NPR’s ‘The Salt’ mentions Bicks’ book on Shakespeare, cocktails
National Public Radio’s food blog, “The Salt,” mentioned Caroline Bicks, the Stephen E. King Chair in Literature at the University of Maine, in a report about using alcohol to make William Shakespeare’s world more relatable to modern audiences. Alcohol is a common theme in many of Shakespeare’s plays, so much so that Bard scholars Bicks and Michelle Ephraim wrote a lighthearted book of cocktails titled “Shakespeare, Not Stirred,” that aimed to bring the Bard to a more general audience, according to the article. “Booze — in Shakespeare, as in life — can lead to some unfortunate situations,” Bicks said. “Jealousy, ambition, insecurity — those negative human drives haven’t changed much since Shakespeare was writing, and people still use booze to manage them.”