·THE·OLD·BLUE·BOAR·IN·LINCOLN·
The most famous of all Shakespearean tavern signs is perhaps the “Boar’s Head.” Washington 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 Japanese 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-fashioned 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 noble 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:—