During the reign of England's Queen Elizabeth I from 1558 to 1603, taverns were a popular place for people to socialize, drink and seek entertainment. The tavern in Elizabethan times differed from the modern bar or pub: They served wine but did not serve beer, and were seen as being socially superior to the lower-class alehouse. They were also favorite gathering places for writers and actors, including William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe.
Elizabethan England was a class-conscious society, and taverns had a specific place in the social order. Of all the places someone could go to have a social drink, inns were considered the most respectable because they offered the food and lodging necessary for long-distance trade. Alehouses were the least respectable because they catered to the lower classes. Taverns were in between. Many were unlicensed, and operated out of private houses. They offered fiddle music and other entertainment, sweet wine and a place to smoke tobacco and talk with friends.
Elizabethan England produced some of the most influential poets, writers and playwrights ever to compose in the English language. Many of these men not only knew each other but spent time together socially, and much of that time was spent in the tavern. William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe and other poets and playwrights patronized the Falcon Tavern in London, where Shakespeare and Jonson are said to have engaged in battles of wit. Jonson met with other famous writers such as John Donne and Inigo Jones the first Friday of each month at the Mermaid Tavern. Taverns gained a reputation as places where poets and writers would gather to debate and socialize.
The Elizabethan tavern was a place where men and women could spend time together in public. It was socially acceptable for a woman to go out to a tavern with a man other than her husband as long as she brought friends with her. Women and men smoked, drank and flirted at the tavern. Oddly enough, no English word existed for the new fad of smoking, so Elizabethan people referred to "drinking" tobacco rather than "smoking" it.
Despite the relatively high social status of the Elizabethan tavern, people who patronized such establishments were often rough characters -- including some of the famous writers of the era. Christopher Marlowe was stabbed through the eye and killed in a tavern brawl in 1593. Ben Jonson, famous for both his literary achievements and his fondness for the tavern lifestyle, killed actor Gabriel Spencer in a sword fight. Many taverns were also brothels, usually employing only a single prostitute who could even be the owner of the business. Puritans did not approve of this sort of thing, and in 1604 -- only one year after Queen Elizabeth died -- a law was passed against the "lewd and drunken" behavior found in England's drinking establishments.
