Dangerous women

In Thomas Middleton’s play Women Beware Women (c.1623-24), which I wrote about here, women are presented as their own worst enemies. At the centre of the play is the character Livia, who engineers the downfall of two young women, Bianca and Isabella, persuading them to embark on dangerous sexual relationships (Bianca’s adulterous and precipitated by a rape, Isabella’s incestuous) which bring about their downfalls and ultimate demise. In her dying breath Bianca, realising what Livia has done, laments ‘the deadly snares / That women set for women’. Continue reading “Dangerous women”

Eating Out

I love eating out almost as much as I love cooking.  And living in London as I do, I’m lucky enough to have an amazing array of restaurants within easy reach offering me all types of food. Continue reading “Eating Out”

The Fig in Literature

Driven as I was to cook with figs when they arrived in my organic box a few weeks ago, I knew I was on safe ground with them as far as literature was concerned since I had just finished teaching Antony and Cleopatra in which Cleopatra has the poisonous snake that will kill her brought to her concealed in a basket of figs.  Continue reading “The Fig in Literature”