A Bucket of Oysters and a Show?

An NYT article on Shakespearean era dining at Althouse.  She was impressed that Shakespeare managed to write all that without coffee.  But this is what caught my eye:

It is impossible to say exactly what Shakespeare ate, but one can make educated guesses. Excavations around the site of the old Globe have uncovered mounds of oyster shells, Ms. Segan said. Oysters were served both at taverns as a pretheater snack and inside the theater itself, the Elizabethan equivalent of ballpark franks. Shakespeare's frequent mention of them (''love may transform me to an oyster,'' says Benedict in ''Much Ado About Nothing'') makes it all but certain that he slurped on oysters or ate oyster pie during long days at the theater.

Until relatively recently, oysters and other shellfish were often considered poor persons fare.  Tons of them were shipped west from the oyster grounds of the east coast.  They ship relatively well, at least in the cold months in which they are traditionally harvested.  However, they did appear in quite a few paintings: