Boar's Head Inn
Appearance
The Eastcheap Boar's Head Inn in 1829, shortly before demolition. The original Boar's Head sign is in the centre of the building, which was no longer an inn. On the ground floor are a perfume shop and a hat shop.
51°30′38.41″N 0°5′1.78″W / 51.5106694°N 0.0838278°W
51°30′38.41″N 0°5′1.78″W / 51.5106694°N 0.0838278°W
The Boar's Head Inn is the name of several former and current
Shakespeare's Henry IV plays. An earlier tavern in Southwark used the same name, and an inn of the name in Whitechapel was used as a theatre
.
A number of other taverns and inns have since used the name, typically with reference to Shakespeare.
In London
Eastcheap
The Boar's Head Tavern on
Falstaff and his friends in the early 15th century. The landlady is Mistress Quickly. It was the subject of essays by Oliver Goldsmith and Washington Irving. Though there is no evidence of a Boar's Head inn existing at the time the play is set, Shakespeare was referring to a real inn that existed in his own day. Established before 1537, but destroyed in 1666 in the Great Fire of London, it was soon rebuilt and continued operation until some point in the late 18th century, when the building was used by retail outlets. What remained of the building was demolished in 1831.[1] The boar's head sign was kept, and is now installed in the Shakespeare's Globe theatre.[2]
The site of the original inn is now part of the approach to
Nicholas Pevsner described it as "one of the maddest displays in London of gabled Gothic brick." Ian Nairn called it "the scream you wake on at the end of a nightmare."[4]
Others
There was another
Boar's Head Inn, at Whitechapel, the courtyard of which was used from 1557 onwards as an inn-yard theatre to stage plays, known as the Boar's Head Theatre. It was refurbished in 1598–1599.[5]
There was yet another
Sir John Fastolf, who is the source for the character-name of Falstaff.[6]
While the Eastcheap Boar's Head Inn is not known to have existed during the reign of Henry IV, this inn may have.
Other Boar's Head establishments
This section needs additional citations for verification. (March 2019) |
The Boar's Head Inn in Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, England, is a historic building dating to the 16th or 17th century.[7]
The Boar's Head Resort of Charlottesville, Virginia, US, a hotel and resort owned by the University of Virginia, is also known as the "Boar's Head Inn".
There is a Boar's Head Pub in Stratford, Ontario, Canada, where an annual Shakespeare Festival is held.
See also
References
- ^ Henry C. Shelley, Inns and Taverns of Old London, Boston, L.C. Page, 1909, p.21.
- ^ Asbury, Nick, White Hart Red Lion: The England of Shakespeare's Histories, Oberon, 2013, p.52.
- ^ Crawford, David, The City of London: its architectural heritage: the book of the City of London's heritage walks, Woodhead-Faulkner, 1976, p.56.
- ^ Christopher Hibbert et al, The London Encyclopedia, Macmillan, 2011, p.263.
- ^ Herbert Berry, The Boar's Head Playhouse, Associated University Presses, 986, pp.81 ff.
- ^ Wm. E. Baumgaertner, Squires, Knights, Barons, Kings: War and Politics in Fifteenth Century England, Trafford Publishing, 2010, chapter "Sir John Fastolf".
- ^ "Bishop's Stortford". An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in Hertfordshire. London: Royal Commission on Historical Monuments. 1910. pp. 62–66 – via British History Online.