WHAT WAS THE 'FRIDAY CLUB'?- Elizabethan taverns, which also served as restaurants and inns for travellers, also offered private rooms that patrons could rent for eating and drinking, gambling, and as general meeting places
- One of these tavern rooms was rented by a literary group, known as the Friday Street Club, that met on the first Friday of every month at the Mermaid tavern
- It became the gathering place for actors, playwrights, authors and poets
- This a literary club first begun in 1603 and is said to have been started by Sir Walter Raleigh
- The Mermaid Tavern was located in Cheapside, to the east of St. Paul's Cathedral
- It had entrances from both Friday Street and Bread Street hence the name the "Friday Street Club" which was also known as the "Mermaid Club"
- Members of the Friday Street Club included Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Francis Beaumont, John Fletcher. John Donne, Robert Herrick, John Selden and Sir Walter Raleigh
- They met on the first Friday of every month!
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