Shakespeare’s Makers

A photograph of eight rectangular biscuits (cookies) arranged in two rows on a square white plate. The plate is framed on all sides by a trailing vine pattern in green with pops of red. The biscuits are mostly in shades of ivory, cream, yellow, and grey, with a burst of vivid red and blue in one corner of the arrangement. Moving across the top row of biscuits from left to right, the designs include: neat lines of handwritten names in an early modern parish register; a section of a hand-drawn map from 1561 featuring St Paul’s Cathedral, with street names like ‘Carter Lane’ visible in a tiny spiky font; an extract of text from a funerary monument printed in an early modern book, ending ‘So transitory is our glory’; a section of embroidery from a funeral pall featuring metallic silver armour, crossed gold keys, and two hands holding up a crown. The biscuit designs on the bottom row include: horses prancing past shopfronts on Cheapside in the mid-sixteenth century; a receipt written in early modern secretary hand, which is difficult to read; a portrait of a stern-looking women dressed in a ruff, pearls, and sober dark clothing; swirling calligraphy and dense secretary hand featuring on a will dating from 1638.

Biscuit (cookie) flavour: Almond and rose. Inspired by the flavour of marchpane, a historical form of marzipan.

Decoration: Royal icing base. Designs painted by hand using food colouring gels, edible lustres, and vodka, with relief details piped in royal icing.

Context: Created as a snapshot of my new research project, ‘Shakespeare’s Makers’, which explores the network of makers and traders that supplied costumes, props, and furniture to Elizabethan and Jacobean playing companies. Together with historian Dr Anouska Lester, I’m looking at 400-year-old documents like parish registers, livery company records, wills, and legal cases to show how integral tailors, clothworkers, merchants, and craftswomen were to the theatre industry of Shakespeare’s time. 

This research is supported by the British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grants Programme.

The items depicted in this biscuit set include:

Top row (L-R)

  • The parish register for Saint Mary Magdalen, Milk Street (1559-1653)
  • The Agas Map of London (1561)
  • John Stow’s Survey of London (1633)
  • The Fishmongers’ Funeral Pall (c.1512-38), a richly embroidered textile piece used to adorn the coffins of members of the Fishmongers’ livery company. A close analysis of the pall is available here.

Bottom row (L-R)

  • An anonymous 1809 engraving depicting Cheapside c.1547
  • A receipt documenting the sale of clothing to Elizabethan theatre impresario Philip Henslowe
  • A portrait of Dame Barbara Stone (c.1605), wife of Sir William Stone, Clothworker
  • The will of Jane Heath (1638), wife of Richard Heath, Mercer