1) Around the year 1640, an unknown antiquary was visiting some of the historic sites around London - in his own words "intending to notice the fast ruining places and things that have been passed by or little mentiond" by historians..
2) As part of his survey he visited The Tabard, a famous Southwark inn established in 1307 that stood on the east side of Borough High Street, at the ancient intersection of the two Roman roads of Stane Street and Watling Street..
3) The Tabard was a raucous inn, celebrated for its literary links and quill-twiddling patrons; most famously being the inn where the pilgrims gathered at the beginning of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales written over two centuries earlier..
4) Inside the coaching inn our antiquary was intrigued to see that many of the notable patrons had graffitied their names in the pub's walls over the decades. He made sure to add the details of one rowdy group to his notes...
5) "The Tabard I find to have been the resort of Mastere Will Shakspear, Sir Sander Duncombe, Lawrence Fletcher, Richard Burbage, Ben Jonson and the rest of their roystering associates in King Jameses time as in the large room they have cut their names on the Pannels."
6) Despite surviving the great fire of 1666, The Tabard and its walls with carved signatures of Shakespeare and his literary drinking-friends, burned down on 26 May 1676 in a fire that destroyed most of medieval Southwark.
7) The remarkable reference to Shakespeare and his "roystering associates" at The Tabard lay undiscovered until 2012, when it was spotted by Professor Martha Carlin as she browsed twenty-seven unresearched pages of antiquarian notes in Edinburgh University. (END)
A short interview with Martha Carlin about her discovery of the reference to Shakespeare at The Tabard can be enjoyed here: folger.edu/shakespeare-un…
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