SHAKESPEARE DISCOVERY

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 7446, 22 May 1911, Page 8

SHAKESPEARE DISCOVERY

MERMAID TAVERN HOST, Lord Howard de Welden lectured before tbe British Empire Shakespeare Society at the Haymarket Theatre (says the "Daily Telegraph") on “Some Reflections on Shakespeare’s Historical Plays.” He said that by accident he had come across a little piece of information about the host of the Mermaid Tavern. He did not think that it was known who was the landlord of the Mermaid during Shakespeare’s time, bat a friend of his lordship, .while looking for something else, found an interesting gloss on the genealogy in the British Museum of one, Peter Ellis, who was admitted as an attorney in 1616, and died about 1637. Ho devoted tho'greater part of his time to certain genealogies of North Welsh clans. Among the clans to which be himself belonged was a certain family of Lloyds. There was a gloss on John Lloyd in the genealogy to the effect that-his wife was a maltster's widow, of Henley-on-Thames, and ho had issue Richard Lloyd, of the Mermaid Inn, Cheapside. It was a little difficult to date Richard Lloyd, but he appeared to have been born somewhere about 1557. That put Richard Lloyd too late for'the Shakespearian period, but it is quite conceivable that he may have succeeded his father at the Mermaid. (Applause.) It was possible that a Lloyd played the part of Pistol, and married Mistress Quickly, of the Mermaid. It was not an unjustifiable speculation to think that the host of the Mermaid, or one of his friends, provided the material from which Shakespeare drew the character of Fluellen, and got the idea of ths songs sung in Welsh by Glendower’s daughter. They knew that Shakespeare derived, a certain knowledge of French through lodging with a Huguenot family, and it was. a reasonable speculation that it was through the Lloyds that he got his undoubted knowledge of the Welsh people.