In taverna con Shakespeare

‘The white bear’, ‘The lion rampant’, ‘The swan’, ‘The miter’, ‘The mermaid’, are some of the innumerable taverns that displayed their signs in the London of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Inside, drinking sherry, Madeira wine and beer, perhaps accompanied by eggs or a plate of anchovies, sat not only men of toil and women of ill repute, but also groups of literati, authors of theater that transformed the inns into real seats of ‘literary clubs‘: ‘La mitria’ was the base of the classicists, for example, and ‘La sirena’ the den of the more modern euphuist school and, sometimes, disputes moved to the front of their respective premises and were resolved with the edge of the sword, instead of at the point of a pen. Among them a young provincial author, who had just moved to London, made his debut: he was William Shakespeare who, shortly afterwards, by observing the environments and the protagonists, would create the most famous prince of taverns in all literature, John Oldcastle, alias Falstaff. In Taverna con  Shakespeare by Roberto Carretta is like a banquet, a real topos in the works of the bard of Stratford, an occasion for consuming revenge, hatching plots, refining dynastic and amorous strategies, and which is usually the central moment of the plot, the initial and final scenario of many events.