THE·FALCON IN·CHESTER
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, Mézières, went so far as to call him “un habitué 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.”