Verses
Over the Door Painted on a 33″ × 27″ (84 × 68.5 cm) wide panel
still preserved in Child & Co. and now part of The Royal Bank of
Scotland), 1 Fleet Street. The panel has been repainted, but the
original lettering is still visible as an embossment. See Textual
Archive, Electronic Edition. The verses were formerly found in or over
the entry to the Apollo Room on the first floor of the Devil and St
Dunstan Tavern, which was bought by Child & Co. in 1787 and
demolished in 1788. See Burn (
1855), 100–5, F. G. H. Price (
1902), 106–10, and
Esdaile (
1943).
The painted terracotta bust of Apollo which was also over the entrance
to the room still survives. See Illustration 77. The room itself was
frequently alluded to as a location for ideal conviviality by Jonson’s
followers: see
Und. 47.74n., Marmion,
A
Fine Companion, sig. D3v. By the later seventeenth century it
had become a little quaint to claim to have quaffed wit and wine there:
Oldwit in Shadwell’s
Bury Fair (1689), p. 6 claims ‘I
was created Ben Johnson’s Son, in the Apollo.’ [Editor: Colin Burrow]
6 Cf. the proverb
in vino
veritas, ‘in wine there is is truth’ (
Tilley, W465).
8 Sim Simon
Wadloe (buried 30 Mar. 1627), first known as the landlord of the Devil
Tavern from 1609 (Burn,
1855, 101). Cf.
Staple, 2.5.127–30 and n.
An old ballad with the chorus ‘Says old Simon the King’ is recorded by
Burn (
1855),
103.