[Sca-cooks] what did they do with dirty tableware?

[Ann Sasahara]

On Tue, 7 May 2002 jenne at fiedlerfamily.net wrote:
> > Stefan! Bad! No biscuit! Don't wipe your knife on the tablecloth- on your
> > napkin maybe, but nor the tablecloth. Nor do you wipe your face on the
> > tablecloth.
> > --------
> > I thought napkins were a post-period development. Let's assume
> > a 14th Century feast here.
>
> It doesn't look like napkins/towels to go accross the diners laps are
> postperiod, they are definitely present in the 16th c. manners texts.

I'm looking at the dust jacket and frontpiece of _Dining with William
Shakespeare_.  It's a wedding scene detail from "The Life of Sir Henry
Unton (1557 - 1596)".  The men in the painting have their napkins on their
left shoulder or on their left forearm.  The ladies at each end of the
table have their napkins in their lap.

I assume from the painting that white cloth napkins did exist in
late 16th c. England, but that only ladies placed them across the lap. Men
had a choice of left shoulder or left forearm.

Does anyone know of any other pictoral evidence? Manuals of behavior
are interesting because they tell you what people SHOULD do.  Paintings are
more interesting because they show you what people ACTUALLY do.  Come Watson,
the game is afoot.

wild thought:
If an Elizabethan man placed his napkin across his lap, as was the custom
shown by the ladies, did his peers consider him effeminate?

Ariann, who eats her salad with her dinner fork and lets the salad fork go
back to the kitchen unused...