Then came the players, and they play’d an act,
Which greatly from my action did detract,
For ’tis not possible for any one
To play against a company alone,
And such a company (I’ll boldly say)
That better (nor the like) e’r played a play.
This company was no doubt the Lady Elizabeth’s, as reconstituted in the previous March under an agreement with Nathaniel Field on their behalf, of which a mutilated copy exists. To it Meade was a party, and there is nothing to establish a connexion between Meade and any other theatre than the Hope.[1436] Jonson names the Lady Elizabeth’s men as the actors of Bartholomew Fair, and in the Induction thereto, after a dialogue between the Stage-keeper, who is taunted with ‘gathering up the broken apples for the beares within’, and the Book-holder, a Scrivener reads ‘Articles of Agreement, indented, between the Spectators or Hearers, at the Hope on the Bankeside, in the County of Surrey on the one party; and the Author of Bartholmew Fayre in the said place, and County on the other party: the one and thirtieth day of Octob. 1614’. According to Jonson the locality was suitable for a play on Bartholomew Fair, for it was ‘as durty as Smithfield, and as stinking euery whit’.[1437] There were disputes between Henslowe and the company, partly arising out of an arrangement that they should ‘lie still’ one day a fortnight for the baiting, and the combination broke up. Some of its members, apparently then Prince Charles’s men, are found after Henslowe’s death signing an agreement with Alleyn and Meade to play at the Hope, and to set aside a fourth of the gallery takings towards a sum of £200 to be accepted in discharge of their debt to Henslowe. Alleyn had of course resumed his part proprietorship of the house as executor and ultimate heir to Henslowe. Meade probably took actual charge of the theatre, and there is an undated letter from Prince Charles’s men to Alleyn, written possibly in 1617, in which they explain their removal from the Bankside as due to the intemperate action of his partner in taking from them the day which by course was theirs. I suppose that this dispute also was due to the competition of baiting with the plays. In 1619 some disputes between Alleyn and Meade had to be settled by arbitration, and from Alleyn’s memoranda in connexion with these it appears that Meade was his deputy under his patent as Master of the Game, and had also a lease from him of the house at £100 a year.[1438] The Hope is mentioned from time to time, chiefly as a place of baiting, up to the civil wars.[1439] It is one of the three Bankside theatres alluded to in Holland’s Leaguer (1632), where it is described as ‘a building of excellent hope’ for players, wild beasts, and gladiators. Bear-baiting was suppressed by the House of Commons in 1642,[1440] and the house was dismantled in 1656. The manuscript continuation of Stowe’s Annales describes its end and the slaughter of the bears, but gives the date of its erection erroneously as 1610 instead of 1613.[1441]
After the Restoration the Bear Garden was restored, and a lane called Bear Gardens, running from Bankside to New Park Street, and a sign therein of The White Bear still mark its name.[1442] Its site is pretty well defined in the seventeenth-century maps as to the west of the Globe and, where that is shown, the Rose, and generally as a little nearer Maid Lane than the latter. This is consistent with a notice in the Sewers records for 5 December 1595 of a sewer which ran to the Bear Garden from a garden known to have lain a little farther east along Maid Lane than the Globe.[1443]
The traditional day for baiting was Sunday. Crowley in 1550 describes it as taking place on ‘euerye Sondaye’.[1444] Naturally this did not pass without Puritan comment, to which point was given by the fall of Paris Garden on a Sunday in 1583.[1445] A general prohibition of shows on Sunday seems to have followed, from which it is not likely that bear-baiting was excepted. It may be inferred that Thursday was substituted, for a Privy Council order of 25 July 1591 called attention, not only to a neglect of the rule as to Sunday, but also to the fact that every day ‘the players do use to recite their plays to the great hurt and destruction of the game of bear-baiting and like pastimes, which are maintained for Her Majesty’s pleasure if occasion require’, and forbade plays both on Sunday and on Thursday, on which day ‘those other games usually have been always accustomed and practised’.[1446] Henslowe’s diary seems to show that up to 1597 he kept the Sunday prohibition and disregarded the Thursday one, which is a little odd, as he was interested in the Bear Garden. But a proclamation of 7 May 1603 on the accession of James repeats the warning that there was neglect of the Sabbath, and renews the prohibition both for baiting and for plays.[1447] Henslowe and Alleyn in their petition of about 1607 for increased fees lay stress on this restraint as a main factor in their alleged loss.[1448] It seems from the notes of Stowe’s manuscript continuator that during the first half of the seventeenth century Tuesday and Thursday became the regular baiting days.[1449] But the agreements made by Henslowe and Meade with the Lady Elizabeth’s men in 1614 profess only to reserve one day in fourteen for this purpose, of which apparently notice was to be given on the previous Monday.[1450]