Would make a Scholler make a Theame."
Breton, in his "Fantasticks," 1626, observes: "Milk, Butter and Cheese are the labourers dyet; and a pot of good Beer quickens his spirits."
Norfolk dumplings were celebrated in John Day the playwright's time. He has put into the mouth of his east-country yeoman's son, Tom Strowd, in "The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green," written long before it was printed in 1659, the following:—"As God mend me, and ere thou com'st into Norfolk, I'll give thee as good a dish of Norfolk dumplings as ere thou laydst thy lips to;" and in another passage of the same drama, where Swash's shirt has been stolen, while he is in bed, he describes himself "as naked as your Norfolk dumplin." In the play just quoted, Old Strowd, a Norfolk yeoman, speaks of his contentment with good beef, Norfolk bread, and country home-brewed drink; and in the "City Madam," 1658, Holdfast tells us that before his master got an estate, "his family fed on roots and livers, and necks of beef on Sundays." I cite these as traits of the kind of table kept by the lower grades of English society in the seventeenth century.
MEATS AND DRINKS.
Slender: You are afraid, if you see the bear loose, are you not?
Anne: Aye, indeed, Sir
Slender: That's meat and drink to me, now.
MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR, i, 1.