Speaking plates: Text, performance, and banqueting trenchers in early modern Europe

Abstract

Dining and banqueting in Renaissance Europe have traditionally received a great deal of attention in historical scholarship, especially within the fields of food history and museum studies. This article intervenes in this much-debated topic through an investigation of banqueting trenchers, objects which have received almost no scholarly attention. Specialized plates used in after-dinner, sweet banquets, trenchers were decorated with pictorial images and accompanying mottos and epigrams. While they may have originated in the context of lavish banquets enjoyed by the social elite, this paper examines their wider use further down the social scale. This article reveals that trenchers required specific oral recitations as well as a repertoire of corporeal acts from diners who engaged with them at the table. In doing so, it analyses over three hundred extant trenchers held in European and North American collections, as well as a wide variety of literary and non-literary textual documents, including almanacs, poetry, and — most importantly — Thomas Middleton's largely ignored city comedy No Wit Like A Woman's (1611), in which trenchers are performed on stage. The essay argues that trenchers facilitated entertainment and lively conversation, both much desired at banquets, however the series of physical manipulations required to use trenchers also produced ‘performances’ of sociability.