Thomas Heywood The Rape of Lucrece 1608

Thomas Heywood is significant because he does not use Beggars Bush when he might have done, but he does associate beggars with bushes. This song appears to be the source or have a common source with, a later ballad Londons Ordinary which does refer to Beggars Bush.

The gentry to the King’s Head,
The nobles to the Crown,
The knights unto the Golden Fleece,
And to the Plough the clown
. . .
The drunkard to the Vine,
The beggar to the Bush, then meet
And with Duke Humphrey dine.

Heywood (c. 1574–1641) was a writer, player and shareholder who claimed to have had contributed to 220 plays, “many of them by shifting and change of Companies, have been negligently lost, . . . others of them are still retained in the hands of some Actors.”. His works were in common language and written for those “not frequent in Poetry”.

He was associated with the Queen’s Men and the populist Red Bull Theatre. Heywood’s writing was parodied by Francis Beaumont as fit only for the ignorant. He seems to have been born in Lincolnshire and attended Cambridge University, so must have been aware of the Huntingdon Beggars Bush via the Saxton map. He lived in London from 1594 and had the opportunity to know the inns included in the poem. Francis Kirkman remarked “many of his plays being composed and written loosely in taverns, occasions them to be so mean”.

Heywood’s Song

In Heywood’s play the song is said to be listing taverns in Rome. However, half of the names can be found in London at the time of the poem, and all but one within the next half century. Only nine of the twenty-two pairings in Heywood’s song survive in Londons Ordinary, including the first five (one accidentally reversed), and the ladies going to the Feathers. In Heywood’s song the pairings link characters rather than occupations. Although many of the names are reproduced in the later ballad they seem unlikely to have been real associations in either. In Heywood the clowns who go to the Plough, which was an inn name. In the later work the Plow-men go to the Clown. This seems to be an accidental reversal. The original character/name relationship to have arisen from clown being used for ignorant countryman, (similar to Boor in the play Beggars Bush). There is no pub called The Clown before 1809, after Grimaldi became famous. Heywood’s associations are also literary, rather than real. The poets go to the River Po – possibly for the poet Virgil’s birth near the river, but perhaps an allusion to a named room in an ordinary as there is no inn of that name. Heywood would have known that Ben Jonson and his fellow writer’s had been frequenting the Mermaid in Cheapside since 1603.

In Heywood the “punks” go to the Cockatrice, while in London’s Ordinarie there are whores (who go to the Naked Man) and bawds go to the Negro (again not recorded as an inn name, and not an obvious allusion unless this refers back Lucy Negro, the “Abbess of Clerkenwell”). Heywood also refers to the Rose, the Globe, and the Fortune. Each time it is more likely he is referring to the theatres of those names than inns. The Globe, and the Fortune were at that time the only licensed theatres in London, the Rose and others having been ordered to be closed, although the Rose had been used until at least 1605. The Fortune was a theatre and taphouse, and and there is reference to a taphouse at the Globe but neither is recorded for an inn alone until 1636.

Although he may not have referred to a Beggars Bush pub it seems unlikely that Heywood would not have known of the phrase. It was used by John Taylor, who he knew and by other writers with whom he was associated through Philip Henslowe.

London’s Ordinary ends with the pickpocket riding to Holburn to the gallows, while Heywood’s song ends:

The beggar to the Bush, then meet
And with Duke Humphrey dine.

To dine with Duke Humphrey was not to dine at all. This was named after an aisle in Old St Paul’s where the tomb of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, son of Henry IV, frequented by those who were unable to provide for themselves who sought an invitation to eat. Finally, in Heywood’s song there is no Beggars Bush.The bankrupts go to the World’s End, another place name usually regarded as derogatory and sometimes as a place name found near Beggar’s Bush sites. Robert Greene also refers to The Bush as the name of an inn, but in his pamphlet it is the resort of card sharps & coney-catchers.

Full Text

Valerius’s Song from Act II Scene 5

The gentry to the King’s Head,
The nobles to the Crown,
The knights unto the Golden Fleece,
And to the Plough the clown ;
The churchman to the Mitre,
The shepherd to the Star,
The gardener hies him to the Rose,
To the Drum the man of war;
To the Feathers ladies you ; the Globe
The sea-man doth not scorn;
The usurer to the Devil, and
The townsman to the Horn ;
The huntsman to the White Hart,
To the Ship the merchants go ;
But you that do the Muses love
The sign called River Po.
The banquerout to the World’s End,
The fool to the Fortune hie;
Unto the Mouth the oyster-wife,
The fiddler to the Pie,
The punk unto the Cockatrice,
The drunkard to the Vine,
The beggar to the Bush, then meet
And with Duke Humphrey dine.

Text

The Rape of Lucrece in The Old English Drama,London, (1824)

The Rape of Lucrece in Verity, E.W., Thomas Heywood, London, (1888)

Posted: March 19th, 2011 | Filed under: Writers | Tags: Cambridge, Coldharbour, Francis Beaumont, Francis Kirkman, John Taylor, London, Londons Ordinary, Saxton, Southwark, St Giles, derogatory, pubs | No Comments »