(Newes From Bartholomew Fayre; an undated, anonymous black-letter poem.)

"Much time," says Andrews in his history of the sixteenth century, "was spent by the citizens of London at their numerous taverns."

The tavern was the lounging-place, not only of the idle and dissolute, but of the industrious also. It was the Club, the Forum, sometimes too the Theatre.

The wives and daughters of tradesmen collected here to gossip, and, strange as it now seems to us they came here, too, to picnic. An old song of the period describes a feast of this sort, and tells how each woman carried with her some goose, or pork, the wing of a capon, or a pigeon pie. Arrived at the tavern, they ordered the best wine. They praised the liquor, and, under its inspiriting influence, discussed their husbands, with whom they were naturally dissatisfied; and then went home by different streets, perfidiously assuring their lawful masters that they had been to church.

This evidence is useful and seemly to be here set down, as indicating the true origin of habits for which much undeserved censure has been in these later days inflicted upon mere imitators.

The men, whose chiefest fault has ever been their too great readiness to follow the women, fell insensibly into the habit, and have been there ever since.

And what a glorious time they have had of it! To recall only Fuller's description of the "wit combates" between Shakespeare's "quickness of wit and invention" against Ben Jonson's "far higher learning," and "solid, but slow performances," at the historic Mermaid; and Beaumont's rapturous praise in his epistle to Jonson of the banquet of wit and admirable[81]
[82]
[83] conversation which they had enjoyed at the same place!

Oh to have been at the Mermaid on the night when Jonson had been burnt out at the Bankside Globe! or on the night of Shakespeare's first performance before Elizabeth—when he had first, perhaps, set eyes on Mary Fitton!

All the wits of that age of giants were wont to assemble, after the theatre, at the Mermaid, the Devil, and the Boar. Exuberant Fletcher and graver Beaumont would "wentle" in from their lodging on Bankside, wearing each other's clothes, and wrangling perhaps about their plots—a habit which on one occasion caused them to be arrested, a fussy listener having heard them disputing in a tavern as to whether they should or should not assassinate the king. Poor, drunken, profligate Greene, and his debauched companions, Marlowe and George Peele,—all of whom ended their riotous courses with painful and shameful deaths,—are sure to have lurched in on many a razzling night. Regular visitors, too, were "Crispinus" Dekker, and his friend Wilson the actor, whom Beaumont mentions as a boon-companion over the Mermaid wine:—

From Whitehall, with "their port so proud, their buskin, and their plume," would swagger in Raleigh, Surrey, Spenser, and others of the wits from Elizabeth's ruffling Court. Drummond of Hawthornden came here at least once on a visit to Ben Jonson; but this must have been after Shakespeare had deserted the festive board for the crested pomp of a gentlemanly life at Stratford, "coming up every term to take tobacco and see new motions."

Sombre John Webster would be here sometimes, sometimes Massinger, Thomas Middleton, Lilly, Thomas Heywood, William Rowley, Day, Wilkins, Ford, Camden, Ned Drayton, Fulke Greville, Harrington, Edmund Waller, Martin, Morley, Selden, the future Bishop of Winchester, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera!

What a galaxy! what a feast!

It is well for your peace of mind, my good wife, that the Mermaid and its company have vanished into the dark immensity. How long would I wait, and cheerfully, for so much as a peep through the window at that glorious company!

Dryden claims that the Mermaid did not receive such pleasant and such witty fellows in the reigns of Bess and James as did the Royal Oak, the Mitre, and the Roebuck after the Restoration; but to me the haunts of Wycherley, Otway, Villiers of Buckingham, Wilmot of Rochester, and the periwigged bucks and bloods and maccaronies in velvets and lace of Charles the Second's dissolute Court, are, as compared with the Falstaffian Taverns of the Shakespeareans, but dull and dry dens.

So, if you will, of your grace, excuse the pun and the hasty skip, we will give these pretty gentlemen a miss, and jump at once into a fresh chapter and an account of a curious experience that once upon a time came in a tavern to me.