Wine runs all through Shakespeare. His characters toast, scheme and stumble over it; his greatest comic creation all but worships it; a duke is even drowned in a barrel of it. To read the plays is to walk into the drinking world of Elizabethan and Jacobean England — a world of sack and canary, of taverns and toasts — and, if a Stratford legend is to be believed, wine may even have carried the playwright off at the end. (See also: our full wine-history timeline.)
Quick facts
- Wine and drinking appear throughout Shakespeare’s plays.
- Falstaff adores “sack” — the fortified ancestor of sherry.
- A duke is drowned in a butt of Malmsey in Richard III.
Wine on the Elizabethan stage
Shakespeare wrote for an age that drank deeply, and wine is everywhere in his work — a marker of fellowship, folly, celebration and corruption. From the drunken porter in Macbeth to the revels of Twelfth Night, he used it to reveal character, spring comedy and drive the plot1.
Falstaff and the praise of sack
No character loves wine like Sir John Falstaff. In Henry IV, Part 2 he delivers a rapturous, half-serious oration in praise of “sherris-sack,” crediting it with warming the blood, quickening the wit and making men brave2. It is one of the great drinking speeches in the language, and it ends with a mock-solemn vow3.
If I had a thousand sons, the first humane principle I would teach them should be to forswear thin potations, and to addict themselves to sack.— Falstaff, Henry IV, Part 22
What was sack?
“Sack” was a strong, often sweetish white wine imported from Spain and the Canary Islands — fortified to survive the sea voyage to England, at perhaps 15 to 20 per cent alcohol. “Sherris-sack” came from Jerez, which the English mangled into “sherris” and then “sherry”; “Canary sack” came from the islands. It was among the most fashionable drinks of Shakespeare’s day, and he did more than anyone to immortalise it45.
Drowned in a butt of Malmsey
Shakespeare also gave wine one of the most macabre exits in all drama. In Richard III, the Duke of Clarence is murdered and his body stuffed into a “malmsey-butt” — a barrel of sweet Malmsey wine. It was not pure invention: the real George, Duke of Clarence, was executed in 1478, and tradition held that he was drowned in a butt of Malmsey, a story Shakespeare turned into unforgettable theatre67.
The wine that steals the brains
For all the merriment, Shakespeare knew wine’s dark side too. In Othello, the villain Iago deliberately gets the loyal Cassio drunk to destroy him — and the ruined Cassio delivers one of literature’s sharpest lines on drink8.
O God, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains!— Cassio, Othello8
The taverns and “good wine needs no bush”
Falstaff holds court at the Boar’s Head in Eastcheap, and taverns like it were the beating heart of Shakespeare’s London. Tradition also links Shakespeare and his fellow writers to the Mermaid Tavern, remembered as a meeting place of literary wits — a story that, true or embroidered, captures how wine and taverns fed the age’s creativity9.
He reached for wine as metaphor, too. “Good wine needs no bush,” he writes in the epilogue to As You Like It — meaning that true quality needs no advertisement, a proverb from the days when a tavern hung ivy outside to signal it had wine to sell.
A merry meeting: the legend of his death
Wine even shadows Shakespeare’s own end. The only surviving account of his death, written decades later by the Stratford vicar John Ward, records that “Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson had a merry meeting and, it seems, drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a fever there contracted”10.
Historians treat it with deep scepticism — Ward wrote some forty-six years after the fact, and neither Jonson nor Drayton ever mentioned such a night. Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616, and we simply do not know how. But it is oddly fitting that the writer who filled his plays with wine should have a wine-soaked legend attached to his passing11.
| Play | The wine moment |
|---|---|
| Henry IV, Part 2 | Falstaff’s rapturous praise of “sherris-sack” |
| Richard III | The Duke of Clarence drowned in a butt of Malmsey |
| Othello | Iago plies the loyal Cassio with wine to ruin him |
| Macbeth | The drunken porter — “drink provokes and unprovokes” |
| Twelfth Night | Sir Toby Belch, his “cakes and ale” and cups of canary |
| As You Like It | “Good wine needs no bush” |
Frequently asked questions
More from this day in wine history
See everything else that happened on April 23 — who was born, what was bottled, and which laws were signed.
Read more
References
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — William Shakespeare. www.britannica.com ↩
- Folger Shakespeare Library — Henry IV, Part 2 (Act 4, the sherris-sack speech). www.folger.edu ↩
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Henry IV (play by Shakespeare). www.britannica.com ↩
- The Oxford Companion to Wine — Sack. app.ckbk.com ↩
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — sherry. www.britannica.com ↩
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence. www.britannica.com ↩
- The Drinks Business — Shakespeare’s Drinks. www.thedrinksbusiness.com ↩
- Folger Shakespeare Library — Othello. www.folger.edu ↩
- Royal Shakespeare Company. www.rsc.org.uk ↩
- Shakespeare Documented (Folger) — John Ward’s Notebook: the only account of Shakespeare’s death. shakespearedocumented.folger.edu ↩
- Sky HISTORY — Did Shakespeare Really Die From a Hangover? www.history.co.uk ↩
Recommended reading
Hugh Johnson
Excellent on sack, claret and the wine of Shakespeare’s England.
As an Amazon Associate, This Day in Wine History earns from qualifying purchases. Book recommendations are chosen independently.
Share This Story, Choose Your Platform!
Related Posts
