The Playhouses at Bankside in the Time of Shakespeare (1885, Walford's Antiquarian, vii. 207, 274; viii. 55), Paris Garden and Blackfriars (1887, 7 N. Q. iii. 241, 343, 442). Some notes of Eu. Hood [Joseph Haslewood] in 1813 and A. J. K[empe] in 1833 are reprinted in The Gentleman's Magazine Library, xv (1904), 74, 117. Other writings on Paris Garden are by W. H. Overall (1869) in Proc. Soc. Antiq. 2nd series, iv. 195, J. Meymott, The Manor of Old Paris Garden (1881), P. Norman, The Accounts of the Overseers of the Poor of Paris Garden, Southwark, 1608-1671 (1901) in Surrey Arch. Colls. xvi. 55. Since I wrote this chapter, C. L. Kingsford (1920, Arch. lxx. 155) has added valuable material.]
It is convenient, in connexion with the Hope, to deal with
the whole rather troublesome question of the Bankside
Bear Gardens. The ursarius or bearward was a recognized
type of mediaeval mimus, and the rewards in which his
welcome found expression are a recurring item in many
a series of municipal or domestic accounts. Thus, to take
one example only, the corporation of Shrewsbury entertained
between 1483 and 1542 the ursinarii, ursuarii, or ursiatores
of the King, the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, the Marquises
of Dorset and Exeter, the Earl of Derby, and the town of
Norwich.[1] On more than one occasion the payment is said
to be pro agitacione bestiarum suarum. The phrase is perhaps
not free from ambiguity. The dancing bear was, until quite
recently, a familiar sight in provincial England, and I have
seen one even on the sophisticated slopes of Notting Hill.
And illuminations dating back as far as the tenth century
bear evidence to the antiquity of his somewhat grotesque
tripudium.[2] But in the robust days of our forefathers there
was an even more attractive way of agitating bears. The
traditional victim of an English baiting was no doubt the
bull. A Southwark map of 1542 shows a 'Bolrynge' in the
middle of the High Street and a neighbouring alley still bore
the name in 1561.[3] The maps of Höfnagel (c. 1560) and Agas
(c. 1570) show another ring, marked 'The bolle bayting' and
with a very palpable bull inside it, upon the Bankside, not
far from where the Hope must afterwards have stood.[4]
But the bear was also baited in London, at least from the
twelfth century.[5] Erasmus is often cited as declaring that
- ↑ Mediaeval Stage, ii. 250; cf. i. 53, 68, 72; ii. 244 (Durham Priory), 246 (Thetford Priory), 247 (Winchester College), 248 (Magdalen, Oxford).
- ↑ Strutt, Sports and Pastimes (ed. Cox), 195.
- ↑ Rendle, Old Southwark, f. p., 31.
- ↑ It is also, although unnamed, in Smith's drawing of 1588, but that is probably based on Agas.
- ↑ William Fitzstephen (c. 1170-82) in J. C. Robertson, Materials for the History of Becket (R. S.), iii. 11, 'In hieme singulis feré festis ante prandium . . . pingues tauri cornipetae, seu ursi immanes, cum objectis depugnant canibus'.
