ABSTRACT
A singular object lingers from the London of 1672. From the Ben Jonson’s Head tavern in Shoe Lane, Fleet Street, survives a token, a small brass coin to be spent in the inn, embellished with a rough engraving of the playwright and the words “BEN. IOHNSONS. HEAD. 1672.”1 Setting aside the transformation of the dramatist’s image into tangible economic currency and the fact that Jonson’s image seems to replace that of the monarch as the somehow transcendent guarantor of true worth and value, this remarkable little object suggests some significant parallels with Jonson’s own theatrical currency in Restoration London and the wider world of the Stuart archipelago.
