Hunger, Appetite and the Politics of the Renaissance Stage

Hunger and appetite permeate Renaissance theatre, with servants, soldiers, courtiers and misers all defined with striking regularity through their relation to food. Demonstrating the profound ongoing relevance of Marxist literary theory, Hunger, Appetite and the Politics of the Renaissance Stage highlights the decisive role of these drives in the complex politics of early modern drama. Plenty and excess were thematically inseparable from scarcity and want for contemporary audiences, such that hunger and appetite together acquired a unique significance as both subject and medium of political debate. Focusing critical attention on the relationship between cultural texts and the material base of society, Matthew Williamson reveals the close connections between how these drives were represented and the underlying socioeconomic changes of the period. At the same time, he shows how hunger and appetite provided the theatres with a means of conceptualising these changes and interrogating the forces that motivated them.

• Foregrounds the drives of hunger and appetite, revealing how the representation of food is bound up with the forces of polarisation and expansion shaping early modern society
• Considers canonical figures such as Shakespeare and Jonson alongside lesser-known writers such as John Fletcher and Philip Massinger, offering a more nuanced understanding of the role of food in early modern theatre
• Emphasises the early modern playhouse as a space devoted to the theatrical representation and physical sale of food, shedding new light on processes of performativity and identification