Topic:Fast Food-Tudor Style
A rich variety of seafood was on offer to peckish audience members, including crabs, cockles, mussels, periwinkles and whelks.
Sturgeon steaks were also popular with 16th century audiences enjoying plays by Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe.
Fruit and nuts were devoured in large quantities, with walnuts, hazelnuts, raisins, plums and cherries for sale.
The findings come from an archaeological survey of the site of the Rose Theatre on what is now the South Bank in London.
Archaeologists Julian Bowsher and Pat Miller wrote up a report published by the Museum of London Archaeology.
By analysing the distribution of food remains over the site, they found that different parts of the audience indulged in different snacks.
The rich, seated in the galleries, could afford imported treats like dried figs and peaches.
In a design that would please today’s eco-conscious architects, hazelnut shells were ‘recycled’ as an absorbent flooring for the yard, where the poorer viewers watched.
The Rose Theatre had a relatively short life. It was built in 1587 by Philip Henslowe, who also owned a brothel, and John Cholmley, a grocer.
Between June 1592 and May 1594 it was shut due to an outbreak of bubonic plague. Then followed a golden period, when plays including Dr Faustus and Tamburlaine by Christopher Marlowe were performed. It shut in 1605 when its lease expired.
Original Article:
Telegraph.co.uk
January 2010
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