Some question has been made whether Shakespeare was a member of the celebrated convivial club established by Sir Walter Raleigh, and which held its meetings at the Mermaid tavern.  We have nothing that directly certifies his membership of that choice institution; but there are several things inferring it so strongly as to leave no reasonable doubt on the subject.  His conversations certainly ran in that circle of wits some of whom are directly known to have belonged to it; and among them all there is not one whose then acknowledged merits gave him a better title to its privileges.  It does not indeed necessarily follow from his facility and plenipotence of wit in writing, that he could shine at those extempore “flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar.”  But, besides the natural inference that way, we have the statement of honest old Aubrey, that “he was very good company, and of a very ready and pleasant smooth wit.”  Francis Beaumont, who was a prominent member of that jovial senate, and to whom Shirley applies the fine hyperbolism that “he talked a comedy,” was born in 1586, and died in 1615.  I cannot doubt that he had our Poet, among others, in his eye, when he wrote those celebrated lines to Ben Jonson: 

    “Methinks the little wit I had is lost
    Since I saw you; for wit is like a rest
    Held up at tennis, which men do the best
    With the best gamesters.  What things have we seen
    Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have been
    So nimble, and so full of subtile flame,
    As if that every one from whence they came
    Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,
    And had resolv’d to live a fool the rest
    Of his dull life.”

In further token of Shakespeare’s having belonged to this merry parliament of genius, I must quote from Dr. Thomas Fuller, who, though not born till 1608, was acquainted with some of the old Mermaid wits.  In his Worthies of Warwickshire, he winds up his account of the Poet thus:  “Many were the wit-combats betwixt him and Ben Jonson; which two I behold like a Spanish great galleon and an English man-of-war.  Master Jonson, like the former, was built far higher in learning; solid, but slow, in his performances:  Shakespeare, with the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and invention.”

* * * * *

The Poet kept up his interest in the affairs of the company, and spent more or less of his time in London, after ceasing to be an actor.  We have several subsequent notices of his being in the metropolis on business, one of which is a deed of conveyance, executed in March, 1613, and transferring to him and three others a house with a small piece of land for L140; L80 being paid down, and the rest left on bond and mortgage.  The deed bears the Poet’s signature,