Is This Bottle Corked__ The Secret Life of Wine - Kathleen Burk [51]
When we think of malmsey now, we think of madeira wine, but for Shakespeare this was not the case. The island itself was only discovered in the fourteenth century, and it was only near the end of the sixteenth century that a wine industry was fully established. The term, in fact, was used for a range of unusually rich, sweet, long-lasting white wines produced in Greece, on the Ionian Islands, and on some of the Cyclades, but especially on Crete (then called Candia), which was the source of the best and most luxurious malmsey wine. The name malmsey is actually a corruption of the word Malvasia (malvoisie in French, as per Commynes), the name of the grape, and did not refer to a specific wine; rather, it denoted any strong, sweet wine from Greece and the islands of the eastern Mediterranean. The size of a butt was also different from the modern equivalent: while today it is 172 gallons, in 1483 a butt held only 108 gallons, but this was still large enough to drown a man.
Many modern historians think that the whole story is ridiculous, and tend to restrict themselves to remarking that Clarence had been condemned to death and died in the Tower. There is the possibility, however, that at least part of the story is correct: that he died in a butt of liquid, but that it was not malmsey. This was the argument put by John Webster Spargo in an academic article some three-quarters of a century ago. Because historians over the years appear to have assumed that this was a method of execution known nowhere else, it therefore could not be authentic: rather, it was merely a jest. However, Webster argues that in the Netherlands, there were examples of those charged with heresy being drowned in a vessel of water. He then cites a business letter written in 1479 as evidence that malmsey was common in London at the time, and thus the presence of a large wine barrel in the area of the Tower that housed noble prisoners also would have been common. (It was the merchants of Venice who created the demand for malmsey in England.) But what was in the barrel? Webster argues that “if the butt had still contained wine at the time of the execution, it would not have been available for occupancy by Clarence, for the head of the barrel would still have been intact.” His conclusion was that it was an old malmsey butt, which, still having a capital value, had had its head knocked out and been filled with water to keep it from drying out. There is an additional argument against death by sweet wine: both murderers refer to a malmsey-butt, not a butt of malmsey—and there is a distinct difference between a water bucket and a bucket of water.
We shall, of course, never know for sure, but what is certain is that the First Murderer’s announcing to Clarence that “I’ll drown you in the water-butt within” would not have quite the same romantic resonance.
Can anyone remember why we drink to forget?
THAT REMINDS US of the one where this guy is getting plastered in a bar and the barman says, “You’ve had enough, pal,” and the guy says, “No, no, you can’t do this to me, I’m drinking to forget,” and the barman says, “Forget what?” and the guy thinks for a bit and says, “I can’t remember.”
That reminds me of the one … The cry of the bar room bore throughout history. But there’s some truth in the joke: we do try to drown our sorrows in wine. Alas, there is also some falsehood in the joke, because—as anyone who has lived with a drinker knows—it simply doesn’t work. After a while, even the most hardened drunk becomes maudlin. Color, bouquet, taste, finish—all are subsumed in an onrush of terrible remembering, as grievances