SHAKESPEARE'S FOOD POESIES AND THE LETTERS "V," "W," AND "X"

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Shakespeare Descants
on letter "V," "W," and "X" Foods

Veal

Love's Labour's Lost, V, 2:
KATHARINE: Veal, quoth the Dutchman. Is not 'veal' a calf?

Venison

The Merry Wives of Windsor, I, 1:
PAGE: I am glad to see your worships well. I thank you for my venison, Master Shallow.
SHALLOW: Master Page, I am glad to see you: much good do it your good heart! I wished your venison better; it was ill killed. How doth good Mistress Page?--and I thank you always with my heart, la! with my heart.
PAGE: Wife, bid these gentlemen welcome. Come, we have a hot venison pasty to dinner: come, gentlemen, I hope we shall drink down all unkindness.

As You Like It, II, 1:
DUKE SENIOR: Come, shall we go and kill us venison? And yet it irks me the poor dappled fools, Being native burghers of this desert city, Should in their own confines with forked heads Have their round haunches gored.

Cymbeline, III, 3:
BELARIUS: My fault being nothing--as I have told you oft-- But that two villains, whose false oaths prevail'd Before my perfect honour, swore to Cymbeline I was confederate with the Romans: so Follow'd my banishment, and this twenty years This rock and these demesnes have been my world; Where I have lived at honest freedom, paid More pious debts to heaven than in all The fore-end of my time. But up to the mountains! This is not hunters' language: he that strikes The venison first shall be the lord o' the feast; To him the other two shall minister; And we will fear no poison, which attends In place of greater state. I'll meet you in the valleys....

Vetches

The Tempest, IV, 1:
IRIS: Ceres, most bounteous lady, thy rich leas Of wheat, rye, barley, vetches, oats and pease; Thy turfy mountains, where live nibbling sheep, And flat meads thatch'd with stover, them to keep; Thy banks with pioned and twilled brims, Which spongy April at thy hest betrims, To make cold nymphs chaste crowns; and thy broom -groves, Whose shadow the dismissed bachelor loves, Being lass-lorn: thy pole-clipt vineyard; And thy sea-marge, sterile and rocky-hard, Where thou thyself dost air;--the queen o' the sky, Whose watery arch and messenger am I, Bids thee leave these, and with her sovereign grace, Here on this grass-plot, in this very place, To come and sport: her peacocks fly amain: Approach, rich Ceres, her to entertain.

Vinegar

The Merchant of Venice, I, 1:
SALARINO: Not in love neither? Then let us say you are sad, Because you are not merry: and 'twere as easy For you to laugh and leap and say you are merry, Because you are not sad. Now, by two-headed Janus, Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time: Some that will evermore peep through their eyes And laugh like parrots at a bag-piper, And other of such vinegar aspect That they'll not show their teeth in way of smile, Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable.

Twelfth Night, III, 4:
SIR ANDREW : Here's the challenge, read it: warrant there's vinegar and pepper in't.

Walnut

The Taming of the Shrew, IV, 3:
PETRUCHIO: Why, this was moulded on a porringer; A velvet dish: fie, fie! 'tis lewd and filthy: Why, 'tis a cockle or a walnut-shell, A knack, a toy, a trick, a baby's cap: Away with it! come, let me have a bigger.

The Merry Wives of Windsor, IV, 2:
FORD : Help to search my house this one time. If I find not what I seek, show no colour for my extremity; let me for ever be your table-sport; let them say of me, 'As jealous as Ford, Chat searched a hollow walnut for his wife's leman.' Satisfy me once more; once more search with me.

Wheat

King Henry IV, part 2, V, 1:
DAVY: Marry, sir, thus; those precepts cannot be served: and, again, sir, shall we sow the headland with wheat?
SHALLOW With red wheat, Davy. But for William cook: are there no young pigeons?

A Midsummer Night's Dream, I, 1:
HELENA Call you me fair? that fair again unsay. Demetrius loves your fair: O happy fair! Your eyes are lode-stars; and your tongue's sweet air More tuneable than lark to shepherd's ear, When wheat is green, when hawthorn buds appear. Sickness is catching: O, were favour so, Yours would I catch, fair Hermia, ere I go; My ear should catch your voice, my eye your eye, My tongue should catch your tongue's sweet melody. Were the world mine, Demetrius being bated, The rest I'd give to be to you translated. O, teach me how you look, and with what art You sway the motion of Demetrius' heart.

The Merchant of Venice, I, 1:
BASSANIO: Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing, more than any man in all Venice. His reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff: you shall seek all day ere you find them, and when you have them, they are not worth the search.

Troilus and Cressida, I, 1:
PANDARUS: Well, I have told you enough of this: for my part, I'll not meddle nor make no further. He that will have a cake out of the wheat must needs tarry the grinding.

King Lear, III, 4:
EDGAR This is the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet: he begins at curfew, and walks till the first cock; he gives the web and the pin, squints the eye, and makes the hare-lip; mildews the white wheat, and hurts the poor creature of earth.

Antony and Cleopatra, II, 6:
POMPEY: You have made me offer Of Sicily, Sardinia; and I must Rid all the sea of pirates; then, to send Measures of wheat to Rome; this 'greed upon To part with unhack'd edges, and bear back Our targes undinted.

Wine, cited numerous times in the following plays:

King Henry VI, part 2, II, 3; IV, 6

King Henry VI, part 1, II, 3

King Richard III, I, 4; V, 3

King Henry IV, Part 2, IV, 3; V, 3

King Henry V, II, 2; III, 5

King Henry VIII I, 4

The Taming of the Shrew, III, 2

The Comedy of Errors V, 1

The Merchant of Venice, I, 1; I 2; III, 1

The Merry Wives of Windsor, I 1; II, 2; III, 2; V, 5

Much Ado About Nothing III, 5

As You Like It, III, 2; III, 5; Epilogue, 1

Twelfth Night, II, 3

Troilus and Cressida, V, 1

All's Well That Ends Well II, 3

Pericles Prince of Tyre, II, 3

The Tempest II, 1; II, 2; IV, 1; V, 1

Romeo and Juliet, I, 2

Julius Caesar, II, 2; IV, 3

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, V, 2

Othello, The Moor of Venice, II, 1; II, 3

Timon of Athens, I, 1; II, 2; III, 1; IV, 3

King Lear, III, 4

Macbeth, I, 7; II, 3; III, 4

Antony and Cleopatra, I, 2; II, 7; III, 11; III, 13; IV, 14

Coriolanus, I, 9; IV, 5; V, 1

Woodcock

King Henry VI, part 3, I, 4:
CLIFFORD: Ay, ay, so strives the woodcock with the gin.

The Taming of the Shrew, I, 2:
GRUMIO: O this woodcock, what an ass it is!

Much Ado About Nothing, V, 1:
CLAUDIO: I' faith, I thank him; he hath bid me to a calf's head and a capon; the which if I do not carve most curiously, say my knife's naught. Shall I not find a woodcock too?

Twelfth Night, II, 5:
FABIAN Now is the woodcock near the gin.

CLOWN: Fare thee well. Remain thou still in darkness: thou shalt hold the opinion of Pythagoras ere I will allow of thy wits, and fear to kill a woodcock, lest thou dispossess the soul of thy grandam. Fare thee well. (IV, 2)

All's Well That Ends Well, IV, 1:
SECOND LORD: Go, tell the Count Rousillon, and my brother, We have caught the woodcock, and will keep him muffled Till we do hear from them.

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, V, 2:
LAERTES Why, as a woodcock to mine own springe, Osric; I am justly kill'd with mine own treachery.

Wormwood

Love's Labour's Lost, V, 2:
ROSALINE : Oft have I heard of you, my Lord Biron, Before I saw you; and the world's large tongue Proclaims you for a man replete with mocks, Full of comparisons and wounding flouts, Which you on all estates will execute That lie within the mercy of your wit. To weed this wormwood from your fruitful brain, And therewithal to win me, if you please, Without the which I am not to be won, You shall this twelvemonth term from day to day Visit the speechless sick and still converse With groaning wretches; and your task shall be, With all the fierce endeavor of your wit To enforce the pained impotent to smile.

Romeo and Juliet, I, 3:
NURSE: Even or odd, of all days in the year, Come Lammas-eve at night shall she be fourteen. Susan and she--God rest all Christian souls!-- Were of an age: well, Susan is with God; She was too good for me: but, as I said, On Lammas-eve at night shall she be fourteen; That shall she, marry; I remember it well. 'Tis since the earthquake now eleven years; And she was wean'd,--I never shall forget it,-- Of all the days of the year, upon that day: For I had then laid wormwood to my dug, Sitting in the sun under the dove-house wall; My lord and you were then at Mantua:-- Nay, I do bear a brain:--but, as I said, When it did taste the wormwood on the nipple Of my dug and felt it bitter, pretty fool, To see it tetchy and fall out with the dug!

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, III, 2:
HAMLET [Aside] Wormwood, wormwood.

The Rape of Lucrece, stanza 128:
'Thy secret pleasure turns to open shame, Thy private feasting to a public fast, Thy smoothing titles to a ragged name, Thy sugar'd tongue to bitter wormwood taste: Thy violent vanities can never last. How comes it then, vile Opportunity, Being so bad, such numbers seek for thee?

Wort

Love's Labour's Lost, V, 2:
BIRON: Nay then, two treys, and if you grow so nice, Metheglin, wort, and malmsey: well run, dice! There's half-a-dozen sweets.

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Shakespeare Descants on letter "V," "W," and "X" Foods