Caroline Bicks, associate professor of English, has co-authored a Shakespeare-themed cocktail recipe book entitled Shakespeare, Not Stirred: Cocktails For Your Everyday Dramas. The book combines Shakespearean puns with common life dramas, with chapter titles like “Shall I Campari to a Summer’s Day?: Romantic Occasions” and “Now Is the Whiskey of Our Discontent: Drinks for the Domestically Distressed.” Each cocktail in the book connects a Shakespearean character to a typical problem. The drinks are also paired with hors d’oeuvres. Bicks wrote the book with Michelle Ephraim, the Shakespeare scholar at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
The idea for the book came when the authors realized that the characters they analyze in their English classes seemed familiar—problems of today were reflected in the characters comedies and tragedies, according to the introduction. They decided to write a cocktail book to “pay it forward, Shakespeare-style.”
“The final product is what you see before you: a book that mixes equal parts booze and Bard to help you through your everyday ups and downs,” the authors write in the introduction. “It’s like having him right there in your living room, downing a great drink, and putting your crappy day in perspective.”
