From the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited. I'm Michael Whitmore, the

Folgers director. This podcast is called You Will High You Home to Dinner, and it diverts slightly from

our usual intense focus on Shakespeare to talk instead about the world Shakespeare inhabited,

or at least a small part of that world. The place we'll be talking about

is the kitchen. As you'll hear, kitchens, and what goes on in them, come up in Shakespeare's

place with surprising frequency, sometimes directly, but more often obliquely. And they are the sole

topic of a new book by Northwestern University English professor, Wendy Wall.

The book is called Recipes for Thought, Knowledge and Taste in the Early Modern English Kitchen,

and it explores not only cookbooks in their recipes, but also what those recipes tell us about

English culture in the time Shakespeare was writing.

Wendy is interviewed by Barbara Bogave.

Well, Wendy, before we get into the nitty-gritty of ye old English home economics,

just how much kitchen stuff like recipes and cooking and housework come up in Shakespeare.

I'm curious.

My mind goes immediately to potions, and I suppose

those come under the heading of cookery. But how common are references to cooking and women's

work in the plays? I would say that once you're thinking about that subject, you start to see

them peppered, so to speak, throughout Shakespeare's works, but they're

not overtly the subject of many scenes. But for instance, Macbeth, you have Lady Macbeth,

and she wants to plot to kill Duncan and the King. So what does she do? She makes a thing called

a posset, which is a drink, and she drugs it, and she gives it to the

guards. And so, you know, I was thinking, would Lady Macbeth, someone who's, you know, pretty

...