Food and foreignness in Sir Thomas More

Abstract

Food and Foreignness in Sir Thomas More 1 Consumption, as physically or morally reprehensible or strange, is a distinct indication of alterity in Sir Thomas More.The recurrent association, in the early modern period, of foreign culinary appetites with physical and sexual degeneracy gives rise to the perception that foreign consumption is harmful to English natives.Contemporary accounts of the Irish diet in colonial prose writings that describe unusual and degenerate consumption contextualize the complaints Londoners made against European foreigners in Sir Thomas More, thus drawing distinctions between civilized English men and their foreign inferiors.Important research undertaken on humoral theory, diet, and the body in early modern culture 2 -specifically the notions that there were four human complexions (sanguine, choleric, melancholic, and phlegmatic) based on the four humours (blood, choler, melancholy and phlegm) and that diet was the most effective way of altering an unfavourable complexion -indicates that food was more than simply a means to assuage hunger.In Sir Thomas More, however, food is primarily significant in its effect upon the economy, the strangeness of its cultivation by foreigners, and its use as a means of undermining national and specifically masculine pride.Sir Thomas More is an inherently interesting text since part of it probably represents the only creative writing by Shakespeare that has survived in his own handwriting.The play exists solely as British Library manuscript Harley 7368, in several hands, and comprising 22 sheets.Most of the writing is in the hand of Anthony Munday, although 'additional' sheets in different hands have been inserted.The front of the first sheet contains a provisional licence from Edmund Tilney, the state censor, requiring alterations before public performance.The 'additions' might represent changes to the play made after Tilney's objections were known, but this explanation is difficult to sustain because in some ways the changes (such as the rewriting of the scene in which More quells the rioters) make matters worse.This problem is treated in the Revels edition of the play by its editors Vittorio Gabrieli and Giorgio Early Theatre 7.2 (2004)

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