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The Mermaid Tavern was a drinking and dining establishment located between lower Bread Street and Friday Street, with entrances to both. Its location corresponds to the place between these two streets on current day London’s Cannon Street (Glinert).
diuers faire Innesand that the area was
wholely inhabited by rich Marchants(Stow 1598, sig. T5r). The Mermaid Tavern was not far from Old Fish Street and the Blackfriars Theatre (Chalfant).
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The Mermaid Tavern was a drinking and dining establishment located between lower Bread Street and Friday Street, with entrances to both. Its location corresponds to the place between these two streets on current day London’s Cannon Street (Glinert).
diuers faire Innesand that the area was
wholely inhabited by rich Marchants(Stow 1598, sig. T5r). The Mermaid Tavern was not far from Old Fish Street and the Blackfriars Theatre (Chalfant). The first possible mention of a tavern with that name on Bread Street is in the will of an early fifteenth-century vintner named
mancion that is cleped the Mermaid in Bredstreete(Ackroyd). The first confirmed mention of the establishment during the Elizabethan period is in pamphlets associated with the Christmas revels of the Middle Temple in
The tavern is particularly associated with a number of important Elizabethan and Jacobean literary figures, most prominently
But that, which most doth take my Muse, and mee, / Is a pure cup of rich Canary-wine, / Which is the Mermaids, now, but shall be mine(Jonson ll.28-30). Student and devoted member of the
(Beaumont).what things have we seen / Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have been / So nimble, and so full of subtile flame
Three Cranes, Miter, and Mermaid(Jonson).
The Mermaid has come to be synonymous with writers and their propensity to drink, and as a location it has stood in as a convenient marker for the literary brilliance of late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century literature. As the supposed site of conversation, argument, and fraternity amongst
An host may gather in dark St. Paul’s / To salve their souls from sin; / But the Light may be where(Noyes).two or three/ Drink Wine in the Mermaid Inn