engagement with ancient and early modern Catholic Italy, and the influence his writing had upon two of his contemporaries, Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, in their play The Woman Hater, first published in 1607. 1 Analysis of three of the most important plays by another of Shakespeare’s contemporaries, Ben Jonson, concludes the chapter: Volpone, The Alchemist and Bartholomew Fair (published in 1605, 1616 and 1631 respectively); all involve food to a remarkable degree, arguably revealing Jonson’s debt to Langland as a prominent critic of England’s social ills. In Chapter 1 we saw that medieval literature focused on religious authority and social rank, with these related concepts often explored via references to food, and some of the themes that emerged are also dominant in the early modern literature here discussed, namely gluttony, hunger, feasting and cannibalism. However, their treatment is often different, which is unsurprising given the important economic, political and social changes that took place in England during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, not least the end of feudalism and the emergence of a capitalist economy, England’s shift from Catholicism to Protestantism, and the beginning also of European expansion abroad.
