The taverns were to the sixteenth century what the coffee-houses were to the eighteenth. Every man frequented his tavern: clubs were held in the taverns; men of the same trade met in the taverns for evening discourse; bargains and business affairs were conducted in taverns; there were good and bad taverns; those like the Boar’s Head, East Cheap, bore a bad character; that is to say, they were laden down by the character of Doll Tearsheet; others, again, where Doll and her friends were not admitted, were frequented by the most respectable merchants and divines. Music was going on in most of them all day long; and all day long the waiters, clad in blue and wearing white aprons, ran about with flasks of wine and cups, and tobacco and pipes, calling “Anon, Anon!” and stopping to chalk a score upon the wall.
It is strange that Stow mentions neither the Boar’s Head, East Cheap, which must have been a well-known tavern, or Shakespeare would not have chosen it for the haunt of the Prince and Falstaff; nor the Mermaid, the haunt of Ben Jonson and the poets. Presumably the worthy antiquary would not have felt at home in the company of the wits.
The Boar’s Head stood in that part of East Cheap now swept away. The statue of King William IV. marks the site. It was not an ancient tavern. There were no taverns formerly in East Cheap according to Stow; the first mention of it is in the year 1537. The courtyard was large enough for the performance of plays; at the back it looked out upon St. Michael’s churchyard. The churchyard and church of St. Michael were swept away to make the approach to new London Bridge. Between St. Michael’s Lane, now Miles’s Lane, and a small alley, stood four taverns in a row: the Chicken, the Boar’s Head, the Plough, and the Three Kings. These taverns were thus in the midst of markets: the Grass Market in front; the Fish Market on the east; the Meat Market on the west. The tavern was rebuilt after the fire, in 1668: the new sign then made for it may be seen in the Guildhall Museum; on each side of the doorway was carved in wood a vine branch, rising three feet from the ground, loaded with leaves and clusters, and on the top of each a figure of Falstaff eight inches high. Before its demolition the house had ceased to be a tavern. Here was held a club of which Boswell was a member, in which every one assumed a Shakespearian character. It was the custom to hold convivial meetings in this house. There Falstaff and Dame Quickly and Doll Tearsheet and the whole merry company became real. Goldsmith wrote his essay, “A Reverie,” in this tavern, and here Washington Irving gave full play to his fancy, and restored the things that never were to the place that never knew Prince Hal.
SIGN OF THE BOAR’S HEAD IN EAST CHEAP
The Mermaid Tavern stood between Friday Street and Bread Street, with an entrance from Cheapside as well. The tavern has been immortalised by a poet of the seventeenth and one of the nineteenth century.
Francis Beaumont, the former, writes to Ben Jonson:—
“What things have we seen
Done at the Mermaid, heard words that have been
So nimble, and so full of subtle flame,