Early modern life
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The "American Nectar": William Hughes's hot chocolate
The perfect post for a winter’s day: Marissa Nicosia shares an early modern recipe for hot chocolate, associated with 17th-century author, botanist, and pirate William Hughes.
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Excerpt - 'How to Behave Badly in Elizabethan England' by Ruth Goodman
From rudeness to gross behavior, Ruth Goodman’s book “How to Behave Badly in Elizabethan England” sheds some surprising light on what bad behavior really meant, including the reason that Shakespeare had Sampson threaten to “bite my thumb” at another character…
![Folger Cogs Biscuits-116 Savory Cogs Biscuits. All photography by Brittany Diliberto. www.beetwosweet.com](https://images.folger.edu/uploads/2018/11/Folger-Cogs-Biscuits-116.jpg?fit=10%2C10)
Savory biscuits from a 17th-century recipe
Interested in adding variety to your Thanksgiving dinner? Try this modernized 17th-century recipe for savory biscuits based on a manuscript in the Folger collection.
![Hartmann Schopper. Panoplia omnium… 1568. Hartmann Schopper. Panoplia omnium… 1568. Folger Shakespeare Library.](https://images.folger.edu/uploads/2018/10/DSC_0513_edited_smfull.jpg?fit=10%2C10)
In the spirit of Oktoberfest: Food, drink, and changing times in early modern Europe
As October comes to an end, we celebrate food, drink, and culture in the German cities of Shakespeare’s day, including the creation of beer and wine and the harvest festivals each fall, marked by our modern-day tradition of Oktoberfest.
![030391 Tower. Richard III, Act III, scene 5. Thomas Medland. ART File L847t2 no.3 (size XS). Before 1812. Folger Shakespeare Library.](https://images.folger.edu/uploads/2018/10/030391.jpg?fit=10%2C10)
A world of poison: The Overbury scandal
The poisoning in Shakespeare’s play King John, and in Romeo and Hamlet, too, had real-world parallels, too. Delve into the infamous story of Thomas Overbury’s death at the Tower of London in 1613.
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Toil and trouble: Recipes and the witches in 'Macbeth'
Shakespeare’s witches, like nearly all witches of Shakespeare’s time, have their roots in the kitchen more than in the study.
![Recipe for mirth from the cookbook of L. Cromwell Recipe for mirth from the cookbook of L. Cromwell](https://images.folger.edu/uploads/2017/12/122252-mirth-recipe.jpg?fit=10%2C10)
Mince pies and mirth: Transcribed 17th-century recipes
Mince pies and a honey-spiced drink called mirth are just two of hundreds of recipes found in a 17th-century handwritten recipe book once owned by Leticia Cromwell.
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Collecting the world in seventeenth-century London
Guest post by Surekha Davies From at least the sixteenth century, overseas artifacts found their way into European princely and scholarly collections. There they were catalogued, analyzed, and displayed alongside natural and artificial curiosities from classical cameos to blowfish. I am…
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News, News, News
How do you get your news today? TV? Radio? Printed newspapers? Online news sites? Social media? Today we seem to be inundated by the news 24/7 and it sometimes takes a conscious effort to step away from the barrage. News…
![Pumpkin Pie Pumpkin pie](https://images.folger.edu/uploads/2017/11/pumpkin-pie-hannah-woolley.jpg?fit=10%2C10)
A pumpkin pie recipe from 17th-century England
In this pumpkin pie recipe from the late 1600s, you peel and slice the pumpkin into thin wedges, dipping them in egg before frying them. Apples, raisins, currants, and sherry also get added to the pie.
![Thomas Fella Folger Shakespeare Library V.a.311](https://images.folger.edu/uploads/2017/11/023631-Thomas-Fella.jpg?fit=10%2C10)
Etiquette in early modern England (part 2)
Books on manners became so popular during the Elizabethan period that it was only a matter of time before someone satirized them.
![Royal, military, and court costumes of the time of James I Folger Shakespeare Library. ART Vol. c91, no. 8c](https://images.folger.edu/uploads/2017/11/000107-ArtVol-c91-no8c.jpg?fit=10%2C10)
Etiquette in early modern England (part 1)
“Manners maketh man” was the motto of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. Would your own table manners pass inspection?