Old Tavern Signs Part 5

_Comedy of Errors._

Little William, already in the days when he went "with his satchel and s.h.i.+ning morning face creeping like a snail unwillingly to school," had ample leisure and opportunity to gaze admiringly at the many signs which adorned the narrow streets of the quiet little town on the Avon.

The memory of them still lives in some of the Stratford hotels. The landlady of the "Golden Lion," for instance, remarks on her bill: "Known as Ye Peac.o.c.ke Inn in Shakespeare's time 1613." Even the "Red Horse," to-day extremely modern and uninteresting-looking, goes back to these old days. In Was.h.i.+ngton Irving's time the place probably looked more quaint and cozy, if we may believe his praise of the old inn in his "Sketch-Book": "To a homeless man, there is a momentary feeling of something like independence and territorial consequence, when, after a weary day's travel, he kicks off his boots, thrusts his feet into slippers, and stretches himself before an inn fire."

This picture gallery of the street signs was still more magnificent in London, where even the theaters had their signs out, as "The Globe,"

"Red Bull," "A Curtain," "A Fortune," "Cross Keys," "The Phenix," "The Rose," "The c.o.c.kpit," and we may be sure that they made quite an impression on the lively mind of the young actor. The word "sign"

occurs frequently in his vocabulary. Inclined to see below the surface, he does not seem to trust the glittering of the sign, as the words of Iago indicate:--

"I must show out a flag and sign of love, Which is indeed but sign."

The signs of his birthplace were probably rather poor-looking things, since he uses the word in his early drama, "t.i.tus Andronicus,"

contemptuously:--

"Ye sanguine, shallow-hearted boys!

Ye white-lim'd walls! ye ale-house painted signs!"

The sign of the "Falcon" was not yet hung out on the old house of Scholar's Lane and Chapel Street in those years of 1571 to 1578, when little Shakespeare went to the Grammar School, in which the traveler to this day may see the chair of the pedagogue who first introduced him to the secrets of literature. But the circle of life led him back to the same narrow street, and opposite the stately building, which now is the "Falcon," Shakespeare died. The mortuary house has disappeared and the ground has been transformed into a garden. Here we are infinitely nearer to the poet's soul than in the tiny birth-chamber disfigured by a huge bust, where the guide drowns all our thoughts in a flood of empty words. Here in this garden the genius of the poet seemed to reveal himself most charmingly. Where once the house stood in which he died we found a little child peacefully sleeping--all alone, unguarded, but the gentle rose of youth blooming on his cheeks--under the perfumed shadow of flowers; a symbol of eternal life conquering death.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THEFALCON INCHESTER]

If we enter the "Falcon," Shakespeare's words greet us from the wall: "Good wine is a good familiar creature if it be well used, exclaim no more against it." The gentle invitation of the blinking sign to enter and to share joy and sorrow with friendly comrades, Shakespeare himself has often followed. A French critic, Mezieres, went so far as to call him "un habitue de la taverne," politely adding that "he never lost his self-control and never contended himself with the light joys of the flying hour."

The "Red Lion" in Henley-on-the-Thames once owned a window pane--recently by mistake packed in the trunk of a confused traveler--into which Shenstone scratched the much-quoted words:--

"Whoe'er has traveled life's dull round, Where'er his stages may have been, May sigh to think he still has found The warmest welcome at an inn."

They are of true Shakespearean spirit and remind us of Speed's words in the "Two Gentlemen of Verona" (II, v):--

"I'll to the alehouse with you presently, where, for one shot of five pence, thou shalt have five thousand welcomes."

It would seem hardly necessary further to urge such an enthusiastic lover of the tavern, but Launce thought differently.

_Launce._ If thou wilt go with me to the alehouse, so; if not, thou art an Hebrew, a Jew, and not worth the name of a Christian.

_Speed._ Why?

_Launce._ Because thou hast not so much charity in thee as to go to the ale with a Christian.

We are not surprised to hear the final question, "Wilt thou go?"

promptly answered, "At thy service."

Most of the tavern names Shakespeare mentions are true products of the Renaissance times when cla.s.sical studies were extremely popular. "The Centaur," "The Phenix," "The Pomegranate,"--an ornament we find so often in the brocades of the sixteenth century,--all are signs of his own time, simply transplanted from London he knew so well to Genoa or Ephesus, places he had never put his eye on. "The Pegasus," by the man in the street called "The Flying Horse," decorated still in the year 1691 the house of a jeweler and banker in Lombard Street. In pa.s.sing, we may remark that all the signs which to-day surprise the traveler in this busy street are more or less happy reproductions of the old signs, hung out there by the great banking firms for King Edward's coronation.

In our wanderings through England we occasionally cross the path Shakespeare went with his company of actors. The court in the "George Inn" in Salisbury, to-day transformed into a pleasant little garden, was once the scene where the "Strolling Players" of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries used to give their performances, and here Shakespeare himself acted when he visited Salisbury. A police ordinance allowed only in the "George" theatrical amus.e.m.e.nts, and demanded that all plays should be ended by seven o'clock in the evening. This George Hotel was first mentioned in 1401 as "Georgysyn." Oliver Cromwell slept here October 17, 1645, on his way to the army. The old beams which carry the ceiling of the parlor, and which a shrewd landlord has discovered in other rooms and freed from the hiding plaster, are the delight of American travelers, who refuse to sleep in rooms without beams. In the days of Pepys it was an elegant hostelry. In his "Diary," in which he praises Salisbury as "a very brave place," he puts down the following remarks: "Come to the George Inn where lay in a silk bed, and very good diet." Less pleased he was with the bill, which he thought "so exorbitant that I was mad and resolved to truble the mistress about it and get something for the poor; and came away in that humour." The result of his protest was not great. After paying 2 5_s._ 6_d._ for the night he gains just two s.h.i.+llings for the poor (one for "an old woman in the street"). Similar privileges for theatrical performances had the "Red Lion" in Boston, the little English mother of her big American daughter, and the "Mayde's Hede" in Norwich. The closed s.p.a.ce of these old innyards, with its staircases leading to the surrounding gallery, was thoroughly fitted for the theatrical representations, and it is quite possible that this gallery of the innyard influenced the architecture of the later theaters. Few of these innyards have survived, unfortunately, but we have still a wonderful example in the charming court of the so-called "New Inn" in Gloucester. It was new in the fifteenth century. How enchanting a Shakespeare play would be in the frame of its verdure!

In the First Part of "Henry IV," the poet himself has introduced us into such an innyard. It is very early morning and everything still dark. Carters come to look after their goods and to harness their horses, exchanging remarks in plain language: "I think this be the most villanous house in all London road for fleas"; or, "G.o.d's body!

the turkeys in my pannier are quite starved. What, ostler! A plague on thee! hast thou never an eye in thy head?"--a master scene of realistic observation in the style Lessing and Goethe admired so much, and Voltaire hated so that he proclaimed: "Shakespeare was a remarkable genius, but he had no taste, since for two hundred years he has spoiled the taste of the English nation."

How important the s.p.a.cious enclosure of the innyard was for the farmers coming to town with their loaded wagons is shown by the fact that still to-day many a hotel in Germany is simply called "Hof"

(court) or "Gasthof"; as, for example: "Koelner Hof," "Rheinischer Hof," "Habsburger Hof," even "Kaiserhof," sumptuous modern structures, perhaps, which have only a narrow lighting shaft in the center of the building and nothing of the large and airy courtyards of the good old times.

Many of the tavern names Shakespeare mentions in his plays we know from other sources as signs that actually decorated the streets of London. "Leopard" and "Tiger" were infrequent, but we hear of a "Leopard Tavern" in Chancery Lane, which still existed in 1665. The popular p.r.o.nunciation was "lubber," and in this form we find the beast quoted in "Henry IV" (Part II, II, i), where it is said of Falstaff: "He is indited to dinner to the Lubber's-head in Lumbert street, to Master Smooth's the silk-man." Such curious distortions of strange words are nothing uncommon in popular language; we have only to remember how the old Yankee farmers used to call the panther by the gentle name "painter." Another of Falstaff's favorite resorts was "The Half-Moon," likewise mentioned in "Henry IV" (Part I, II, iv), where he used to consume countless "pints of b.a.s.t.a.r.d" and of dark Spanish wine. "The Tiger" referred to in the "Comedy of Errors" (III, i) was, too, an actual sign of the times, as we hear of a "Golden Tiger" in Pilgrim Street, Newcastle. On the other hand, the name of the "Porcupine," which occurs in the same play, is probably invented as a characteristic sign for a place of ill-fame.

The most renowned of all the Falstaff inns is doubtless "The Garter,"

his real home, so vividly described in the "Merry Wives of Windsor": "There's his chamber, his house, his castle, his standing-bed and truckle-bed; 'tis painted about with the story of the Prodigal, fresh and new." These few words give us an exact picture how a sleeping-room in an inn looked in his time. The truckle-bed, it seems, was put under the standing bed and was used by the servant, if we interpret rightly the old rhyme on a "servile tutor":--

"He lieth in the truckle-bed, While his young master lieth o'er his head."

Even the wall paintings, as Shakespeare describes them, are not invention. In the sixteenth century people loved to paint the story of the lost son on the walls of the tavern room, just as in the fifteenth century they pinned up little primitive woodcuts representing St.

Christopher. Later we shall see a painter of talent like Hogarth not despise the decoration of taverns as below his genius and embellish with works of his brush the "Elephant Tavern" in Fenchurch Street, where he stayed for a time.

The name "Garter Inn," p.r.o.nounced "de Jarterre" by Doctor Caius, is historical, too. Later, in the times of Charles I, who added the star to the insignia of the order founded by Edward III in 1350, the "Star and Garter" appeared.

A true Renaissance sign we find again in the "Sagittary," cursorily mentioned in "Oth.e.l.lo" (I, i). The archer, the ninth sign of the Zodiac, was very familiar to the people from the old calendar woodcuts. Italian prints, as the beautifully ill.u.s.trated "Fasciculus medicinae" (Venice, 1500), represent him in cla.s.sical fas.h.i.+on as an elegant centaur, very unlike the little philistine with round belly, such as he appears in the earlier "teutsch kalender" of Ulm, 1498. The common people did not call him "Sagittarius," but "bowman" (Schutze).

There is good historical evidence of a "Bowman Tavern" in Drury Lane, London. It is natural that Shakespeare, a true son of the Renaissance, should call him with the cla.s.sical name, just as the first German composer of operas changed his good German name "Schutze" to the more pretentious form of "Sagittarius."

In these "Bowman Taverns" the guilds of the archers used to come together; as, for instance, in the "Hotel de l'Arquebuse" in Geneva, where the Swiss archers had their joyous reunions after they had finished their outdoor sport to shoot the "papegex" (the parrot). Here the king of the archers who had done the master shot "sans reproche"

and "sans tricherie" (without cheating), was celebrated in poetical speeches, according to the customs of the times:--

"Je boy a vous, a votre amye, Et a toute la compaignie!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: THEOLDBLUEBOARINLINCOLN]

The most famous of all Shakespearean tavern signs is perhaps the "Boar's Head." Was.h.i.+ngton Irving has told us in his research, "the boar's head tavern, Eastcheap" about his investigations on this important matter. "I sought, in vain, for the ancient abode of Dame Quickly. The only relic of it is a boar's head, carved in relief in stone, which formerly served as a sign; but at present [Irving's 'Sketch-Book' dates from 1820] is built into the parting line of two houses, which stand on the site of the renowned tavern." To-day the relief, blackened by age and curiously looking like j.a.panese lacquer-work, belongs to the treasures of the Guildhall Museum in London. The place where the old tavern stood is marked by the statue of William IV, opposite the Monument Station of the subway. Merry souvenirs of good old England are suggested by the boar's head, which used to be served on Christmas Day decorated with rosemary and greeted from the company with the half-Latin song:--

"Caput apri defero Reddens laudes Domino, The boar's head in hand bring I, With garlands gay and rosemary; I pray you all synge merrily, Qui estis in convivio."

It will be a great disappointment to our readers when we have to confess that the unlucky fellows called literary critics have found out that the stage-direction, "Eastcheap. A room in the Boar's Head Tavern," is not Shakespeare's own remark, since we do not find it in the early editions of "Henry IV." Still more so when they hear that the relief in Guildhall bears the date 1668 and has been chiseled, therefore, fifty-two years after the poet's death. A little consolation we find in the not improbable supposition that it is a copy in stone from the original wooden sign. Did not the famous fire, which raged from Pudding Lane to Pye Corner in the year 1666, destroy nearly all the Shakespearean London, with its old-fas.h.i.+oned frame houses? For greater security the new buildings were erected in stone and the old house emblems and carved tavern signs reappeared, too, in more substantial form. The Guildhall Museum furnishes quite a number of examples: "The Anchor" of 1669, "The Bell" of 1668, "The Spread Eagle" of 1669, and others.

And now let us follow Heinrich Heine on his voyage to Italy and hear from him how in his days the n.o.ble palace of the Capulets, Julia's paternal home in Verona, was debased to a common tavern. Near the Piazza dell Erbe "stands a house which the people identify with the old palace of the Capulets on account of a cap (in Italian 'cappello') sculptured above the inner archway. It is now a dirty bar for carters and coachmen; a red iron hat, full of holes, hangs out as a tavern sign." To-day this disgraceful sign has disappeared and a marble slab consecrates the popular myth as historical fact. This was then the house where Romeo for the first time saw his lady love:--

_Romeo._ What lady's that which doth enrich the hand Of yonder knight?

_Servant._ I know not, sir.

_Romeo._ O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!

Her beauty hangs upon the cheek of night Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear; Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!

Shakespeare's geographical knowledge seems to have been very limited.

If he could have gone, as the citizen of Stratford to-day, to the Carnegie library, how many shocking errors he had avoided! Here he could have learned that Bohemia has no seacoast, that Florence is not a port, and that the forest of Arden neither hides lions nor contains palms. But would this knowledge have increased his poetical feeling and his power of representation? Hardly. The northern land with its "sniping winds," how well it is characterized; how simple and true to life his description of the mild climate of Sicily, crowned with temples, in the "Winter's Tale" (III, i):--

"The climate's delicate, the air most sweet, Fertile the isle; temple much surpa.s.sing The common praise it bears."

It was not yet the fas.h.i.+on to flee the winter and try to find eternal spring in the South. Every season is welcome to the poet who loves the peculiar charm of each one, as he says in "Love's Labor's Lost"

(I, i):--

"At Christmas I no more desire a rose Than wish a snow in May's new-fangled shows, But like of each thing that in season grows."