Shakespeare, Chaucer, and the Tabard Inn, with Martha Carlin (Rebroadcast)

Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare Unlimited

Folger Shakespeare Library

Arts

4.7 • 837 Ratings

🗓️ 2 August 2022

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What if Shakespeare and his friends had gotten together and carved their names on the wall of an inn made famous by Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales? In 2015, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee history professor Dr. Martha Carlin found an anecdote in a little-known, unpublished manuscript that suggests such a link between these two great English writers. Unfortunately, the Tabard Inn burned down in the great Southwark fire of 1676, so there’s no way of knowing the truth for sure. But even if it only was hearsay, this Shakespeare graffiti story—and the alehouse-centric connection between two writers over 200 years apart that it suggests—captures the imagination. Carlin talks with Rebecca Sheir about the anonymous diarist who wrote the account and what might have drawn Shakespeare and his pals to the Tabard Inn. Dr. Martha Carlin is a professor of history in the College of Letters & Science at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. © Folger Shakespeare Library. This podcast episode, "Betwixt Tavern and Tavern," was published July 15, 2015, and rebroadcast August 2, 2022. It was produced under the supervision of Garland Scott, and is presented with permission of rlpaulproductions, LLC, which created it for the Folger. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster and Esther Ferington. Ben Lauer and Esther French are the web producers. We had help from Lisa Nalbandian at Wisconsin Public Radio.

Transcript

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0:00.0	In 2015, some scribbling on a wall in a bar made news in the Shakespeare world.
0:06.0	The suggestion it made was so remarkable that we're going to bring it to you again.
0:17.9	From the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited.
0:22.3	I'm Michael Whitmore, the Fulcher director.
0:25.1	While the scholarship around Shakespeare's works is voluminous,
0:28.7	we're always eager to learn more about Shakespeare's life,
0:32.2	especially the life he lived as a working theater artist in London.
0:36.6	There is such an intense hunger to know something
0:39.4	about Shakespeare himself that when something turns up, it can generate considerable excitement.
0:45.3	That's what happened in 2015 when one particular item seemed to link Shakespeare with another
0:50.8	man acknowledged as a great writer in English, Jeffrey Chaucer.
0:55.8	As you'll hear, a discovery was made by University of Wisconsin history professor Martha Carlin
1:01.3	that seemed to place Shakespeare, along with several other prominent members of the Elizabethan Litterati,
1:07.3	together drinking at the Tabard Inn, the Roadhouse made famous in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales
1:13.3	two centuries earlier. The story which leans on a little known manuscript and an ancient
1:18.9	piece of graffiti is intriguing to say the least. Dr. Carlin told the story to Rebecca Shear
1:25.9	for this podcast that we call Betwixt Tavern and Tavern.
1:29.9	I want to start with this intriguing discovery you made.
1:32.7	What was it you found?
1:34.1	And then tell us where you found it.
1:36.1	Well, it was a very lucky discovery of an unpublished manuscript.
1:43.6	And the discovery that is of the most fun is a discovery
	...

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