Drinking with Shakespeare: Early Modern Tavern Tokens

Heads up: your bar tab is over 400 years old. Well, the idea of bar tabs is that old, and if you can find an example of a special coin Shakespeare almost certainly carried in his pocket, you can technically still buy the Bard a drink.

I am not a stereotypical drunken writer, but as an artistic fellow at the Folger Shakespeare Library, I came to the Reading Room to work on a historical novel, and while there I became fascinated by Early Modern drinking habits. We artistic fellows have fewer restrictions on our time than scholars do, and part of the joy of being in residence is how the Folger fosters creative discovery. I stumbled upon many unexpected objects and books that enriched my work simply by following a hunch or asking a librarian to open an archival box that caught my eye. One especially rewarding surprise came from exploring tavern/pub culture and how it overlaps with another interest of mine: fake money.

Before I explain the fake money part, it’s important to understand what a big deal taverns were during Shakespeare’s time. Thanks to the Protestant Reformation, church-centered social gatherings, which usually allowed or even endorsed wine and beer drinking, changed drastically—or simply disappeared—in 16th century England. The Church of England preferred to separate sacred activities from putatively “profane” behaviors like alcohol consumption, so as the influence of the Catholic church collapsed across Britain, people needed new places to socialize and share a pint.

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