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| Batata Hispanorum. John Gerarde's Herbal (1597) |
- Let the Sky Rain Potatoes;
- What Color Were Shakespeare’s Potatoes?
When I posted my piece “Let the sky rain potatoes!” on Falstaff’s reference to the New World vegetable in The Merry Wives of Windsor I was reminded by one of my readers that the Sweet Potato proper was not orange in color. While she only felt I had left the impression, however much I had not said as much, her comment sent me looking for early information on the tuber.
What did witnesses say about the potato when it was first
discovered in South and Central America?
There turned out to be a small but descriptive literature on the plant
during the waning years of the 16th century. Some was wrong, some was inexact and some was
highly informative.
By the year 1599-1600, when Shakespeare’s play would seem to
have been written, the potato was available in London. It was considered a delectable treat and an
aphrodisiac. But the tuber referred to
by the name was not the potato-proper as we know it now.
The White Potato had indeed been introduced a mere 20
years after the Sweet Potato and was available at least throughout Northern
Europe. But persistent attempts to
introduce it into areas with overburdened soil, in England and Ireland, would
take more than 100 years still to bear fruit.
The flavor is not a pleasant one.
The means of cooking were unfamiliar as were recipes that might mitigate
the natural bitterness. These factors together
with the fact of the close similarity of the above-ground flower to the
fearful, poisonous Nightshade (to which the White Potato is, indeed, related), assured
the tuber would be given a wide berth.
The literature regarding South American flora was pretty
much entirely in Latin and Spanish. The authors
generally gathered their information by observing specimens transplanted in
Spain. Of course, preparation and eating
could be observed first hand.
To add to the difficulties of searching out 16th
century information, even those sources who saw the flora first hand, in Peru,[1]
and the surrounding areas, such as the Jesuit Joseph de Acosta, received much
of their information from the accounts of others. There was no standardized science of
description. Acosta was thorough when he
gave his list of the types of potato[2]
but had no idea what characteristics properly identified plants as belonging to
the family. Some of the tubers he
describes are not potatoes. It takes an
extra round of research to verify that Falstaff’s (Sweet) Potato was indeed the
camote.
Two earlier accounts of the
potato, by authors who had gleaned their knowledge in Europe, never having
traveled to the New World, are actually more precise and to our point. Chapter XVIII, De Batatas, of the
great botanist Charles de l'Écluse’s Rariorum aliquot stirpium per Hispanias
obseruatarum… (1576) informs the reader that all varieties of the potato
root were white. The skins of the roots were various colors,
generally shades of red and purple, white and off-white.[3]
L’Ecluse may also have been the first to record that the
potato was customarily baked in coals, cut into slices and dipped in Falstaff’s
favorite wine by way of relish, sack![4] This also clarifies the only other reference
to potatoes in Shakespeare.
Thersites. How the devil Luxury, with his fat rump and
potato-finger, tickles these together! Fry, lechery, fry!
In Troilus and Cressida [or, more precisely, in Ulysses and Agamemnon (1584)[5]]
Thersites refers to a “potato-finger”.
Also in the London of 1584, it would seem, potatoes were customarily cut
into strips popularly called potato-fingers.
In his Coronica y historia general del hombre (1598),
Doctor Ivan Sanchez Valdez de la Plata described the external color of the potato
as “tawny”.[6] Apparently never having seen a potato, however,
or any of the exotic plants discovered in the New World, it is difficult to be
sure it is not just another of the many errors in his book.
The entry on Batatas in the Herbario Nuovo
(1585), an Italian Herbal by Castore Durante, on the other hand, is
delightfully precise. The inside of a
potato is white it bluntly declares.
Happily, he also describes how the root is eaten: cooked in the midst of
hot coals, sliced in long thin pieces and dipped in wine and sugar.[7] Falstaff, of course, prefers his sack with
sugar.
The famous English herbalist, John Gerarde has a good deal
to say about the potato. His information,
however, is tangential to our subject and requires a short essay of its own.
[1] The
Natural & Moral History of the Indies, By Father Joseph De Acosta.
Reprinted From The English Translated Edition Of Edward Grimston, 1604. Haklyut
Society, 1880. This edition includes a
brief biography of Acosta. He lived in
South America and Mexico from 1571-1587.
[2] Acosta, Joseph. Historia natural y moral de las Indias
(1598). 242. “Las que agora me ocurren,
vltra delas Papas áfon lo principal, fon ocas, y yanaocas, y camotes, y
vatatas, y xiquimas, y yuca, y cochuchu, y cavi, y totora, y mani, y otros cuen
generos que no me acuerdo.”
[3] Clusius Atrebatensis, Carolus [Charles de
l'Écluse]. Rariorum aliquot
stirpium per Hispanias obseruatarum ... (1576). 297. “colore externo inter
sé differentia,… aut cortex externus rubescit siue purpurascit… aut pallet, aut
candidùs est: omnes verò radices, intus albæ.”
[4] Clusius, 299. “praefertim si cineribus
cocta & exteriore pelle repurgata & in talleolas sécta ex pauxillo
vino, stillaticique, rosàrum liquoris & sácchari momento edatur.”
[6] Sanchez Valdez, Ivan. Coronica y historia general del hombre :
en que se trata del hombre en comun, de la diuision del hombre en cuerpo y
alma, de las figuras monstruosas de los hombres, de las inuenciones dellos, y
de concordia entre Dios y el hombre. (1598). 128. “la corteza de encima,
que es aspera, y de color leonada”.
[7] Durante, Castore. Herbario Nuovo (1585). 66. “Mangiasi questa radice tenera cruda, cotta sotto
la cenere monda, & tagliata in pezzetti con vino, acqua rosa, &
zuccaro, quero con olio aceto, & sale.”
Durante himself prefers to eat it dipped in vinegar and salt.
Also at Virtual Grub Street:
- The Fascinating Itinerary of the Gelosi Troupe, 1576. June 10, 2019. “The Spanish soldiers had not been paid and unpaid soldiers tend to rob and loot. The citizens were prepared to give them a fight. Violent flare ups were occurring everywhere.”
- A Thousand Years of English Terms. June 2, 2019. ‘One person did not say to another, “Meet you at three o’clock”. There was no clock to be o’. But the church bell rang the hour of Nones and you arranged to meet “upon the Nones bell”.’
- A Most Curious Account of the Funeral of Queen Elizabeth I: April 28, 1603. April 28, 2019. “Once it was clear that James I would face no serious challenges, Cecil and the others could begin to give attention to the matter of the Queen’s funeral.”
- The Battle Over Shakespeare's Early and Late Plays. September 24, 2018. “The answers to the post-Oxford dilemma, of course, are three.”
- Stratford Shakespeare’s Undersized Grave. July 22, 2018. “Mr. Coll’s considers this evidence to support an old rumor that Shakspere’s head had been stolen in 1794. But I submit that he is merely making his observation based upon a coincidence.”
- Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
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