This collection of Bear Gardens/Hope Playhouse records is the second digital edition of London area Renaissance and Jacobean playhouses for the REED Online series. We are delighted to acknowledge here the support and expertise of several members of the REED editorial team. Stephanie Hovland, in particular, as a ‘new’ editor is especially grateful for their help in understanding the intricacies of the final stages in the production of a REED collection online.
Tanya Hagen, REED's bibliographer and managing editor, has been an invaluable and supportive companion along the way, first as our research paths converged while she edited the Bear Gardens/Hope bibliographic data for the Early Modern London Theatres website and lately as bibliographic support and production manager of the completed collection. REED's associate editor and paleographer, Patrick Gregory, checked all transcriptions, patiently sorted out our many queries, and contributed Latin translations and glossary entries. REED's research associate, Illya Nokhrin, took primary responsibility for indexing this complex collection and brought initiative to a variety of other technical responsibilities, including the development of the timeline feature. Three graduate research assistants contributed as well: Sara Ameri Mahabadi checked the bibliography, Alexandra Atiya checked the Latin translations and glosses, and Jenna McKellips did content checking and assisted in indexing. Thanks too to Emily Mayne for her translation assistance with the Italian record for Alessandro Magno's Journey in England. Additional help in the archives was provided by post-doctoral research student Michael Powell-Davies, and Professor Sue Wiseman, Birkbeck College, University of London.
As editors of this collection, we have collaborated fully on the Records text and annotations. Individually, Stephanie Hovland contributed the History of the Properties section of the Introduction and Appendices 2 and 4. Sally-Beth MacLean provided the History of Entertainment section of the Introduction and Appendices 1 and 3.
MacLean's long-time collaborator, Byron Moldofsky, deserves special mention for his cartographic skills and ongoing interest in developing a more ambitious project to map not only the Southwark area in historic detail but also the wider London area for more playhouse editions to come. The timeline feature was first developed at his recommendation.
The Bear Gardens/Hope Playhouse collection, like other REED digital editions, would not appear on our screens without the expertise and advice of our former programmer, the late Jamie Norrish, and his successor, Miguel Vieira, Principal Research Software Engineer at King's Digital Lab, with whom we are privileged to work.
The inclusion of manuscript digital images has been made possible through permissions granted by the following archives: The National Archives, The British Library, the London Metropolitan Archives (City of London) and the Parliamentary Archives. Our thanks to Paul Johnson (TNA) and Laurence Ward and Wendy Hawke (LMA) for responding to requests for help with permission to publish transcriptions. We are grateful to Justine Horseman Sewell and Southwark Cathedral for permission to include images from the St Saviour's Vestry Minutes now held at LMA. Special thanks go to Calista Lucy, Keeper of the Archives at Dulwich College, and to Grace Ioppolo, Director of the Henslowe-Alleyn Digitisation Project, who granted permission to link our transcriptions to the professional images on the open access Henslowe-Alleyn website. We want to acknowledge warmly Calista Lucy's welcome and assistance when visiting the Archives at Dulwich College, and similarly we are grateful to the staff of The National Archives, especially to Daniel Gosling, Legal Records Specialist (Early Modern), who advised us on the idiosyncrasies of the records of the Exchequer. Thanks are also due to the staff of the London Metropolitan Archives and of the Surrey History Centre for advice given during our research of their collections.
We are indebted to William Ingram and Alan Nelson, whose generous work on the parish records of St Saviour's Southwark, freely available on the web, has assisted ours in so many ways. Alan also shared with us his spreadsheet of names, dates and occupations culled from St Saviour's parish registers and his transcriptions of letters patent for the Masters of the Bears, Bulls and Mastiff Dogs from 1553 to 1638. We have benefited from encouragement and discussions with many other colleagues over the course of our research and thank them all for their interest and support. This collection has had specific improvements thanks to the helpful suggestions made by our external assessors.
Research for this publication has been supported by several granting agencies to whom MacLean owes lasting gratitude. An Insight grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) funded the initial research phase for the Bear Gardens/Hope and four other playhouses south of the river. The British Academy's ongoing grants for bibliographic work on the Early Modern London Theatres website contributed to comprehensive study of relevant print sources to be linked with our record transcriptions. MacLean's research travel was enabled by several personal grants from Victoria College at the University of Toronto. We also want to acknowledge the help of Christopher Catling, Director, and the generous funding awarded by the Marc Fitch Fund in support of Hovland's work in the UK.
Finally, publication has been made possible by a second Insight grant to MacLean from the SSHRC and a Research Publications grant from Victoria College which supported REED staff work for this edition.
Stephanie Hovland and Sally-Beth MacLean