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Shakespeare and beef

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Peter Childs
Peter Childs*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, Royal South Hants Hospital, Graham Road, Southampton SO14 0YG
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Type
The Columns
Information
Psychiatric Bulletin , Volume 25 , Issue 3 , March 2001, pp. 118
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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Copyright © 2000, The Royal College of Psychiatrists

Sir: Given the current topicality of concerns about the safety or otherwise of beef, both in this country and in continental Europe, I was most interested to note the following exchange between Sir Andrew Aguecheek and Sir Toby Belch in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night (Act I, Scene III):

Sir Toby: O knight, thou lack'st a cup of canary! When did I see thee so put down?

Sir Andrew: Never in your life, I think; unless you see canary put me down. Methinks sometimes I have no more wit than a Christian or an ordinary man has; but I am a great eater of beef, and I believe that does harm to my wit. Sir Toby: No question.

I have always been an admirer of Shakespeare's descriptions of medical and psychiatric conditions, but can it be that in this case, as in so many others, he has once again exhibited remarkable prescience?

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