The Elizabethan Imogen 11
And sauced our broths, as Juno had been sick
And he her dieter.48
It is quite proper that she should have such knowledge, be-
cause, as Markham tells us, “To speake then of the outward
and active knowledges which belong to the English House-
wife, I hold the first and most principall to be a perfect skill
and knowledge in Cookery, together with all the secrets
belonging to the same, because it is a dutie rarely [i.e., ex-
cellently] belonging to the woman.”49 For that matter, the
Queen, too, is proficient at confections, at distilling for the
table, preserving, and also at making perfumes. She even
lays claim to having a scientific interest in poisons and tells
her physician that she wants to experiment with them in
order to study their effects and to see if antidotes can be
found.50 AU of this would be very admirable in an honest
woman, because as we noted in Mulcaster, the housewife has
in her keeping the good health of her household, to whom
she must administer medicines which she has compounded
herself. Another skiU of the Queen’s,—one which we do know
whether Imogen possesses or not,—is the interest in gathering
flowers (or having them gathered) for use in decorating the
house, and the knowledge of when these flowers should
best be gathered.51 Robert Burton writes that women ‘have
to busy themselves about . . . neat gardens of exotic, ver-
sicolour, diversely varied, sweet-smelling flowers, and plants
in all kinds, which they are most ambitious to get, curious to
preserve and keep, proud to possess, and much many times
brag of.”52 Likewise, Viola, in The Coxcomb, who is attempt-
ing to find employment while disguised as a serving maid, is
told that she must be able to “dress a house with flowers,”53
which luckily her education has taught her how to do.
The only fault which could possibly be charged against