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Early Modern England Encyclopedia

By Kate McPherson, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions

Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines

This document uses Canadian English spelling

 Published file. Updated metadata proofed updated author respStmt. updated sourceDesc Added date, pubPlace, and publisher tags to sources Added Shakespeare’s Life and Times database to Best sources. Fixed small mistakes Made corrections and left comments for EMEE team. Created File
A woman in an apron and head bandana uses a butter churn. A small cat rubs against her leg. Woman Churning Butter, an etching by Jean-François Millet (1855–1856). Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public Domain.

Either I mistake your shape and making quite, Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite Call’d Robin Goodfellow: are not you he That frights the maidens of the villagery; Skim milk and sometimes labour in the quern grain grinder And bootless make the breathless housewife churn. (A Midsummer Night’s Dream 2.1.399–405)

Overview

Among the most important duties of a housewife, especially a countrywoman, would be the production of dairy foods for her household. Common people, particularly those of the poorer classes, would have gotten much of their protein from cow’s milk (and occasionally ewe’s milk) products.

A rustic character in ThomasLodge and Robert Greene’s play A Looking Glass for London and England cogently sums up the value of the cow in the ordinary man’s diet: Why, sir, alas, my cow is a common-wealth to me, for first, sir, she allows me, my wife and son, for to banquet ourselves withal: butter, cheese, whey, curds, cream, sod boiled milk, raw milk, sour milk, sweet milk and buttermilk. (1.3.91–5)

Women typically milked the cows, strained the milk, separated the cream, and made cheese products from the family cow. Both soft, unripened cheeses and harder, aged cheeses were developed to preserve the nutrition of milk without refrigeration. Because England has a temperate climate that features extensive grass pastures, it’s ideal for grazing cattle. That temperate climate means that the cool rooms in a farmhouse or barn room with thick stone walls, especially if it is partly below ground, can be used to store and to age dairy products.

Gervase Markham notes that: Touching the well ordering of milk after it is come home to the dairy, the main point belonging thereunto is the housewife's cleanliness in the sweet and neat keeping of the dairy house; where not the least mote of any filth may by any means appear, but all things either to the eye or nose so void of sourness or sluttishness, that a prince's bed chamber must not exceed it. Markham Markham also comments extensively on the process for churning butter, which the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust also explores in a discussion of important material objects of the period. The upshot of all the specific instructions on dairy work in household management guides of the period emphasizes that women remained responsible for dairy production as an important aspect of their economic contribution to a household.

Key Print Sources Forgeng, Jeffrey L. Daily Life in Elizabethan England. 2nd ed. Greenwood Press, 2010. Markham, Gervase. The English Housewife. Ed. Michael Best. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1986. Orlin, Lena Cowen. Elizabethan Households: An Anthology. Folger Shakespeare Library, 1995.
Key Online Sources Best, Michael. The Dairy. Shakespeare’s Life and Times.Internet Shakespeare Editions, https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/society/huswifery/dairy.html. Accessed 18 Feb. 2023. Sharrett, Elizabeth. Shakespeare’s World in 100 Objects: Butter Churn. Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, 21 Jun. 2023, https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/blogs/shakespeare-100-objects-butter-churn/.
Image Sources Millet, Jean-François. Woman Churning Butter 1855–1856. Etching. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Object number: 17.21.40. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/371478.