------------------------------------------------------ https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-95279

Patrons of the Mermaid tavernfree (act. 1611)

Michelle O'Callaghan: 28 September 2006

Patrons of the Mermaid tavern (act. 1611), included a drinking society, the ‘Fraternitie of Sireniacal gentlemen’. According to the early seventeenth-century traveller, writer, and wit, Thomas Coryate, it met the 'first Fridaie of every Moneth, at
the signe of the Mere-Maide in Bread-streete in London' (Traveller for the English Wits, 37). The tavern attracted the patronage of other convivial societies in this period, attesting to well-confirmed habits of formal socializing among the élite in the
West End of early seventeenth-century London. It subsequently achieved fame as the meeting-place of Ben Jonson and his fellow dramatists Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, and other 'heroes and witts of that time' (Aubrey, 2.239).
.
Jonson identified himself with the Mermaid in the 1610s, before taking up residence at the Apollo room of the Devil and St Dunstan tavern on Fleet Street. Beaumont's verse epistle to Jonson, 'The Sun which doth the greatest comfort bring', writes of
.
. what things have we seen
. Done at the Mermaid: heard words that have been
. So nimble, so full of subtil flame
. Then when there hath been thrown
. Wit able enough to justifie the Town
. For three days past, wit that might warrant be
. For the whole City to talk foolishly
. Till that were cancell'd, and when that was gone,
. We left and Air behind us which alone,
. Was able to make the two next Companies
. Right witty; though but downright fools, more wise.

Internal evidence dates the verse epistle to mid-1605, providing further evidence for long-standing if informal drinking and dining societies at the Mermaid, such as the merry dinner attended by Chamberlain, Winwood, and Edmondes in February 1603 (Bland,
165; Letters of John Chamberlain, 1.185). Like Beaumont's epistle, Jonson's writings consistently associate the tavern with poetry and the muses. His 'pure cup of rich Canary wine' eulogized in one of the first English symposiastic lyrics, 'Inviting a
Friend to Supper', comes from the Mermaid; in his exuberant burlesque On the Famous Voyage the two 'knights', Sheldon, probably Thomas or Sir Ralph Sheldon, and Heydon, possibly Sir Christopher Heyden.
.
The development of an English symposiastic tradition that integrated poetry, wine-drinking, and convivial practices during the seventeenth century culminated in Gifford's account of the Mermaid Club, in which the tavern took its place in literary history
as the birthplace of the eighteenth-century literary club. Gifford's Mermaid Club probably inspired John Keats to visit the tavern some time before February 1818, and he had Beaumont's epistle in mind when he wrote his 'Lines on the Mermaid Tavern' ('
Souls of poets dead and gone'). Both Gifford and Keats lie behind Alfred Noyes's Tales of the Mermaid Tavern (1913); a nostalgic reworking of a vision-poem, it imagines, in Beaumont's words, 'what things have we seen / Done at the Mermaid' when Ralegh,
Jonson, [MARLO]we, Shakespeare, Robert Greene, Thomas Dekker, and other Elizabethan dramatists and poets were gathered in the one room.
------------------------------------------------------ http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/jonson/supper.htm

. . "Inviting a Friend to Supper" by Ben Jonson

. Yet shall you have, t[O] rectifie your pa[L]ate,
. An olive, cape[R]s, or some better s[A]llad
. Ushring the [M]utton ; with a short-leg'd hen,
. If we can get her, full of eggs, and then,
. Limons, and wine for sauce : to these, a coney
. Is not to be despair'd of, for our money ;
. And, though fowle, now, be scarce, yet there are clerkes,
. The skie not falling, {T}h{I}n{K}e we may have lar{K}es.
.{I}'ll {T}ell you of more, and lye, so you will come :
. Of partrich, pheasant, wood-cock, of which so[M]e
. May yet be there ; and godwit, if we c[A]n :
. Knat, raile, and ruffe too. How so e'e[R], my man
. Shall reade a piece of VIRGI[L], TACITUS,
. LIVIE, or of some better bo[O]ke to us,
. Of which wee'll speake our minds, amidst our meate ;
. And I'll professe no verses to repeate :
. To this, if ought appeare, which I know not of,
. That will the pastrie, not my paper, show of.
.
{KIT}. . -2, 3
[MARLO] -15, 29 : Prob. of 2 [MARLO]s ~ 1 in 2,000 ------------------------------------------------------
Art Neuendorffer

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