Early modern life
The Four Humors: Eating in the Renaissance
John Augustus Atkinson. The Taming of the Shrew. Watercolor drawing, late 18th or early 19th century. Folger Shakespeare Library. In The Taming of the Shrew, Petruchio attempts to squelch Katherine’s hot temper by denying her meat, snatching away a roast…
What to eat after a long morning's work in the Star Chamber
Well, if it’s fish Friday, the menu consisted of… fish! Fish, glorious fish. Thirty or more courses of fish, including oysters, ling, green fish, salt white herring, salt salmon, salmon, great pike, smaller pike, crayfish, roach, great carp, smaller carp, roasting…
Filing, seventeenth-century style
When we think of filing today, we think of digital files and folders, and manilla folders, hanging files, and filing cabinets. But what did filing look like in early modern England? How did people deal with all their receipts and…
Women marking the text
“I beegan, to ourloke this Booke . . . .” These words are written by Lady Anne Clifford on the title page of her copy of John Selden’s Titles of Honor (1631), which is featured in the first case of…