TRAVELING WITH SHAKESPEARE AND MONTAIGNE
“Let us to the Tiger all to dinner!”
_Comedy of Errors._
Little William, already in the days when he went “with his satchel and
shining morning face creeping like a snail unwillingly to school,” had
ample leisure and opportunity to gaze admiringly at the many signs
which adorned the narrow streets of the quiet little town on the Avon.
The memory of them still lives in some of the Stratford hotels. The
landlady of the “Golden Lion,” for instance, remarks on her bill:
“Known as Ye Peacocke Inn in Shakespeare’s time 1613.” Even the “Red
Horse,” to-day extremely modern and uninteresting-looking, goes back
to these old days. In Washington Irving’s time the place probably
looked more quaint and cozy, if we may believe his praise of the old
inn in his “Sketch-Book”: “To a homeless man, there is a momentary
feeling of something like independence and territorial consequence,
when, after a weary day’s travel, he kicks off his boots, thrusts his
feet into slippers, and stretches himself before an inn fire.”
This picture gallery of the street signs was still more magnificent in
London, where even the theaters had their signs out, as “The Globe,”
“Red Bull,” “A Curtain,” “A Fortune,” “Cross Keys,” “The Phenix,” “The
Rose,” “The Cockpit,” and we may be sure that they made quite an
impression on the lively mind of the young actor. The word “sign”
occurs frequently in his vocabulary. Inclined to see below the
surface, he does not seem to trust the glittering of the sign, as the
words of Iago indicate:--
“I must show out a flag and sign of love,
Which is indeed but sign.”
The signs of his birthplace were probably rather poor-looking things,
since he uses the word in his early drama, “Titus Andronicus,”
contemptuously:--
“Ye sanguine, shallow-hearted boys!
Ye white-lim’d walls! ye ale-house painted signs!”
The sign of the “Falcon” was not yet hung out on the old house of
Scholar’s Lane and Chapel Street in those years of 1571 to 1578, when
little Shakespeare went to the Grammar School, in which the traveler
to this day may see the chair of the pedagogue who first introduced
him to the secrets of literature. But the circle of life led him back
to the same narrow street, and opposite the stately building, which
now is the “Falcon,” Shakespeare died. The mortuary house has
disappeared and the ground has been transformed into a garden. Here we
are infinitely nearer to the poet’s soul than in the tiny
birth-chamber disfigured by a huge bust, where the guide drowns all
our thoughts in a flood of empty words. Here in this garden the
genius of the poet seemed to reveal himself most charmingly. Where
once the house stood in which he died we found a little child
peacefully sleeping--all alone, unguarded, but the gentle rose of
youth blooming on his cheeks--under the perfumed shadow of flowers; a
symbol of eternal life conquering death.
[Illustration: 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.”
It would seem hardly necessary further to urge such an enthusiastic
lover of the tavern, but Launce thought differently.
_Launce._ If thou wilt go with me to the alehouse, so; if not,
thou art an Hebrew, a Jew, and not worth the name of a
Christian.
_Speed._ Why?
_Launce._ Because thou hast not so much charity in thee as to
go to the ale with a Christian.
We are not surprised to hear the final question, “Wilt thou go?”
promptly answered, “At thy service.”
Most of the tavern names Shakespeare mentions are true products of the
Renaissance times when classical studies were extremely popular. “The
Centaur,” “The Phenix,” “The Pomegranate,”--an ornament we find so
often in the brocades of the sixteenth century,--all are signs of his
own time, simply transplanted from London he knew so well to Genoa or
Ephesus, places he had never put his eye on. “The Pegasus,” by the man
in the street called “The Flying Horse,” decorated still in the year
1691 the house of a jeweler and banker in Lombard Street. In passing,
we may remark that all the signs which to-day surprise the traveler in
this busy street are more or less happy reproductions of the old
signs, hung out there by the great banking firms for King Edward’s
coronation.
In our wanderings through England we occasionally cross the path
Shakespeare went with his company of actors. The court in the “George
Inn” in Salisbury, to-day transformed into a pleasant little garden,
was once the scene where the “Strolling Players” of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries used to give their performances, and here
Shakespeare himself acted when he visited Salisbury. A police
ordinance allowed only in the “George” theatrical amusements, and
demanded that all plays should be ended by seven o’clock in the
evening. This George Hotel was first mentioned in 1401 as
“Georgysyn.” Oliver Cromwell slept here October 17, 1645, on his way
to the army. The old beams which carry the ceiling of the parlor, and
which a shrewd landlord has discovered in other rooms and freed from
the hiding plaster, are the delight of American travelers, who refuse
to sleep in rooms without beams. In the days of Pepys it was an
elegant hostelry. In his “Diary,” in which he praises Salisbury as “a
very brave place,” he puts down the following remarks: “Come to the
George Inn where lay in a silk bed, and very good diet.” Less pleased
he was with the bill, which he thought “so exorbitant that I was mad
and resolved to truble the mistress about it and get something for the
poor; and came away in that humour.” The result of his protest was not
great. After paying £2 5_s._ 6_d._ for the night he gains just two
shillings for the poor (one for “an old woman in the street”). Similar
privileges for theatrical performances had the “Red Lion” in Boston,
the little English mother of her big American daughter, and the
“Mayde’s Hede” in Norwich. The closed space of these old innyards,
with its staircases leading to the surrounding gallery, was
thoroughly fitted for the theatrical representations, and it is quite
possible that this gallery of the innyard influenced the architecture
of the later theaters. Few of these innyards have survived,
unfortunately, but we have still a wonderful example in the charming
court of the so-called “New Inn” in Gloucester. It was new in the
fifteenth century. How enchanting a Shakespeare play would be in the
frame of its verdure!
In the First Part of “Henry IV,” the poet himself has introduced us
into such an innyard. It is very early morning and everything still
dark. Carters come to look after their goods and to harness their
horses, exchanging remarks in plain language: “I think this be the
most villanous house in all London road for fleas”; or, “God’s body!
the turkeys in my pannier are quite starved. What, ostler! A plague on
thee! hast thou never an eye in thy head?”--a master scene of
realistic observation in the style Lessing and Goethe admired so much,
and Voltaire hated so that he proclaimed: “Shakespeare was a
remarkable genius, but he had no taste, since for two hundred years he
has spoiled the taste of the English nation.”
How important the spacious enclosure of the innyard was for the
farmers coming to town with their loaded wagons is shown by the fact
that still to-day many a hotel in Germany is simply called “Hof”
(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 pronunciation 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 bastard” 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,” pronounced “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 “Othello” (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 illustrated “Fasciculus
medicinæ” (Venice, 1500), represent him in classical fashion 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” (Schütze).
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 classical name, just as the first German
composer of operas changed his good German name “Schütze” 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 à vous, à votre amye,
Et à toute la compaignie!”
[Illustration: ·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:--
_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 surpassing
The common praise it bears.”
It was not yet the fashion 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.”
He probably never traveled far, but how intensely does he feel the
curious sensations of all travelers, the weariness and yet the
eagerness to see the new sights! How perfectly modern sound in the
“Comedy of Errors” (I, i) the words:--
“Go bear it to the Centaur, where we host,
And stay there, Dromio, till I come to thee.
Within this hour it will be dinner time,
Till that, I’ll view the manners of the town,
Peruse the traders, gaze upon the buildings
And then return and sleep within mine inn,
For with long travel I am stiff and weary.”
He possessed, like Schiller, who never saw Switzerland, and yet wrote
“Tell,” the wonderful gift of filling the lack of distinct knowledge
with the poetical power of imagination, or, as he calls it himself,
“to make imaginary puissance” and “to piece out our imperfections with
our thought.”
No doubt certain things, details of local civilization, cannot be
imagined. One has to go and study them. We will therefore, to gain a
fuller understanding of the hospitality of the sixteenth century,
follow a contemporary of Shakespeare in his travels, Montaigne, a
clear-sighted observer, who as _grand seigneur_ had the good fortune
to make extended voyages in France, Southern Germany, and Italy.
Although himself rather a spoiled gentleman, he generally is full of
praise for the comforts and elegance of the inns, especially in the
south of Germany. Only once he had to complain about the “liberté et
fierté Almanesque,” and this happened at Constance in the “Eagle.” The
elegance of the Renaissance hostelries was indeed surprising and has
hardly been surpassed in our days of luxurious traveling. Not only
most of the beds were covered with silk, as in the “Crown” at Chalons,
for instance,--“la pluspart des lits et couvertes sont de soie,”--but
sometimes the table silver was richly and artistically decorated, as
in the “Bear” at Kempten (Bavaria): “On nous y servit de grands tasses
d’arjant de plus de sortes (qui n’out usage que d’ornemant, fort
labourées et semées d’armoiries de divers Seigneurs), qu’il ne s’en
tient en guière de bones maisons.” In many places still the wooden
plates and cups were used, sometimes covered with silver; tin plates,
which appear at the end of the fifteenth century, seem to impress
Montaigne as a novelty. He notes at least expressly that in the “Rose”
at Innsbruck he was served in “assiettes d’étain.” In the same very
good “logis” he admired the beautiful laces which decorated the
bed-linen--the pride of the German Hausfrau to the present day. The
sheets had, he said, “quatre doigt de riche ouvrage de passement
blanc, comme en la pluspart des autres villes d’Allemaigne.” Other
things, on the contrary, which one finds to-day in the most modest
lodging-house--as, a stairway carpet--seem to him very strange and a
great novelty, although he used to stop only in first-class houses.
The inn “Zur Linde” in Augsburg--“a l’enseigne d’un arbre nomé ‘linde’
au pais”--possessed this novel luxury, and Montaigne describes it in
this detailed manner: “Le premier apprêt étrange et qui montre leur
properté, ce fut de trouver à notre arrivée le degrés de la vis
(spiral stairway) de notre logis tout couvert de linges, pardessus
lesquels il nous falloit marcher, pour ne salir les marches de leur
vis qu’on venait de laver.”
The linden tree was very popular in Germany as a tavern sign; under
the shadow and in the sweet perfume of the village Linde, old and
young loved to gather to dance and sing. How cozy the inn room looked
at times we may see from his description of the “Crown” in Lindau. A
great bird cage “à loger grand nombre d’oiseaus” was connected with
the woodwork of the comfortable bench that used to surround the big
stove. A look at Dürer’s engraving, “The Dream,” will help our
phantasy to see and feel more clearly the “Gemütlichkeit” of such a
stove-corner. Leaning back in soft cushions, a philistine in
dressing-gown is peacefully dozing, while a beautiful young woman
standing at his side seems to reveal a part of his dream.
The most luxurious hotel Montaigne ever stopped at was one in Rome,
nobly called “Au Vase d’Or.” “As in the palace of kings,” the
furniture was covered with silk and golden brocades. But he did not
feel at home in his royal room, constantly fearing to injure the
costly things, and to get a great bill against him for damages. So he
decided to move to more modest quarters, not without dictating to his
secretary: “M. de Montaigne estima que cette magnificence estoit
non-sulement inutile, mais encore pénible pour la conservation de ces
meubles, chaque lict estant du pris de quatre ou cinq çans escus.”
Most of the Italian inns of his time stood in curious contrast to this
royal sumptuosity. Often the windows were mere holes in the walls,
simply closed with wooden shutters, which darkened the room
completely if one needed to be protected against sun, wind, or rain.
Such was the case of the “Crown” in Siena: “Nous lojames à la
Couronne, assés bien, mais toujours sans vitres et sans chassis. Ces
fenêtres grandes et toute ouvertes, sauf un grand contrevent de bois,
qui vous chasse le jour, si vous en voulez chasser le soleil ou le
vent; ce qu’il trouvoit bien plus insupportable et irremédiable que la
faute des rideaux d’Allemaigne.” This lack of curtains in German
hostelries was still, two hundred and fifty years later, for Victor
Hugo a reason to complain about the “indigence des rideaux.” A real
miserable time Monsieur de Montaigne had in Florence in the
“hostellerie de l’ange,” where certain little creatures drive him out
of bed and force him to sleep on the table: “J’etois forcé la nuit de
dormir sur la table de la salle ou je faisais mettre des matelas et
des draps ... pour éviter les punaises dont tous les lits sont fort
infectés.” A similar experience he has in San Lorenzo, near Viterbo,
the charming little town of countless fountains.
But we must take leave of our noble traveling companion and visit the
painters’ studios of the time to see if we cannot find in their work
pictures of the taverns and signs we have heard so much about.
[Illustration: ·THE·ROWING·BARGE·WALLINGFORD·]