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Shakespeare Descants
on letter "C" Foods

Cabbage

The Merry Wives of Windsor, I, 1:
SLENDER: Pauca verba, sir John. Goot words.
FALSTAFF: Good worts! Good cabbage. Slender, I broke your head. What matter have you against me?

Cheese

Henry IV, part 1, III, 1:
HOTSPUR: O, he is as tedious As a tired horse, a railing wife; Worse than a smoky house: I had rather live With cheese and garlic in a windmill, far, Than feed on cates and have him talk to me In any summer-house in Christendom.

Henry IV, part 2, III, 2:
FALSTAFF (about Justice Shallow): I do remember him at Clement's Inn like a man made after supper of a cheese-paring: when a' was naked, he was, for all the world, like a forked radish, with a head fantastically carved upon it with a knife.

Henry V, II, 1:
NYM: For my part, I care not: I say little; but when time shall serve, there shall be smiles; but that shall be as it may. I dare not fight; but I will wink and hold out mine iron: it is a simple one; but what though? it will toast cheese, and it will endure cold as another man's sword will: and there's an end.

The Merry Wives of Windsor, I, 1:
BARDOLPH: You Banbury cheese!

SIR HUGH EVANS: Nay, it is petter yet. Give her this letter; for it is a 'oman that altogether's acquaintance with Mistress Anne Page: and the letter is, to desire and require her to solicit your master's desires to Mistress Anne Page. I pray you, be gone: I will make an end of my dinner; there's pippins and cheese to come. (I, 2)

NYM (to Page): My name is Corporal Nym; I speak and I avouch; 'tis true: my name is Nym and Falstaff loves your wife. Adieu. I love not the humour of bread and cheese, and there's the humour of it. Adieu. (II, 1)

FORD: Page is an ass, a secure ass: he will trust his wife; he will not be jealous. I will rather trust a Fleming with my butter, Parson Hugh the Welshman with my cheese, an Irishman with my aqua-vitae bottle, or a thief to walk my ambling gelding, than my wife with herself. (II, 2)

FALSTAFF: Heavens defend me from that Welsh fairy, lest he transform me to a piece of cheese! (V, 5)

FALSTAFF: Have I laid my brain in the sun and dried it, that it wants matter to prevent so gross o'erreaching as this? Am I ridden with a Welsh goat too? shall I have a coxcomb of frize? 'Tis time I were choked with a piece of toasted cheese. (V, 5)

Troilus and Cressida:
ACHILLES: Where, where? Art thou come? why, my cheese, my digestion, why hast thou not served thyself in to my table so many meals? Come, what's Agamemnon? (II, 3)

THERSITES: O' the t'other side, the policy of those crafty swearing rascals, that stale old mouse-eaten dry cheese, Nestor, and that same dog-fox, Ulysses, is not proved worthy a blackberry: they set me up, in policy, that mongrel cur, Ajax, against that dog of as bad a kind, Achilles: and now is the cur Ajax prouder than the cur Achilles, and will not arm to-day. (V, 4)

All's Well That Ends Well, I, 1:
PAROLLES: There's little can be said in 't; 'tis against the rule of nature. To speak on the part of virginity, is to accuse your mothers; which is most infallible disobedience. He that hangs himself is a virgin: virginity murders itself and should be buried in highways out of all sanctified limit, as a desperate offendress against nature. Virginity breeds mites, much like a cheese; consumes itself to the very paring, and so dies with feeding his own stomach. Besides, virginity is peevish, proud, idle, made of self-love, which is the most inhibited sin in the canon. Keep it not.

King Lear, IV, 6:
KING LEAR: Nature's above art in that respect. There's your press-money. That fellow handles his bow like a crow-keeper: draw me a clothier's yard. Look, look, a mouse! Peace, peace; this piece of toasted cheese will do 't. There's my gauntlet; I'll prove it on a giant. Bring up the brown bills. O, well flown, bird! i' the clout, i' the clout: hewgh! Give the word.

Corn (wheat)

As You Like It, V, 3:
SECOND PAGE (singing): It was a lover and his lass,
With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,
That o’er the green corn-field did pass,
In the spring time, the only pretty ring time,
When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding;
Sweet lovers love the spring.

Coriolanus, I, 1:
FIRST CITIZEN: First, you know Caius Marcius is chief enemy to the people.
ALL: We know’t, we know’t.
FIRST CITIZEN: Let us kill him, and we’ll have corn at our own price. Is’t a verdict?

Coriolanus, II, 3:
THIRD CITIZEN: We have power in ourselves to do it, but it is a power that we have no power to do; for if he show us his wounds, and tell us his deeds, we are to put our tongues into those wounds and speak for them; so, if he tell us his noble deeds, we must also tell him our noble acceptance of them. Ingratitude is monstrous, and for the multitude to be ingrateful were to make a monster of the multitude; of the which, we being members, should bring ourselves to be monstrous members.
FIRST CITIZEN: And to make us no better thought of, a little help will serve; for once we stood up about the corn, he himself stuck not to call us the many-headed multitude.

Henry IV, part 2, IV, 1:
MOWBRAY: Yea, but our valuation shall be such
That every slight and false-derived cause,
Yea, every idle, nice, and wanton reason
Shall to the king taste of this action;
That, were our royal faiths martyrs in love,
We shall be winnow’d with so rough a wind
That even our corn shall seem as light as chaff
And good from bad find no partition.

Henry VI, part 1, III, 2:
JOAN: These are the city gates, the gates of Roan,
Through which our policy must make a breach:
Take heed, be wary how you place your words;
Talk like the vulgar sort of market-men
That come to gather money for their corn.

Henry VI, part 2, I, 2:
DUCHESS: Why droops my lord, like over-ripen’d corn
Hanging the head at Ceres’ plenteous load?

Henry VI, part 2, III, 2:
WARWICK (about Gloucester): His well-proportion’d beard made rough and rugged,
Like to the summer’s corn by tempest lodg’d.
It cannot be but he was murder’d here;
The least of all these signs were probable.

Henry VI, part 3, V, 7:
KING EDWARD: Once more we sit in England’s royal throne,
Re-purchas’d with the blood of enemies.
What valiant foemen like to autumn’s corn,
Have we mow’d down, in tops of all their pride!

King Henry VIII, V, 5:
CRANMER (about Princess Elizabeth): Her foes shake like a field of beaten corn,
And hang their heads with sorrow;

King Henry VIII, V, 1:
CRANMER [Kneeling]: I humbly thank your highness;
And am right glad to catch this good occasion
Most throughly to be winnow’d, where my chaff
And corn shall fly asunder

King Lear, III, 6:
EDGAR:Let us deal justly.
Sleepest or wakest thou, jolly shepherd?
Thy sheep be in the corn;
And for one blast of thy minikin mouth,
Thy sheep shall take no harm.

King Lear, IV, 6:
CORDELIA: Alack! ’tis he: why, he was met even now
As mad as the vex’d sea; singing aloud;
Crown’d with rank fumiter and furrow weeds,
With burdocks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo-flowers,
Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow
In our sustaining corn. A century send forth;
Search every acre in the high-grown field,
And bring him to our eye.

Love's Labour's Lost, I, 1:
LONGAVILLE (about the King): He weeds the corn, and still lets grow the weeding.

Measure for Measure, IV, 1:
DUKE: Nor, gentle daughter, fear you not at all.
He is your husband on a pre-contract:
To bring you thus together, ’tis no sin,
Sith that the justice of your title to him
Doth flourish the deceit. Come, let us go:
Our corn’s to reap, for yet our tithe’s to sow.

Pericles, III, 3: CLEON: Fear not, my lord, but think
Your Grace, that fed my country with your corn
For which the people’s prayers still fall upon you
Must in your child be thought on.

Richard II, III, 2:
KING RICHARD: ...Aumerle, thou weep’st, my tender-hearted cousin!
We’ll make foul weather with despised tears;
Our sighs and they shall lodge the summer corn,
And make a dearth in this revolting land.

The Tempest, II, 1:
GONZALO: I’ the commonwealth I would by contraries
Execute all things; for no kind of traffic
Would I admit; no name of magistrate;
Letters should not be known; riches, poverty,
And use of service, none; contract, succession,
Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none;
No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil;
No occupation; all men idle, all;
And women too, but innocent and pure;
No sovereignty,--

Titus Andronicus, II, 3:
DEMETRIUS: Stay, madam; here is more belongs to her: First thrash the corn, then after burn the straw.

Titus Andronicus, V, 3:
MARCUS: You sad-fac’d men, people and sons of Rome,
By uproar sever’d, like a flight of fowl
Scatter’d by winds and high tempestuous gusts,
O! let me teach you how to knit again
This scatter’d corn into one mutual sheaf....