Let’s imagine that my casual reader is British and he’s going to have dinner or has just had it.
Unless he had enjoyed a very frugal meal based on a simple sandwich, it’s very probable that he used a fork to eat his food.
Maybe using such a banal and common little domestic tool is just a habit which doesn’t deserve a second thought, but it could be funny if my reader stops for a second and tries to imagine that, before Shakespeare’s age, fork was a totally unknown item in England ( and in many other countries of course).
If you could stick your fork into your sausage or your steak after cutting it with a knife, well it is all due to a very extraordinary and eccentric character, an indefatigable and adventurous English traveller, contemporary of Shakespeare.
Thomas Coryate, this was his name, would deserve a much longer story, since he had really a very interesting and adventurous life, so maybe well speak of him again another time, but for the moment we remain on the present topic:
the fork.
Coryate had travelled throughout Europe and in a part Asia, mostly on foot, noting accurately on his “carnets de voyages” the different habits and the cultural features of the various countries he visited.
We might say he was the writer of the first Travel guide we can have full memory of, which is similar in many aspects to modern ones.
While he was in Italy Thomas Coryate discovered the use of the fork and was so impressed that he decided to import it to his own country.
In Italy the fork was already well known and commonly used for centuries, at least by middle and upper class and nobles, but in Northern Europe it was not included in kitchenware at all.
When our Coryate presented this sophisticated novelty to his fellow citizens the interest was very limited…
Unless he had enjoyed a very frugal meal based on a simple sandwich, it’s very probable that he used a fork to eat his food.
Maybe using such a banal and common little domestic tool is just a habit which doesn’t deserve a second thought, but it could be funny if my reader stops for a second and tries to imagine that, before Shakespeare’s age, fork was a totally unknown item in England ( and in many other countries of course).
If you could stick your fork into your sausage or your steak after cutting it with a knife, well it is all due to a very extraordinary and eccentric character, an indefatigable and adventurous English traveller, contemporary of Shakespeare.
Thomas Coryate, this was his name, would deserve a much longer story, since he had really a very interesting and adventurous life, so maybe well speak of him again another time, but for the moment we remain on the present topic:
the fork.
Coryate had travelled throughout Europe and in a part Asia, mostly on foot, noting accurately on his “carnets de voyages” the different habits and the cultural features of the various countries he visited.
We might say he was the writer of the first Travel guide we can have full memory of, which is similar in many aspects to modern ones.
While he was in Italy Thomas Coryate discovered the use of the fork and was so impressed that he decided to import it to his own country.
In Italy the fork was already well known and commonly used for centuries, at least by middle and upper class and nobles, but in Northern Europe it was not included in kitchenware at all.
When our Coryate presented this sophisticated novelty to his fellow citizens the interest was very limited…
The fork was considered by Englishmen a kind of mincing and effeminate tool and even quite dangerous ( at the beginning it had only two prongs, quite sharp).
But business is business and some producers guessed it would have been profitable to dedicate more attention to this new bizarre thing, so they made accurate marketing searches (yes, already centuries ago they existed) and tried to create forks with a different number of prongs and to ask volunteers to make tests in order to find out what would have been more convenient.
Only at the end of 19th century the fork got its actual shape and the four prongs were adopted as usual standard, being, it seems the best solution for the majority of testers.
But the fork was not the only new object introduced to England by Thomas Coryate.
We’ll speak again of him.
He had a very rich and intriguing life and died one year after William Shakespeare, in 1617.
But business is business and some producers guessed it would have been profitable to dedicate more attention to this new bizarre thing, so they made accurate marketing searches (yes, already centuries ago they existed) and tried to create forks with a different number of prongs and to ask volunteers to make tests in order to find out what would have been more convenient.
Only at the end of 19th century the fork got its actual shape and the four prongs were adopted as usual standard, being, it seems the best solution for the majority of testers.
But the fork was not the only new object introduced to England by Thomas Coryate.
We’ll speak again of him.
He had a very rich and intriguing life and died one year after William Shakespeare, in 1617.
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