“Minced in a Charger for a Gallimaufrey”: Reconciling the Local and the Global in Shakespeare’s “Falstaff” Plays

This article uses Shakespeare’s Falstaff as a case study to consider the implications of early modern dietary theories and global trade on developing ideas of national identity. It proposes that Falstaff’s associative resonance with international culinary trade networks offers fresh insight into how Shakespeare navigated the complexity of local and global intersections. Early moderns constructed and understood their identities – and those of “others” – through their dietary practices, and the publication of cookbooks was intimately connected to larger processes of gradual nationalization. Yet despite the interest shown by Shakespeare scholarship in food history and multiculturality, there is no sustained study of the ways in which Falstaff’s diet and his implication within the domestic sphere complicate the state-sponsored centripetal ideology cookery books and dietary literature implied. This article fills this critical lacuna, demonstrating how Falstaff both makes visible and seeks to alleviate the tensions inherent in transcultural culinary encounters.