There also is a review by James Sharpe in the Times Literary  
Supplement (4 February 2005), p. 24.  By the way, the Clemis review  
appears on the ADHS website service called the Daily Register (which,  
to date, has received 361,919 "hits").

David Fahey

On Mar 30, 2007, at 10:54 AM, Ron Roizen wrote:

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> Subject: Clemis on Smyth, _A Pleasing Sinne_
>
> H-NET BOOK REVIEW
> Published by [log in to unmask] (February, 2007)
>
> Adam Smyth, ed. _A Pleasing Sinne: Drink and Conviviality in
> Seventeenth-Century England_. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2004. xxv + 214
> pp. Illustrations, index. $85.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-84384-009-1.
>
> Reviewed for H-Albion by David Clemis, Department of
> History and Classics, University of Alberta.
>
> Drink, Identity, and Ambivalence
>
> This engaging collection of essays represents an important new  
> strand in
> the study of early modern English drug and alcohol history. The  
> largely
> literary studies gathered together in _A Pleasing Sinne_ focus neither
> upon state regulation nor the evidence of the social or public order
> effects of the production and distribution of alcohol. Instead, they
> take a more cultural turn in their efforts to elucidate key values,
> attitudes, and beliefs that are apparent in various seventeenth- 
> century
> English texts concerned, in one way or another, with alcohol
> consumption.
>
> As Adam Smyth observes in his introduction to this collection, "the
> great wealth of texts that reflected and shaped seventeenth-century
> culture contested the moral, social and political significances of
> alcohol" (p. xiv). A key theme that runs through most of these  
> essays is
> what Smyth calls "a larger cultural ambivalence about alcohol that is,
> to this day, unresolved" (p. xiv). For seventeenth-century writers,  
> this
> ambivalence was fostered by broadly inconsistent conceptions of
> drinking. On one hand, drink promoted conviviality, bonds of  
> friendship,
> loyalty, and artistic creativity (so it was said of wine), and it was
> strengthening and refreshing (especially English ale). But the  
> evils of
> drink were also seen in its promotion of sin and arrogance, as well as
> the destruction of reason and dulling of the wits (so said  
> royalists of
> ale-swilling commonwealthmen). Drinking was also thought to undermine
> the natural social order and, for some, the drinking of claret was
> simply unpatriotic. For the contributors to this volume, this
> ambivalence, or at least the strong contests between understandings of
> the nature and effects of alcohol (or different types of alcohol),  
> often
> turns on the place of drinking in the assertion of one or more  
> forms of
> identity. Thus, we find essays about drinking and political  
> association,
> gender, national stereotyping, and social rank.
>
> Throughout the mid-seventeenth century, writers of popular broadsides
> and aristocratic poets made strong connections between particular
> drinking practices and political affiliation. As Angela McShane Jones
> observes in her impressive essay: "From 1649 ... broadside balladeers
> took a political stance on drink and drinking. They politicised drink
> and then drunkenness, personified radical political leaders in  
> terms of
> drink and drunkenness and, in so doing, depicted the social and  
> cultural
> landscape in which 'political drinking' took place" (p. 72). In her
> study of the writing of royalist exiles, Marika Keblusek shows the
> strength of the association between a particular drinking culture  
> and a
> political identity. Drinking healths or toasting with their trademark
> cups of wine can be seen as epitomizing royalist exiles making  
> defiant,
> if symbolic, resistance to the much mocked parliamentarians
> surreptitiously sipping their ale. But Keblusek suggests that perhaps
> the greater significance of royalist drinking was as a means of  
> finding
> comfort and solidarity in difficult times. McShane Jones shows how,  
> from
> the 1670s, broadsides politicized drunkenness with claims of excessive
> Tory binging and hypocritical, secretive Whig tippling. This would  
> only
> abate when the great seventeenth-century political crises passed.
> McShane Jones describes a new image that appears after 1688: that of
> William III drinking beer with common folk. As he tried to rule with
> Whig and Tory, so his willingness to mix drinks diminished the
> significance of wine and beer as political markers.
>
> Charles Luddington's article suggests that the political  
> significance of
> drink remained after 1689, but it assumed different forms. He charts
> how, between 1680 and 1703, the strategically motivated trade policies
> of the parties resulted in the association of French claret with the
> Tories and Portuguese port with the Whigs. Luddington is quick to  
> point
> out that this division was purely one of political symbolism--it  
> was no
> reflection of the fine palates of Earl of Shaftesbury and his  
> followers.
> The Whig policy might have driven up the price of claret for political
> reasons, but it did not stop rich Whigs from stocking their personal
> cellars with great quantities of superior French wine. Indeed,
> Luddington argues, perhaps the more important signification made by  
> the
> claret/port divide was between the wealthy who could afford costly
> French claret and the middling sorts forced to resort to port on  
> account
> of Whig trade policies. Other contributors to this volume consider the
> place of drink in the inscription of social identity. In their  
> essay on
> medical understandings of wine and beer, Louise Hill Curth and Tanya
> Cassidy note one seventeenth-century text in which various social  
> groups
> are assigned their appropriate form of alcohol: "wine is for wits and
> scholars (improving mental health), beer is for the urban bourgeois
> (imparting a diet of strength and solidity), and ale is for the
> countryman (as an early morning pick-me-up)" (p. 144). In "Drinking
> Cider in Paradise: Science, Improvement, and the Politics of Fruit,"
> Vittoria Di Palma observes that, like ale, the marketing of cider
> suffered from the product's "local and rural connotations" which  
> "needed
> to be combated before the drink could become prized by the nation's
> gentry" (p. 175).
>
> Cedric Brown's comparative study of two seventeenth-century poets,
> Robert Herrick and Leonard Wheatcroft, is a fascinating account of the
> possibilities for the assertion of social identity "through the  
> meanings
> of drink in the cultural practices of the period" (p. 17). Herrick, a
> royalist "gentleman priest" and notable author of _Hesperides_ (1648),
> and Wheatcroft, "a yeoman or artisan church clerk," both wrote poems
> celebrating the social bonding engendered by alcohol on festive
> occasions. Nonetheless, Brown observes, their respective social
> identities inevitably produced different perspectives. Herrick's  
> view is
> thick "with affections of superiority.... Only wine supports the
> Muse.... Both poetry and wine are signs of an exclusive society,  
> and the
> Sons of Beer can have no pretensions to refined understanding" (p. 7).
> For Wheatcroft, Brown suggests, "it was often the companionship of ale
> or beer that led to the occasions, even sometimes gave inspiration,  
> for
> verse" (p. 18). Where Wheatcroft remarks upon the social  
> inclusivity of
> festive drinking, Herrick emphasizes its reinforcement of social  
> order.
>
> Stella Achilleos considers how the _Anacreontea_--a collection of  
> short
> Greek lyrics devoted to love and wine--was reappropriated by young  
> elite
> men of the early seventeenth century and informed the literary
> expressions of their exclusive and sophisticated conviviality. The
> sociability of the upper ranks is also the subject of Michelle
> O'Callahan's essay on London tavern culture. A picture, familiar to
> scholars of the early modern tavern on the continent, emerges here of
> flourishing early seventeenth-century London tavern societies that  
> were
> sites of conviviality, wit, and common interest.[1]
>
> While male sociability features prominently in this volume, the themes
> of drinking, identity, and ambivalence are also richly explored in
> several contributions concerned with women and drink. Karen Britland
> incisively examines gender roles and identities in early
> seventeenth-century dramas through the lenses of drink and  
> hospitality.
> In "empirical," property-oriented, and virile Rome, male drinking
> supported conviviality and fellowship that affirmed men's identity and
> authority. In decadent, feminized Egypt under Cleopatra, wine led to
> delusion and decadence. In John Marston's _The Wonder of Women, or the
> Tragedie of Sophonisba_ (1606), Britland finds that there is "an
> equation to be made between strong wine's potency and a woman such as
> Sophonisba who has the capacity, even against her own will, to  
> undermine
> a man's reason" (p. 123). In these early seventeenth-century dramas,
> Britland sees that when dispensed and partaken by men, drink leads to
> conviviality and solidarity. Yet when women are associated with drink,
> masculinity and the social order are undermined.
>
> Susan Owen's examination of the libertine figure in two Restoration
> comedies uncovers different ambiguities relating to drink and gender.
> Owen notes that women, like men, drink in William Wycherley's _The
> Country Wife_ (1675), and are not taken advantage of as a  
> consequence of
> their drinking. Moreover, Owen holds that "drink is the agent of  
> women's
> emancipation and self-expression" (p. 139). It is through drink that
> they are able to escape the power of men and, indeed, turn the  
> tables on
> men like the character Mr. Horner, who become their creatures. Owen
> acknowledges the "ironic social reflexiveness of the play," suggesting
> the importance of the power of drink to create the remarkable social
> relations found within the world of the play. It is interesting  
> that, as
> Britland sees pre-Civil War dramas that present the mysterious,
> analogous powers of women and drink that threaten the masculine power
> and the social order, so Owen finds in Restoration comedies the  
> amazing
> transformative power of alcohol that helps create a comic world which
> mocks society's gender relations.
>
> Several essays explore the relationship between drink, or its
> production, and national identity. Vittoria Di Palma found that
> seventeenth-century writers extolling the virtues of cider played the
> familiar nationalistic card. The cultivation of apples and pears was
> seen as having benefits for the poor, was good for the general  
> economy,
> and promoted the general virtues of Englishness. Charlotte McBride  
> notes
> that nationalistic perspectives related to alcohol engage not only
> patriotic sentiments and economic interests in the production of  
> ale or
> beer, but also the notion of a people's inclination to drunkenness.
> McBride joins others in noting that, from the early seventeenth  
> century,
> excessive English drinking was a great concern amongst puritans.[2]
>
> While most of these essays look at drink in relation to one or more
> types of group identity, some consider it broader social contexts.  
> Curth
> and Cassidy note that the wide availability of alcohol and the great
> number of texts endorsing its medicinal properties facilitated a
> "broadening access to the science of healthcare" thus enabling "more
> people than ever before to manage their liquid diet in an empoweringly
> responsible way" (p. 159). Curth and Cassidy make an important
> observation about the anachronistic imposition of recent medical and
> psychological categories upon early modern texts. They observe that
> "terms such as 'medicine', 'intoxicant' and 'social lubricant' lose
> something of their clarity in the context of a holistic 'humours'- 
> based
> medical philosophy. Given that the mind and the body act on one  
> another,
> the distinctions between 'life preserving', 'life affirming' and
> 'cheering' are hard to define" (p. 159).
>
> Adam Smyth concludes the volume with a fascinating essay on  
> conceptions
> of drunkenness in cheap, printed, popular works. The tensions Smyth
> identifies in these works reflects the broader ambivalence about
> drinking that appears to be evident across English culture in the
> seventeenth century. Of the texts condemning drink, he notes that
> "running through all of these discussions of the destructive potential
> of drink is, paradoxically, an emphasis on the seductive qualities of
> alcohol" (p. 201). Moralists, says Smyth, face the delicate task of
> describing the tempting appeal of drink without appearing to celebrate
> it.
>
> Smyth finds another, different kind of tension in a text that
> unashamedly defends the practice of hearty drinking. In response to
> moralists' charges that drinking dulls the mind and undermines social
> hierarchy, John Cotsgrave's _Wits Interpreter_ (1655, 1662, 1671),  
> tries
> to show how the properly conducted drinking rituals of elite societies
> emphasize the use of wit and reason, and reinforce social hierarchy.
> Yet, as Smyth argues, in defending drinking to the public by reference
> to exclusive drinking rituals, _Wits Interpreter_ encourages the
> adoption of those rituals by the public. Thus, the text "is  
> celebrating
> a culture of restricted access and hierarchies by flinging open the
> doors to preserve it" (p. 209). The ambiguities or ambivalence that  
> the
> contributors to _A Pleasing Sinne_ find about drinking in
> seventeenth-century texts is complicated by a further consideration.
> These can be challenging texts for cultural historians to  
> interpret. As
> O'Callaghan notes wit, humor, and merry-making were essential  
> aspects of
> drinking culture: taverns "were as much places for convivial pleasures
> as rational deliberation" (p. 51). Grasping the particular wit, irony,
> and satire in these sorts of works can be a challenge for historians
> wishing to make inferences about widely held attitudes and beliefs.
> Reflecting on the libertine in Restoration comedy, Susan Owen
> acknowledges the debate amongst critics as to "how 'sexy' sex  
> comedy is:
> how far does it promote or endorse the rakes' libertine values and how
> far does it anatomise them or hold them up to critical scrutiny or
> satire" (p. 127). The same might be said of drinking and  
> drunkenness in
> the seventeenth-century literature. Citing Charles Cotton's _The
> Compleat Gamester_ (1674), Smyth notes the disingenuous and "comically
> unconvincing" efforts of Cotton to deny that he is a gamester.
> O'Callaghan notes that the wit of tavern societies employed "in-jokes,
> formulae, codes, and rituals" which were only recognized by members  
> (p.
> 50). This makes it difficult to know how closely we may infer social
> conventions as they were practiced from a text like Richard  
> Brathwaite's
> _Law of Drinking_ (1617). This is, after all, a text rich in satire  
> and
> mockery as is evident in its account of the etiquette of drunken
> vomiting with its distinct requirements when one "casts up" in the
> presence of only men and or mixed company.[3]
>
> Perhaps as more studies of the place of alcohol in English literature
> and culture are produced, we will develop a better sense of the  
> tone and
> temper of these kinds of works. The essays in _Pleasing Sinne_, of
> necessity, analyze a relatively small number of texts. This, of  
> course,
> inevitably imposes limits on the wider conclusions that can be drawn
> about drinking in early modern English society. Nonetheless, this  
> volume
> raises important, new questions and constructs some key themes that
> point the way for future research. Moreover, these essays make  
> clear the
> particular qualities of drug and alcohol history that make it so
> fruitful for those interested in early modern societies and cultures.
>
> Notes
>
> [1]. Beat Kumin and B. Ann Tlusty, eds., _The World of the Tavern_
> (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002); and Ann Tlusty, _Bacchus and the Civic
> Order: The Culture of Drink in Early Modern Germany_ (Charlottesville:
> University of Virginia Press, 2001). See also Peter Clark, _The  
> English
> Alehouse: A Social History, 1200-1830_ (London: Longman, 1983).
>
> [2]. The work of Judith Bennett and Peter Clark on the social  
> functions
> and transformation of drinking, as well as the authorities anxieties
> about ale houses are endorsed here. See: Clark, _The English  
> Alehouse_;
> and Judith M. Bennett, _Ale, Beer and Brewsters in England: Women's  
> Work
> in a Changing World, 1300-1600_ (New York: Oxford University Press,
> 1996).
>
> [3]. Blasius Multibibus [Richard Brathwaite], _A Solemne joviall
> disputation, theoreticke and practicke; briefely shadowing the Law of
> Drinking..._ (London, 1617), 40-41.
>
>
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