By Michael Cheang
One of William Shakespeare’s lines in Henry V goes, “I would give all my fame for a pot of ale”.
While we certainly don’t think that Shakespeare meant that he would personally give up his own fame for some booze, it certainly does indicate that he was familiar with alcoholic drinks. Perhaps a little too well too, judging from this line in Macbeth, which goes “Drink sir, is a great provoker of three things … nose painting, sleep and urine. Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes; it provokes the desire but takes away the performance”.
Er, ok, whatever you say, sir.
Anyway, almost every single one of Shakespeare’s plays contained a reference to alcohol, and some of his most famous characters – Falstaff from Henry V, Mercutio from Romeo And Juliet – are also infamously known to be quite fond of a tipple or five.
So, we know that Shakespeare is pretty familiar with his drinks. The question now is, what sort of drink would he have drunk back then?
Well, in the Elizabethan era, ale would have been the dominant style of beer – not the pale lagers of today, so it stands to reason that Shakespeare would probably have partook a pint of ale or two back in the day. In fact, almost everyone at the time drank ale or beer – the water was simply too contaminated to drink.
According to Shakespeare Online, Shakespeare’s father was an official ale taster in Stratford, a job that entailed, well, tasting ale and monitoring the ingredients used by professional brewers, and also making sure that the ale was sold at the correct, regulated prices.
Besides ale, chances are the honey-fermented wine called mead was quite widely brewed at the time as well. Shakespeare mentions a style of mead called metheglin (made from water, yeast, honey, and various herbs) in a couple of his plays, including Love’s Labour’s Lost and The Merry Wives of Windsor.
Shakespeare also mentions wine a lot in his plays, especially those imported from other countries like France and Spain. Sack (white fortified wine), in particular, is mentioned in Henry V, where Falstaff, a great devourer of sherris sack (now known as sherry), dedicates an entire monologue to wax lyrical over the benefits of the beverage, which he concludes with “If I had a thousand sons, the first humane principle I would teach them should be, to forswear thin potations and to addict themselves to sack”.
Malmsey (a sweet fortified wine from Madeira) plays an infamous role in Richard III – Richard’s brother, the Duke of Clarence, is drowned in a cask of malmsey by assassins. Another sweet fortified wine called “canary” from the Canary Islands, is mentioned in Twelfth Night and The Merry Wives of Windsor.
While ale, beer, sherry, wine and mead still exist today, they would be vastly different from what their Elizabethan ancestors were. But there is little doubt that if Shakespeare were alive today, he would probably have approved of the vast improvement in terms of quality and flavour in today’s beverages, though he probably would also approve of the various “drink responsibly” campaigns out there as well. After all, he was also the one who wrote, in Othello: “Good wine is a good familiar creature, if it be well used”.
http://www.star2.com/food/food-news/2016/04/23/what-did-shakespeare-drink/
