Part 5 (2/2)
(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.”
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