Top five Shakespeare & Beyond blog posts of 2017

2017’s most popular blog post featured a 17th-century pumpkin pie recipe.

It’s been a busy year on our Shakespeare & Beyond blog. These were the top five blog posts of 2017:

1. A pumpkin pie recipe from 17th-century England

“Hannah Woolley was the Betty Crocker of Renaissance England. Raised in London in the 1660s, Woolley established a name for herself as a chef, author, and cooking instructor. Dozens of recipe books appeared in her name, and she hosted cooking classes in her London kitchen. Woolley was an early adapter when it came to pumpkin. Recipes for pumpkin appear in her books as early as 1672. In a book called The Queen-Like Closet, Woolley included this recipe.”

2. Fakespeare: 5 quotes commonly misattributed to Shakespeare

Every day, fake Shakespeare quotes are being shared on social media. Here are a few common examples, such as “Expectation is the root of all heartache.”

3. Etiquette in early modern England

“Manners maketh man” was the motto of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. More than simply the social niceties, as portrayed (and sometimes mocked) in the period’s satiric comedies, courtesy and civility were the very glue that held society together. They were, as scholar Anna Bryson notes, “central to Tudor and Stuart assumptions and fears about the social and political order.”

4. A recipe for 1610 rose cakes

This recipe for rose cakes, adapted by food historian and cookbook author Francine Segan, is from the 1610 handwritten recipe book of Sarah Longe.

5. Quiz: Can you guess the Shakespeare play just from its most memorable props?

How well do you know the props in Shakespeare’s plays? Take the quiz!