Hungry shadows or nourishing meats? The functions and representations of food in the Stuart court masque

This paper examines the roles and representations of food and eating in the seventeenth century court masque. The court masque was a dramtic genre inextricably connected with the consumption of food and drink performed as part of a larger complex of aristocratic fastivities, which included elaborate banquets. Foodstuffs were even sometimes represented as characters on the masque stage: there are Minced Pie and Baby Cake in Ben Jonson's Christmas His Masque, dancing bottles in his Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue, and Plumporridge in Thomas Middleton's The Masque of Heroes.