Literary Slumps and Slurps
If England had reached the southern New World before Spain, Portia’s Merchant suitors might have wisely chosen against the casket with cacao in it. Olivia’s uncle, Sir Toby Belch would re-tune the suggestion that virtue meant no more cakes and chocolate (Twelfth Night, 2.3). The gentlemen dining with Mr. Page would have “drunk down all unkindness” with hot chocolate after sharing hot venison pasty (Merry Wives, 1.1). And Falstaff's page in Henry V might give all of his fame f
Women's Work II
Broadside against coffee, one of many from the 1660s and 70s. Houghton Library, Harvard. The 1660s were a busy decade for writing about chocolate in England and in English. No fewer than 10 broadsides, commentaries, and treatises were published. If people worried about coffee and its desiccating effects (see above), they looked to chocolate as an energizer. Women weighed in on both sides. After Hannah Woolley kicked off the trend of adding chocolate to recipe books, many more