Sirenaicks, Guilds and a New Coryate Manuscript

Abstract

Abstract While Thomas Coryate (1577–1617) is most often remembered as an eccentric and pioneering travel writer, his other claim to fame is his participation in a group called ‘right Worshipful Fraternitie of Sireniacal Gentlemen’. Often conflated with the ‘Mermaid Club’, this group met monthly at the Mermaid Tavern to eat, drink and trade jesting verses. Coryate’s role in the group was often that of the comic butt, a position that had classical antecedents in the buffoonish roles of the parasite at Greek symposia and the scurra at Roman convivia. However, a previously overlooked manuscript suggests that Coryate had a closer relationship to at least one of the other Sireniacal Gentlemen, John Hoskins, than simply being his club’s object of ridicule. This new evidence prompts a re-examination of the primary sources related to the ‘Sirenaicks’ (as Coryate called them) as well as the scholarship scrutinizing that group. This essay argues that the Sirenaicks organised themselves as a mock-guild and it begins to develop an understanding of how that social structure affected the group’s mode of literary production.