Documentary evidence from the mid-sixteenth century confirms that bear- and bullbaiting were likely the earliest forms of popular entertainment on Bankside, apart from the notorious brothels that had lined the south bank of the river since at least the fourteenth century. In fact, a seventy-seven-year-old witness named John Taylor in a 1620 court case recalled that there had been four bearbaiting arenas at various locations in Southwark over the course of decades.
The complexity of these locations and their ownership has been addressed in the previous chapter; see the Introduction: History of the Properties. The focus here will be on the rising popularity of animal sports by the sixteenth century; the attempted combination with professional playhouse performances initiated by Philip Henslowe at the Hope in 1614, and the gradual decline and eventual closure and demolition of such venues during the Interregnum.
Some may have railed against bearbaitings at the time, but for at least three decades that was the main game on the south bank, and likely a lucrative one too. Much of the audience may have come across the river by ferry or on foot but there was also a long string of inns along the high street of Southwark leading to London Bridge, including the famous Tabard where Chaucer’s pilgrims gathered before their trek to Canterbury. Although the records and literary allusions to bearbaiting in Southwark do not begin until the mid-sixteenth century, there is plenty of earlier evidence in the provinces for royal and noble patronage of touring bearwards and their bears by the second half of the fifteenth century. Some of the northern earls and the Yorkist kings in particular seem to have had an appetite for this type of spectacle which evidently found popular audiences on the road beyond their own private residences.
The first authoritative record of bearbaiting on Bankside comes from a royal proclamation on 13 April 1546, primarily directed towards the suppression of the brothels that had helped to establish the south bank of the Thames as an illicit attraction for medieval Londoners. Almost as an aside, the following attempt was made to also stop another form of entertainment in the same neighbourhood:
The Kinges maiestie straightlie chargeth and Comaundeth that from the feast of Easter next ensuing, there shall noe Bearebating be vsed in that Rowe, [ie, Bankside] or in any place, on that side the bridge, called Londonbridge, whereby the accustomed assemblies, may be in that place cleerely abolished and extinct, vpon like paine, aswell to them that keepe the Beares, and Dogges, which haue byn vsed to that purpose, as to all such as will resort to see the same.
Just how determined that act of repression was can be judged by two licenses issued by Henry VIII later the same year to Thomas Fluddie, yeoman of the king's bears, to bait and 'make pastyme at the stews ... notwithstanding the proclamacion,' and to John Allen, yeoman of the Prince's Bears, to do the same 'in Southwarke or thereaboutes.'
There is an oft-quoted eyewitness account of the varied animal sports already on offer in this period both for local Londoners and, in this case, a continental visitor. In 1544 a Spanish nobleman, Don Manriquez de Lara, third duke of Nájera (1504–57/8), visited the English court. Among the hospitable amusements described by his secretary, who wrote the account, was a trip to 'an inclosure', possibly an arena of some sort on the south bank, where bearbaiting was much enjoyed:
In another part of the city we saw seven bears, some of them of a great size. They are led out every day to an inclosure, where being tied with a long rope, large and intrepid dogs are thrown to them, in order that they may bite, and make them furious. It is no bad sport to see them fight, and the assaults they give each other. To each of the large bears are matched three or four dogs, which sometimes get the better, and sometimes are worsted, for besides the fierceness and great strength of the bears to defend themselves with their teeth, they hug the dogs with their paws so tightly, that, unless the masters came to assist them, they would be strangled by such soft embraces. Into the same place they brought a pony with an ape fastened on its back, and to see the animal kicking amongst the dogs, with the screams of the ape, beholding the curs hanging from the ears and neck of the pony, is very laughable.'
There is pictorial evidence to corroborate such 'inclosures' in the mid-sixteenth century, though the earliest, in a c 1560 copperplate map of the Bankside area, has not survived. Instead we have a later version of the original, commonly referred to as the 'Agas' map, which shows two arenas, labelled 'The bolle bayting' and 'The Bearebayting,' both approximately located in the Pike Gardens, also visible below.. We can assume that significant artistic license has been taken but it is certainly possible that two enclosures of some sort existed around that time in approximately the same area, perhaps those leased by John Allen and William Payne in the 1550s. Very little is known about either of these arenas, including their operators or their size, structure and permanence.
1633, Traditionally attributed to Ralph Agas, based on a c 1560 original copperplate view of London (most sections now lost). London Picture Archive, https://www.londonpicturearchive.org.uk. By kind permission of London Metropolitan Archives, City of London.
According to Taylor, the third venue for animal baiting (designated by W.W. Braines as Bear Garden no 3), was located at the south end of the Bell and Cock property on Bankside. This was the property leased to William Payne by Bishop Stephen Gardiner in 1540 and subsequently leased to Edward Wistowe. This bearbaiting arena, which became known as 'Payne's Standings,' may have been first erected c 1557 by Payne and/or Simon Poulton, appointed yeoman of the bears in 1557.Bowsher suggests that low scaffolds were erected as viewing stands, 'likely no more than 50 or 60 feet (15–18m) in exterior diameter.' The outer court faced the Thames with the entrance through the Bell and Cock buildings.
In 1562 another continental visitor offered a description of one of these early Bear Gardens. On his journey to England in August of that year, a young Venetian merchant named Alessandro Magno noted in his journal a visit to Bankside where he observed pens for perhaps 200 dogs, bears, and bulls, and in their midst 'an open circular space surrounded by stands with their awnings for the sun and the rain, where every Sunday in the training of these dogs people find great entertainment.' The charge at the entrance was one penny for standing and two pence for places in the stands. The baitings, which included a monkey on a horse, began at the vesper hour in the late afternoon (approximately 4pm) and continued into the evening.
Only very occasional mishaps have surfaced on record in the first decades of Bankside bearbaiting, despite the potential for violence if the wild animals broke loose from their captors. In 1554 Henry Machyn noted an incident in his diary that ended in the death of a bystander, bitten on the leg by a blind bear on the run. While this may have caused some gossip at the time, there is no evidence of any other such consequences. Over two decades later, however, John Napton, an evident miscreant deputy keeper at Payne's Standings, was brought before the assizes for bearbaiting on the sabbath. He was also criticized for demanding large sums of money from spectators and allowing his bears and dogs to run amok amongst them, with some loss of life and undoubted trauma.
It is noteworthy, however, that the authorities did not appear to intervene or attempt to regulate this form of entertainment, popular as it was for all levels of society. For example, when the privy council issued orders of restraint during the time of plague in 1574 and 1578, bearbaiting was not singled out for attention along with plays and players. What roused official condemnation was the disastrous collapse of Payne's Standings at the third Bear Garden on Sunday, 13 January 1582/3. The first official notice comes in the lord mayor of London's letter of 14 January to Lord Burghley regarding 'a greate mysshappe at Parise gardeine, where by ruyn of all the scaffoldes at once, ysterdaie a greate nombre of people, are some presentlie slayne, and some maymed and greavouslie hurte, It giveth greate occasion to acknowledge the hande of god for suche abuse of the sabboth daie.' The bearbaiting arenas were commonly referred to as Paris Garden, even though they were all located east of the manor. William Lambarde, for example, describing the habits of pleasure-seekers in the London area in 1570, refers to 'suche as goe to Parisgardein, the Bell Sauage, or some other suche common place, to beholde Beare bayting, Enterludes, or Fence playe.' It is possible that many spectators from London arrived by water via the Paris Garden stairs along the river close to Bankside, resulting in the misleading name association.
Burghley's letter in response picks up the mayor's interpretation of the event as the result of profaning the Sabbath, and encourages prohibition of such assemblies on the customary Sundays henceforth. Without ruling bearbaiting out entirely, he suggests that 'if it shalbe requisite to haue such like worldly pastimes I think some other daie within the weke meeter for those purposes.' The mayor followed up rapidly with an order to the aldermen of the city wards on 16 January, forbidding London residents to 'goe or resorte to any playes enterludes tumblinges beare or bulbaytinges or [[wyne]] anye vnlaufull games plaies pastimes or exercises vpon eny the saboth daies either within this Cittie or within two milles of the same.' However zealous his efforts, apparently the order did not have the desired impact: a subsequent letter to Sir Frances Walsingham expresses the lord mayor's ongoing frustration at the resort of people attending 'playes beare bayting fencers and prophane spectacles at the Theatre and Curtaine and other like places to which doe resorte great multitudes of the basist sort of people; and many enfected with sores runing on them being out of our iurisdiction and some whome we cannot discerne by any diligence.' The appeal of bearbaiting was apparently irresistible.
The most vivid accounts of the disaster published the same year, with multiple reprintings, come from two Protestant writers, their disapproval unleashed by what was interpreted as an act of God. Philip Stubbes, in his Anatomy of Abuses, provides an estimate of the size of the audience that could be accommodated at the Bear Garden:
[W]hen they were all come together, and mounted aloft vpon their scaffolds, and galleries, and in middest of al their iolytie & pastime, all the whole building (not one stick standing) fell down with a most wonderfull and fearefull confusionn So, that either two or three hundred men, wemen, and childrenn (by estimationn), wherof seuen were killed dead, some were wounded, some lamed, and othersome brused and crushed, almost to the death. Some had their braines dasht out, some their heads all to squasht, some their legges broken, some their arms, some their backs, some their shoulders, some one hurt, some another.
A more detailed glimpse of the doomed structure is provided by the puritan preacher John Field in A godly exhortation:
Being thus vngodlilie assembled, to so vnholy a spectacle and specially considering the time: the yearde, standinges, and Galleries beinge full fraught, beinge nowe amiddest their iolitie, when the Dogs and Beare, were in their cheefest battell.... This Gallerie that was double, and compassed the yarde round about, was so shaken at the foundation, that it fell flat to the ground, without poste or peece, that was left standing, so high as the stake whereunto the Beare was tyed.
There are documentary clues for the rapid rebuilding and improved stability of the Bear Garden on the Bell and Cock property. Before 1583 the sub-lease of the property had been transferred by Morgan Pope to Edward Bowes, with William Glover deputized to operate the bearbaiting enterprise. The interrogatories in the 1620 court case suggest that the rebuilding featured galleries 'larger in Circuit & compasse then the fformer called Mr Payne’s Standing.' Bear Garden no 3, according to Braines' designation, must have been newly built before 3 July 1583, because of a disgruntled reference in another letter from the lord mayor to the privy council: 'Wherof god hath in his iudgement shewed a late terrible example at Paris garden in which place in great contempt of god, the scaffoldes ar new builded.'
John Norden (1548–1625?). Speculum Britanniae (London, 1593), plate facing leaf E2 verso: map of London. Call #: STC 18635. Used by permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Fresh pictorial evidence of the rebuilt Bear Garden is provided by two contemporary views drawn by John Norden, the first version published in 1593, is illustrated here. The second, from the inset map of London included in his 1600 panorama of the city, also shows part of Southwark's Bankside area. The 'Beare howse' appears south of Bankside and just north-west of the 'The play howse,' also known as the Rose, newly renovated by 1592 on the north side of Maid Lane. Allowing as always for artistic license here, the Bear Garden is depicted as a circular structure, with an entrance from the south side and adjacent buildings on the east side. An eyewitness description from the 1580s confirms that there were three galleries. In 1584–5 a German nobleman from Pomerania named Lupold Von Wedel (1544–1615) visited England and Scotland, keeping a journal of his travels. On 23 August 1584 he described a visit to the rebuilt bearbaiting arena on Bankside, translated from the original as follows:
On the 23rd [of August] we went across the bridge to the above-mentioned town. There is a round building three stories high, in which are kept about a hundred large English dogs, with separate wooden kennels for each of them. These dogs were made to fight singly with three bears, the second bear being larger than the first, and the third larger than the second. After this a horse was brought in and chased by the dogs, and at last a bull, who defended himself bravely. The next was, that a number of men and women came forward from a separate compartment, dancing, conversing and fighting with each other: also a man who threw some white bread among the crowd, that scrambled for it. Right over the middle of the place a rose was fixed, this rose being set on fire by a rocket: suddenly lots of apples and pears fell out of it down upon the people standing below. Whilst the people were scrambling for the apples, some rockets were made to fall down upon them out of the rose, which caused a great fright but amused the spectators. After this, rockets and other fireworks came flying out of all corners, and that was the end of the play.
The remains of this building have not been fully excavated although in 1996 a Museum of London Archaeology team did some initial work in the area. Most significantly, they identified a site named as 'Building 12' that may have been the rebuilt Bear Garden 3:
Building 12 may have been a 12-sided polygon with a diameter of c 16.0m (52ft 6in), smaller than the Rose playhouse (c 22.0m or 73ft) which was built some four years later. Although there is no evidence of the width of the galleries from which people would have watched a baiting, it would seem that the diameter of the baiting area itself would have been quite small -- a surrounding gallery width of 3.0m (10ft) would only have allowed a baiting area of about 10m (33ft). This would have been both an intimidating and exhilarating arena in which to watch animals being baited and one in which the safety of the spectaors could be regularly in doubt. The recovery of dog and horse bones -- albeit from undated contexts -- to the west of Building 12 may provide evidence of the documented pond for dead dogs, although evidence was not found of the pond itself.'
Reconstruction of Hope/Bear Garden 4 in relation to Bear Garden 3, Mackinder et al, Hope Playhouse, fig 17. Post-Restoration Bear Garden 5 is also shown. © MOLA
The size of some of the dog bones suggests they belonged to mastiffs, commonly used for baiting, but perhaps surprisingly no bear bones were discovered.
The rebuild must have involved considerable investment and promise of a good return. In June 1584 William Napton estimated that Bowes’ bears, bulls, apes, lion and dogs were valued at more than £200 and said that Bowes took the ‘whole benifitt’ of the Bear Garden. Thomas Sewall bore witness to a discussion with William Cudworth, the yeoman of the bears, who estimated the ‘gayn’ to be some £60 between mid-April and mid-June.
By 1586 the vestry members of St Saviour's parish recognized the ongoing enterprise at the Bear Garden within their boundaries and apparently determined for the first time to request that Morgan Pope, the current lease holder, pay 6s 8d in tithes to the church, both retroactively once and then ongoing annually. Pope held leases on both the Bell and Cock and the Unicorn where the adjacent dogyard was located, as the vestry minutes record.
Among the numerous property transactions documented in the Records and summarized in the History of the Properties chapter, is a 1590 indenture transferring the lease of the Bear Garden and its adjacent grounds from Captain Thomas Burnaby to Richard Reve, deputized to run the operation there by the master of the Bears, Bulls, and Mastiff Dogs. Attached to the indenture is a 'scedule' of the bears, bulls, horse and ape (with their monetary values) that came with the property. Here is a rare glimpse of the performing bears and bulls whose individual names suggest a cast list of sorts for this type of popular entertainment: 'one greate beare called harry of Tame,' worth £8, 'one blacke Bull called Danyell,' worth £4, 'one old she beare called Nan,' worth 30s, and so on. These animals were valuable assets and must have often gotten the better of the numerous mastiff dogs who were also part of the show but not listed in the 'scedule.' An earlier French eyewitness account, translated here, describes the action:
[O]ne can see there fights between large mastiffs and a bear, a bull, a frost-nailed horse and an ape. These are held after dinner on feast-days and sometimes during the week when there are fairs. I have sometimes seen 14 mastiffs at once set loose against a bear which, seizing six of them at a time, clenched them so hard between his arms that he suffocated two of them, the others being overjoyed to flee, with some difficulty, and not to return. The pleasure of a bull fight comes from when the bull is able to seize a mastiff (the mastiffs used in these fights are particularly big) using its horns; it throws the mastiff high up into the air and the mastiff, falling to the ground, either dies or breaks a limb, and so is no longer of any worth.
Such was the appeal of these spectacles that the privy council would move to protect the Bear Garden's monopoly on Sunday as the weekly date for entertainment there. As the number and popularity of playhouses increased, and with Henslowe's Rose opening in 1587 virtually across a lane from the Bear Garden, there was competition to lure audiences elsewhere. As a result, in July 1591, the privy council directed the following complaint to the lord mayor and JPs of Middlesex and Surrey:
Whereas heretofore there hathe ben order taken to restraine the playinge of Enterludes and playes on the Sabothe daie, Notwithstandinge the which (as wee are enformed), the same ys neglected to the prophanacion of this daie, and all other daies of the weeke in divers places the players doe vse to Recyte theire plaies to the great hurt and destruction of the game of Beare Baytinge and lyke pastymes which are maynteyned for her maiestes pleasure yf occacion require: These shalbe therefore to Requiere yow not onlie to take order hereafter that there maie no plaies Interludes or Commodyes be vsed or publicklie made and shewed either on the Sondaie or on the Thursdaies, because on the Thursdayes those other games vsuallie haue ben allwayes accustomed and practized.'
This intervention provides evidence that a second customary day for bearbaiting had developed in recent years, so both Thursdays as well as Sundays were to be reserved for animal sports. When von Wedel visited the Bear Garden on 23 August 1584, the baiting was held on a Thursday. An otherwise undated (and very rare) bill survives in the Henslowe-Alleyn papers advertizing that 'a great match' at the Bear Garden was to be held on a Thursday. However, surviving reports from foreign visitors suggest that other days may have allowed occasional openings. Further, royal pleasure in such entertainment ensured more protection by authorities than perhaps was the case for the sometimes controversial new theatre industry. Such protection from the authorities did not extend to one year of severe plague, however. In January 1592/3 bearbaiting for the first time was not excluded from the list of prohibited entertainments known to draw the public assemblies prone to spreading infection. Numerous further privy council orders attempting to control playhouses and their audiences followed between 1593/4 through 1605, including 1604, a year of severe plague, but bearbaiting was not singled out for restriction.
It is possible that Richard Reve, deputy at the Bear Garden from 1590, may have also been impacted by the local crisis arising from the apprentices' riot in Southwark in June 1592. In August his name appears in the commissioner of sewers' reports, pleading incapacity to pay a fine outstanding from his predecessors:
Whereas Morgan Pope or (blank) Napton and Captaine Barnaby were amerced att xxxv s. for defaultes done att the bearegarden wharfe, long before the tyme of Richard Reve now Tenaunte of the bearegarden; The Commissioners att the humble suite of the sayd Richard Reve and as the sayd Richard protesteth he is not able to pay[ne] the fyne; by reason he was commaunded to departe into the country with his game, to his great hinderaunce and almost vndoing, and for that the faultes were done before he came to the garden remitted the fyne.
A privy council letter issued on 23 June had forbidden 'vnlawfull assemblies' or any 'other sorte of vnlawfull or forbidden Pastymes that drawe togeather the baser sorte of people from hence forth vntill the feast of St michaell.' It seems that even the Bear Garden may have been closed for a period as a result, with financial consequences for Reve. However, he may have been back in action there by Tuesday, 1 September, when a special bearbaiting was requested by Frederick, duke of Wurttemberg.
Unsurprisingly, records of profits made at the three Bear Gardens are mostly unavailable for the earliest decades of operation. Even speculation based on attendance once a week is futile as the number of spectators cannot be calculated from the few broad references that survive. As Brownstein summarizes: 'Baiting attendance figures are few, general, and of questionable authority. Crowley says that "two or three hundred" attended baitings in about 1550 ... John Field says that "above a thousand" were in the stands that collapsed in 1583.' However, we are safe to assume that the Bear Garden rebuilt in 1583 had greater audience capacity and that its ongoing success may have attracted Philip Henslowe's interest when or even before he opened his first playhouse nearby at the Rose in 1587: for a fuller discussion of his career see Rose Playhouse, Introduction: Philip Henslowe, Theatrical Entrepreneur and Man of Property. By 1594 the evidence suggests that he and his actor son-in-law, Edward Alleyn, had conceived of a plan to expand their entertainment enterprise by acquiring the lease of the Bear Garden itself in 1594, and subsequently the lease of the Bell and Cock property and the adjacent Unicorn land where the dog yard and other buildings to house the bears and bulls were located. Alleyn also purchased the office of deputy in 1594 in order to take an active role in managing the bearbaiting on Bankside. He noted in his memorandum book the not inconsiderable cost of the Bear Garden lease as £200, with a further £250 for the license. Half the interest in this bearbaiting enterprise and property he then shared with Henslowe.
However, the partners had an even more ambitious goal, to be appointed joint masters of the Bears, Bulls, and Mastiff Dogs, a lucrative royal office that would remain out of reach until 1604 when they obtained it from Sir William Stewart at significant cost of £450. The master had a number of privileges beyond the lustre of the court appointment. There was a reward each time a baiting was held at one of the royal palaces such as Whitehall – and the queen, nobility, and foreign visitors did delight in this type of entertainment. The master also had sole right to license the many touring bearwards on the provincial circuits, while also receiving a percentage of their profits. And then there were the profits from the Bear Garden itself, as well as from the breeding and sale of mastiffs. There were expenses too, of course, but no longer would they have to pay someone else £40 annually for the right to bait bears at the Bear Garden.
Even as the Rose playhouse aged and was finally abandoned by 1605, Henslowe and Alleyn maintained their stake in the Bankside entertainment area. Although the focus of their theatrical investment shifted across the river to the new Fortune playhouse, opened in 1600 in Finsbury just north of the city walls, they improved the Bear Garden site in 1606 by demolishing the old Bell and Cock building at its entrance to the north and erecting a new two and a half storey gatehouse which became known as the Dancing Bears. The building contract on 2 June 1606 with Peter Street survives allowing a conjectural plan of the complex to be drawn.
Walter Godfrey’s Conjectural Plan of the 1606 Bear Garden Gatehouse, Lawrence and Godfrey, ‘Bear Garden Contract,’ p 154.
The plan illustrates the several purposes of the new building: a tenement, likely for the deputy bearward; a study or office to be used by Henslowe and Alleyn; and, as Lawrence and Godfrey suggest, ‘the greater part of the gatehouse proper, with its ample, well-lit spaces ... devoted to the purposes of a taphouse.’ The gateway itself featured a large window projecting above, supported by two carved satyrs – an impressive approach from the Bankside to the inner courtyard that would continue to be used even after the Bear Garden arena (3) on the site was demolished. The size of the weekly audiences remains unknown for this period but the type of entertainment offered at the Bear Garden was likely constant. It may be relevant to note here the rare survival of a playbill in the Henslowe-Alleyn archive advertising coming attractions for an undated event in the early seventeenth century:
Tomorrowe beinge Thursdaie shalbe seen at the Beargardin on the banckside a greate Mach plaid by the (gamesters) of Essex who hath chalenged all comers what soeuer to plaie v dogges at the single beare for v pounds and also to wearie a bull dead at the stake and for your better content shall (have) plasant sport with the horse and ape (for the) whiping of the (blind) beare.
The traditional days of the week for bearbaiting were likely affected by the arrival of James I on the throne in 1603, as the following proclamation, issued 7 May 1603, suggests:
And for that we are informed, that there hath bene heretofore great neglect in this Kingdome of keeping the Sabbath day: For better observing of the same, and avoyding of all impious prophanation of it, wee do straightly charge and commaund, that no Beare-bayting, Bul-bayting, Enterludes, common Playes, or other like disordered or unlawful Exercises or Pastimes be frequented, kept or used, at any time hereafter upon any Sabbath day.
Certainly Edward Alleyn included the restraint on traditional Sunday baitings in a c 1607 petition from Henslowe and himself to the king, seeking to reinforce their rights and fees as joint masters of the Bears, Bulls, and Mastiff Dogs, while also complaining of the high costs of acquiring the office from Sir William Stewart and loss of income from closures enforced during extended times of sickness.
Although Henslowe noted play performances with dates and his share of the gate, whether at the Rose or the Fortune, for over a decade in his diary, the same accounting does not survive for the Bear Garden. There is only one slim record late in the manuscript that provides a glimpse of some special days sanctioned for opening, as well as his own profits taken, to be compared with the same days at the Fortune:
Receued at the fortewne this yeare 1608 begenynge at
Crystmas holedayes
Receued one St steuenes daye xxv s.
Receued one St Iohnes daye xxxxv s.
Receued one Chelldermas daye xxxxiiij s. ix d.
Receued at the bergarden this yeare 1608 begning
at Chrystmas holedayes as foloweth
Receued one monday St steuenes daye iiij li.
Receued one tewesdaye St Iohnes daye vj li.
Receued one wensday being Shilldermas daye iij li. xiij s.
The tradition of bearbaitings allowed on holidays apparently continued into the seventeenth century even if the old Sunday practice was officially discouraged. This rare piece of evidence also attests to the income that Henslowe and Alleyn must have enjoyed from their simultaneous operations at the Fortune north of the city and at the Bear Garden south of the river, and also suggests that at times there were better or at least comparable profits to be had at the Bear Garden.
Alleyn's personal records also provide very occasional evidence of his income from the Bear Garden partnership. His memorandum book sums up the costs of his purchase of the Bear Garden from Thomas Burnaby in 1594 and of its sale to Philip Henslowe in 1610, with the estimate of his own annual income of £60, or £960 in total over the sixteen-year period of shared ownership.
Alleyn sold his share in the Bear Garden properties to Henslowe in February 1610/11, presumably to help fund his ambitious plans for the estate at Dulwich. Henslowe seems to have maintained his focus on Bankside where he lived, moving on in partnership with Jacob Meade who had been appointed deputy at the Bear Garden by 1599, possibly succeeding Richard Reve in the day-to-day operation, as well as residence at the property.
By 1613 it seems likely that Henslowe was again considering an innovative venture south of the river to complement the success of the Fortune Playhouse north of the city. His concept was for a multi-purpose entertainment centre with a removeable stage, that could mount weekly plays, animal baitings (at least bi-weekly), and other types of amusement such as ‘flytings,’ in which contestants hurled scurrilous verse at each other. Whether his thinking was influenced by the disastrous fire that destroyed the Globe on 29 June that year cannot be proven but for some months at least there may seem to have been an opening for a new type of playhouse, to combine bearbaiting alternating with theatre in the same space. The Swan playhouse in Paris Garden may still have been operating at times unrecorded but it was almost twenty years old and may not have had a resident company as the Globe had enjoyed until recently with the prestigious King's Men.
By late August 1613 Henslowe and Meade were ready to contract with the carpenter Gilbert Katherens to demolish the former Bear Garden and one of its stables, and build a new playhouse, bull house, and stable on or near the same site. The building contract survives to provide precise details of the new construction, as well as note the influence of the Swan on its design:
The playhouse was to be builde the same of suche large compasse, fforme, widenes, and height as the Plaie house Called the Swan in the libertie of Parris garden in the saide parishe of St Saviour, now is/ And shall also builde two stearecasses without and adioyninge to the saide Playe house in suche convenient places as shalbe moste fitt and convenient for the ⸢same⸣
wito stande vppon, and of such largnes and height as the stearecasses of the saide playehouse called the Swan, nowe are or bee / And shall also builde the Heavens all over the saide stage to be borne or carryed without any postes or supporters to be fixed or sett vppon the saide stage.
The three-storey polygonal building that became known as the Hope was to be constructed on a brick foundation using timber from the old Bear Garden and its stable, plus more purchased from a demolished property on Thames Street in London. It was to have a tiled roof, with a tiring house and a removable stage on tressles for plays that would also allow use of the space for baiting. A new bull house and stable were also contracted to replace the older structures. Later court cases reveal that the actual site of the playhouse was prudently moved slightly south of the old Bear Garden at the Bell and Cock, to a new location on the Unicorn property where the dog yard had been previously, so that it did not straddle property lines leased separately from the bishop of Winchester and the Crown.
An illustrious artist's representation of this playhouse provides some visual clues about its appearance. In 1647 Wenceslaus Hollar published a finely etched panoramic 'Long View' of London, based on work he had probably done earlier while resident in the city under the patronage of the earl of Arundel between 1636 and 1644. The Hope playhouse (mislabelled as 'The Globe') was depicted near the south bank of the Thames, with the Globe, nearby to the south-west, reverse-labelled as the 'Beere bayting.'
The Hope Theatre, mislabelled 'The Globe', ca. 1640, from Wenceslaus Hollar's Long View of London from Bankside (1647). Reproduced by kind permission of the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library.
One of the two exterior staircases adjoining the building can be seen at its southeast end but the other, and the entrance to the playhouse on the north side, are not in view. The stage clearly lacks the Globe's extensive gabled cover, in accordance with the Hope contract dictating that the Heavens were not to have support posts on the stage. Beyond this slight evidence, further details of the interior design of the stage are lacking. Whether it had two doors at the rear of the stage, as shown in the sketch of the Swan, or a central discovery space, remains the subject of speculation.
The Hope, or Bear Garden 4 according to Braines, has not been fully excavated though 'two short parallel and angled stretches of brick walls,' tentatively identified as the north-east section of its polygonal structure were excavated in 1999–2000. Details of its dimensions and audience capacity must remain speculative as a result.
While the playhouse was under construction Henslowe may also have been organizing a company for residence there, alongside the bears, bulls, and mastiff dogs. He had already involved himself with the Lady Elizabeth's Men, a troupe initially licensed to perform on 27 April 1611. In March 1612/13 Henslowe apparently had a hand in the amalgamation of the adult company with the Children of the Queen's Revels, led by Philip Rosseter. However, a year later, in March 1613/14, further reorganization occurred, presumably in anticipation of the opening of the Hope. Articles of agreement between Nathan Field, now a lead actor of the company, and the Henslowe-Meade partnership survive, albeit in damaged form, to show the details of some of the management responsibilities involved: notably, for three years the partners committed to providing a playhouse or playhouses for the company, as well as a stock of playing apparel and props, whether the troupe was at home or on the road during times of official prohibition. Apart from the agreement with Field on behalf of the troupe, there is another document of note during this period, as a bond between Robert Dawes and Henslowe survives to witness to the terms of his engagement with Lady Elizabeth's Men in April 1614. From this very damaged record we learn the financial and contractual details of the three-year bond for Dawes' engagement; that plays were to start at 3pm on days of performance; and that Henslowe and Meade reserved one day in every four for the sport of bear and bullbaiting, for which they would take all profits.
The date of opening for the Hope cannot be confirmed though the building contract specified the goal of completion as 30 November 1613 and evidently the acting company was being reorganized in the spring of 1614. There is no mention, however, of the new playhouse in the prolific author/waterman John Taylor's account of the Watermen's petition to the king, which originated in January 1613/14 and concerns their loss of income following the removal of most playgoing to Bankside, in favour of theatres north of the river. The first firm date comes from a colourful series of published exchanges by John Taylor and the poet William Fennor, who were booked for a flyting contest at the Hope on 7 October. In the event, Fennor did not show up; Taylor, in one of the furious exchanges of insults that followed, mentions that at the time and in their stead 'came the players, and they play'd an act.' These players must have been the Lady Elizabeth's Men, by then resident. At the end of the same month the company premiered Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair at the Hope on Monday, 31 October, before performing the play the next day for King James at court. The comic 'Articles of Agreement' outlined by the Scrivener in the play's 'Induction' provide both the date and some details of the costs of admission:
Articles of Agreement indented between the spectators or hearers at the Hope on the Bankside in the County of Surrey on the one party, and the author of Barthol’mew Fair in the said place and county on the other party: the one and thirtieth day of October, 1614, and in the twelfth year of the reign of our sovereign lord, James, by the grace of God King of England, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith. And of Scotland the seven and fortieth. IMPRIMIS, It is covenanted and agreed by and between the parties abovesaid that the said spectators and hearers — as well the curious and envious as the favouring and judicious, as also the grounded judgements and understandings— do for themselves severally covenant and agree to remain in the places their money or friends have put them in, with patience, for the space of two hours and an half and somewhat more. In which time the author promiseth to present them by us with a new sufficient play called Barthol’mew Fair, merry and as full of noise as sport, made to delight all and to offend none — provided they have either the wit or the honesty to think well of themselves.... It is further agreed that every person here have his or their free-will of censure, to like or dislike at their own charge, the author having now departed with his right. It shall be lawful for any man to judge his sixpenn’orth, his twelvepenn’orth, so to his eighteen pence, two shillings, half a crown, to the value of his place — provided always his place get not above his wit.
Within a short time, in 1615 Lady Elizabeth's men drew up 'Articles of Grievance' against Henslowe about the conditions of their arrangements at the dual-purpose playhouse, including a complaint that they had been shortchanged for ‘lying still one daie in forteene for his baytinge.' With the evident breakdown in the relationship, they left playing at the Hope, although the date of their departure remains uncertain. What is clear is that Henslowe and Meade then negotiated an arrangement with a newly amalgamated company with some actors from Lady Elizabeth's Men as well as new recruits from Prince Charles' Men, presumably sometime in 1615. Their residence at the playhouse was also destined to be brief and it was interrupted by Henslowe's death in January 1615/16.
For almost a decade Henslowe's family and partnerships fell into disarray but it is worth noting that Edward Alleyn, also a man of influence and strategy, was well-placed as son-in-law to Agnes Henslowe to inherit much of the estate left to her by her husband. Even as his building plans for the College of God's Gift at Dulwich, the Chapel, and twelve almshouses were progressing, he became immersed, as one of the defendents, in a Chancery Court case initiated by Henslowe's aggrieved nephew by 25 January 1615/16. By March he also assumed a role in negotiating the settlement of an outstanding debt owed to Henslowe by Prince Charles' Men at the Hope; with Jacob Meade, he agreed to settle their £400 debt peacefully for the sum of £200; see Articles of Agreement between Edward Alleyn, Jacob Meade and Players at the Hope, 1615/16. During the same year, building at Dulwich was first completed on the Chapel, with its consecration on 1 September by George Abbott, Archbishop of Canterbury.
Articles of agreement in March that year between Jacob Meade, Henslowe's partner in the Hope/Bear Garden, Edward Alleyn, Henslowe's successor and eventual heir, and the Prince's players reveal the names of the three actors who had joined from Lady Elizabeth's men as well as terms negotiated for the settlement of their debt of £400 to Henslowe.
With an agreement for the payment of half their debt, and the renewal of the terms of their previous bond with Henslowe and Meade, Prince Charles' Men recommitted to using the Hope as their performance base in the London area: but not for long. An undated letter, likely written later in 1616, from the players to Edward Alleyn, reveals that they had left Bankside. The reason for their departure was likely not the 'intemporate weather' at the playhouse (which did, however, lack a substantial cover over its removable stage), but conflict with Jacob Meade, who would have been responsible for the Hope's day-to-day operations, as a resident there and also as deputy for the ongoing bearbaiting operation on the site. Their plea was twofold: for another playhouse where they could fulfill their bond, and for money to tide them over until they received the 'great summe of monie' anticipated from court. Prince Charles' Men are known to have performed fourteen unnamed plays at court between October 1616 and January 1616/17, so the reference may have been to the substantial payment anticipated for those entertainments. Gerald Bentley first suggested the possibility that the company moved north of the river in 1617 to the recently vacated Red Bull playhouse in Clerkenwell with help from Alleyn, thereby marking the end of Henslowe's attempt to run a multi-purpose playhouse.
From the outset, the conditions for playing alongside the bearbaiting operation must have been disagreeable, as Ben Jonson's 1614 induction to Bartholomew Fair reveals in a frequently cited passage: 'The play shall presently begin. And though the Fair be not kept in the same region that some here perhaps would have it, yet think that therein the author hath observed a speciall decorum, the place being as dirty as Smithfield, and as stinking euery whit.’
Jonson's play is in fact the only one that can be identified with certainty for performance at the Hope. Although we know that popular Jacobean playwrights such as Beaumont, Dekker, Fletcher, Marston, and Massinger, as well as Nathan Field the player, wrote plays for Lady Elizabeth's Men in the second decade of the seventeenth century, no known record was kept by Henslowe for the repertory and profits at the Hope as he had done for the Rose and the Fortune. There is one random survival, apparently in Henslowe's hand, in a small memorandum book mostly kept by Alleyn during the 1614–15 period. Here appears a cryptic record of a few sums of money below an entry for a now lost play titled 'the noble grandchild,' presumably from the time when Henslowe was affiliated with both Lady Elizabeth's Men at the Hope and the Palsgrave's Men at the Fortune. The fourteenth day of an unspecified month dates the performance, wherever it occurred but whether some or all of the 19s 8d total accounted for represents Henslowe's receipts from the event cannot be determined. A Fair Quarrel, an extant tragicomedy by Middleton and Rowley, has also been attributed by Wiggins and Richardson to Prince Charles' Men during their brief tenure at the Hope,1616–17.
There remain various communications between Henslowe and the playwright Robert Daborne, mostly from 1613, about personal loans and plays commissioned, but only the titles are known and no particulars of their actual performance. The span of time for the Hope's use as a playhouse was two to three years at most: the instability of the managers' relationship with the two companies involved must have affected sustained residency, and provincial touring by some of their members during the same period would have further complicated any regular schedule. Further confusion has been sown by an anonymous commentator of dubious merit, who added handwritten notes about playhouses to a copy of the 1631 continuation of Stow's Annales, likely sometime between 1710 and 1844 according to Herbert Berry:
The Hope on the Bankeside in Southwarke, commonly called the Beare Garden. A playhouse for Stage Playes. On Mondayes Wedensdayes Fridayes and Saterdayes. And for the Baiting of the Beares On Tuesdayes and Thursdayes. the stage being made to take up and downe when they pleased. It was built In the yeare 1610.
The building date is clearly an error or misremembering but it is possible that two days a week became the norm once again for bearbaiting after the players left the Hope. It seems evident that Jacob Meade continued to act as deputy for running the animal baiting from that date until his death in July 1624 while Alleyn assumed the solo mastership of the Bears, Bulls, and Mastiff Dogs from 1616 until his death. After the death of his wife Joan, Alleyn married Constance, John Donne's daughter, the same year on 3 December 1623. He died three years later on 25 November 1626. As both of his marriages were childless, Alleyn's extensive archives and much of his considerable wealth were left to Dulwich College.
Between 1626 and 1630 reports filed by the commissioners of the Sewers name Meade's successor in residence at the Bear Garden as John Nurse (or Nurce). Further evidence comes from a lay subsidy assessment, likely completed by 30 March 1625, that includes Nurse as a resident in the Clink liberty, assessed at £6 in goods. Further, a letter dated 23 June 1625 and signed by John Nurse describing himself as a tenant survives among Alleyn's papers at Dulwich College. After 1630 the dearth of Bear Garden records frustrates the attempt to identify the date when the next known deputy keeper took up residence but John Nurse's death was recorded on 15 September 1631 in St Saviour's parish register. For the rest of the decade the Bear Garden is not mentioned specifically in the Sewer Commissioner Reports but in 1640 Thomas Godfrey appears as the deputy keeper, known to have served under Thomas Manley and James Davies, by then the jointly appointed masters of the Bears, Bulls and Mastiff Dogs. Godfrey's name also appears as a resident in the Clink liberty at the Bear Garden in the St Saviour Token Books for 1638 and 1642, with another less specific notice in 1641, and another in the Clink liberty (street side) in 1639. Intriguingly, a 'Mrs Thomas Godffre' is named at the Bear Garden as early as 1632, but then there is a lapse in further notices of the surname until 1638. Thomas Godfrey would continue to act as deputy at the Bear Garden into the 1650s and may have begun his activities there soon after Nurse died in 1631.
Following the failed multi-purpose experiment at the Hope, activities there returned to the older, long-established pattern described with characteristic colour by the waterman John Taylor in Bull, Beare, and Horse, Cut, Curtaile, and Longtaile, published in 1638 and dedicated to Thomas Godfrey:
There's three couragious Bulls, as ever plaid, Twenty good Beares, as er'e to stake was taid. And seventy Mastives of such Breed and Races, That from fierce Lions will not turne their faces; A male and female Ape (kind Jacke and Jugge) Who with sweet complement do kisse and hugge, And lastly there is Jacke an Apes his Horse.
The custom continued of naming the star attractions to the Bear Garden (documented decades earlier). Taylor includes a roll call of bears, nineteen in all, with names such as 'Ned of Canterbury,' 'Robin Hood,' and 'Rose of Bedlam.' Notable are 'Mad Besse' and 'Will Tookey,' two white bears, indicating that James I's predilection for baiting of polar bears in the Thames may have persisted into the 1630s. Royalty did not frequent the popular arena on Bankside, as the game was brought to court instead. Notice of a blended audience of nobility and commoners, however, does occur more than once in the period, as for example in the description of Bankside amphitheatres in Nicholas Goodman's 1632 pamphlet, Hollands Leagver: 'the other was a building of excellent Hope, and though wild beasts and Gladiators, did most possesse it, yet the Gallants that came to behold those combats, though they were of a mixt Society, yet were many Noble worthies amongst them.'
Other sources provide evidence of varied entertainments in the 1620s and '30s at the Hope, which once again became known familiarly as the Bear Garden. Edmund Howes, in his 1632 continuation of Stow's Annales, mentions fencing contests in a retrospective on the opening of the Hope: 'besides the new built Beare garden, which was built as well for playes, and Fencers prizes, as Bull Bayting.' Further corroboration comes from transcriptions made from the lost office books kept by the master of the Revels, Henry Herbert: in 1632, for example, a fencing prize and a showing of a camel were both recorded on separate occasions.
Apart from closures during time of plague in 1630 and 1636, there are no official early seventeenth century records of suppression of the traditional entertainments at the Bear Garden before the 1640s. An order from the privy council stopped performances at the playhouses during time of a serious plague in 1625, but bearbaiting is not specifically mentioned and may have continued despite concerns about crowded gatherings. However, more than plague would create problems for Godfrey's operation at the Bear Garden in the 1640s. In December 1642 he ran into trouble with the authorities for participating in a protest riot at the Guildhall in London and was imprisoned at Newgate. Consequently, an order was passed in parliament 'that for the future, ⸢they doe not permitt to bee vsed⸣ ... the Game of Bearebateinge in these tymes of great distracciones. till this House doe giue further order herein.'
A Chancery Court case was launched a decade later in 1652 by Thomas Godfrey against Thomas Davies and Thomas Manley, whom he names as joint masters of the Bears, Bulls, and Mastiff Dogs with letters patent confirmed in 1638/9. Godfrey had been faithfully paying £40 per annum for the right to act as deputy and £60 annually for renting the tenement there. Among the grievances he lists as their deputy and tenant, he cites Thomas Davies' aggressive effort to shut down his bearbaiting entertainment operation in 1642 and a subsequent killing of forty of his bears by 'diuers vnruly fellowes' at a personal cost of £500. As a result of this calamity and prohibition by parliament in 1643, he claimed that he was unable to continue the game for two and a half years. He was, however, able to reopen the Bear Garden periodically following another order of parliament in April 1644.
Although the Bear Garden entertainments continued during the Interregnum at a reduced level longer than the London area public playhouses were allowed, Godfrey would soon experience even greater distress than he apparently felt in 1652. By May 1653 a parliamentary order was passed to suppress 'bear baiting, bull baiting, and playing for prizes by fencers hitherto practised in Southwark and other places, which have caused great evils and abominations.'
Demolition of the Bear Garden and the demise or dispersal of its animals would follow in February 1655/6. The putative surviving witness to this event, however -- a manuscript note in a copy of Howe's 1631 continuation of Stowe's Annales has been dismissed by Herbert Berry as a likely forgery: 'And now pulled downe to make tennements, by Thomas Walker a Peticoate Maker in Cannon Streete on Tuesday the 25 day of March 1656. Seuen of Mr Godfries Beares by the command of Thomas Pride then hie Sh[e]riefe of Surry were then Shot to death, On Saterday the 9 day of February 1655[/6]. by a Company of Souldiers.' Berry contends that the section on the demise and demolition of the Hope in 1656 'could well be right in detail' but the various period sources used are not cited and the main writer was not contemporaneous.
A Worcestershire magistrate named Henry Townshend noted the final days in his diary as follows: 'Feb. Col. Pride, now Sir Thomas Pride, by reason of some difference between him and the Keeper Godfrey of the Bears in the Bear Garden in Southwark, as a justice of the peace there caused all the Bears to be fast tied up by the noses and then valiantly brought some files of musketeers, drew up and gave fire and killed six or more bears in the place (only leaving one white innocent cub), and also all courts of the game. It is said all the mastifs are for to be shipt for Jamaica.'