Eating 'High Off The Hog' at the theater in Old England

The food selections at the old theaters in London were pretty high end compared to what we often see today at many theaters, cinemas or stadiums.

The preferred snacks for Tudor theater-goers appear to have been oysters, crabs, cockles, mussels, periwinkles and whelks, as well as walnuts, hazelnuts, raisins, plums, cherries, dried figs and peaches.

Some clues even suggest that 16th-century fans of William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe also plowed through vast quantities of elderberry and blackberry pie – and some may even have snacked on sturgeon steaks.

The evidence has emerged from the most detailed study ever carried out on a Tudor or early Stuart playhouse. Archaeologists have been analyzing the thousands of seeds, pips, stones, nutshell fragments, shellfish remains and fish and animal bones found on the site of the Rose Playhouse on London's South Bank.