* “A Catch—Mr. Henry Purcell—
Here's that will challenge all the Fair:
Come buy my nuts and damsons, my Burgamy Pear. Here's the
Whore of Babylon, the Devil and the Pope: The girl is just
going on the rope.
Here's Dives and Lazarus, and the World's Creation: Here's
the Dutch Woman, the like's not in the nation. Here is the
booth where the tall Dutch Maid is,
Here are the bears that dance like any ladies.
Tota, tota, tot goes the little penny trumpet,
'Here's your Jacob Hall, that can jump it, jump it.
Sound trumpet: a silver spoon and fork;
Come, here's your dainty Pig and Pork”
** “The old Droll Players' Lamentation, being very pleasant
and diverting. 1701.”
“Oh! mourn with us all you that live by play,
The Reformation took our gains away:
We are as good as dead now money's gone,
No Droll is suffer'd, not a single one!
Jack Pudding now our grandeur doth exceed,
And grinning granny is by fates decreed
To laugh at us, and to our place succeed.
But after all, these times would make us rave,
That won't let's play the Fool as well as Knave!”
—and Adam and Eve driven out of Paradise,”—“Judith and Holofernes,” * —“Dives and Pauper,”—the “Humours of Noah's Ark, or the Drolleries of the Deluge,”—“Jeptha's Rash Vow,”—and “The Pleasant Conceited History of Abraham and Isaac!” These Mysteries ** were only endured when tacked to “a Comick Dance of gigantic automatons the “merriments of Sir John Spendall and Punchinello; Pickle-Herring and Punch.” Of the multifarious and ludicrous literature of the “Rounds” little remains. The serious portion consisted, as we have shown, of such representations taken from Bible History, after the manner of the Chester and Coventry Monks, and the ancient Parish Clerks of Clerkenwell, as were most likely to beget an awful attention in the audience; and the comic, of detached scenes of low humour from Shakspere, and Beaumont and Fletcher, like “The Wits ***
* “To be sold in the Booth of Lee and Harper, and only
printed for, and by G. Lee, in Blue Maid Alley, Southwark.”
** Spence, in his anecdotes, describes a Mystery he saw at
Turin, “where a damned female soul, in a gown of flame-
coloured satin, intreats, as a favor, to be handed over to
the fires of purgatory, for only as many years as there are
drops of water in the ocean!”
*** “The Wits, or Sport upon Sport: being a curious
collection of several Drolls and Farces, as they have been
sundry times acted at Bartholomew and other Fairs, in halls
and taverns, on mountebanks' stages at Charing Cross,
Lincoln's Inn Fields, and other places, by Strolling
Flayers, Fools, Fiddlers, and Zanies, with loud laughter and
applause. Now newly collected by your old friend, Francis
Kirkman, 1673.” The author says, in his preface to the
Second Part, “I have seen the Red Bull Playhouse, which was
a large one, so full, that as many went back for want of
room as had entered; and as meanly as you may think of these
Drolls, they were acted by the best comedians then, and now
in being. I once saw a piece at a country inn, called 'King
Pharaoh, with Moses, Aaron, and some others; to explain which
figures was added this piece of poetry,
Here Pharaoh, with his goggle eyes, does stare on
The High Priest Moses, with the Prophet Aaron.
Why, what a rascal
Was he that would not let the people go to eat the Pascal!
I believe he who pictured King Pharaoh had never seen a king
in his life; for all the majesty he was represented with was
goggle eyes, that his picture might be answerable to the
verse.”
—or Sport upon Sport” and “The Stroller's Pacquet Open'd—except when a Smithfield bard, “bemus'd in beer,” ventured upon originality, and added “Robin Hood, * an Opera,” and “The Quaker's Opera,” ** to the classical press of Bartholomew Fair.
* “Robin Hood, an opera, as it is performed at Lee and
Harper's Great Theatrical Booth in Bartholomew Fair, 1730.”
** “The Quaker's Opera, as it is performed at Lee and
Harper's Great Theatrical Booth in Bartholomew Fair, 1728.”
This is the story of Jack Sheppard dramatised and set to
rough music! It may be gratifying to the curious to see how
the adventures of this house and prison-breaker were
“improved” (!!) by a Methodist Preacher under the Piazza of
Covent Garden. “Now, my beloved, we have a remarkable
instance of man's care for his tabernacle of clay in the
notorious malefactor Jack Sheppard! How dexterously did he,
with a nail, pick the padlock of his chain! how manfully
burst his fetters; climb up the chimney; wrench out an iron
bar; break his way through a stone wall, till he reached the
leads of the prison! and then fixing a blanket through the
wall with a spike, he stole out of the chapel! How
intrepidly did he descend from the top of the Turner's
house! and how cautiously pass down the stairs, and make his
escape at the street-door! Oh, that ye were all like Jack
Sheppard! Let me exhort ye, then, to open the locks of your
hearts with the nail of repentance; to burst asunder the
fetters of your beloved desires; to mount the chimney of
hope; take from thence the bar of good resolution; break
through the stone wall of despair; raise yourselves to the
leads of divine meditation; fix the blanket of faith with
the spike of the conventicle; let yourselves down the
Turner's house of resignation, and descend the stairs of
humility; so shall you come to the door of deliverance, from
the prison of iniquity, and escape the clutches of that old
executioner, the devil.”
Good company has occasionally visited the “Rounds.” Evelyn * went there, but it was to gape and grumble.
* 1648. 28 Aug: Saw ye celebrated follies of Bartholomew
Fair, which follies were more harmless, in those days, than
the solemn and sinister mummery of a Brownist's conventicle,
a Presbyterian Synod, and a Quakers' meeting.
In the year 1670 (see “Some Account of Rachel Lady Russell,”) Lady Russell, with her sister, Lady Northumberland, and Lady Shafts-bury, returned from Bartholomew Fair loaded with fairings for herself and children! Sept. 1, 1730, the “Four Indian Kings” visited Pink-ethman and Giffard's booth, and saw Wat Tyler and Jack Straw. Sir Robert Walpole, * when Prime Minister, starred and gartered, graced the fair with his presence. Frederick Prince of Wales, in 1740, attended by a party of the Yeomen of the Guard with lighted flambeaux, contemplated its pantomimical wonders, with Manager Rich for his cicerone; as, in after times, did David Garrick and his lady, marshalled by the bill-sticker of Old Drury! On tendering his tester at the Droll Booth, the cashier, recognising the fine expressive features and far-beaming eye of Roscius, with a patronising look and bow, refused the proffered fee, politely remarking, “Sir, we never take money from one another.”
* A coloured print of Bartholomew Fair in 1721, copied from
a painting on an old fan mount, represents Sir” Robert
Walpole as one of the spectators.
Pinkethman's “Pantheon, or Temple of the Heathen Gods, consisting of five curious pictures, and above one hundred figures that move their heads, legs, and fingers, in character,” long continued the lion of Bartholomew and Southwark fairs. * On the 19th August, 1720, great preparations were made against the approaching festival. Stables were transmogrified into palaces for copper kings, lords, knights, and ladies! and cock-lofts and laystalls into enchanted castles and Elysium bowers! The ostlers beguiled the interval by exercising their pampered steeds, and levying contribution on such as happened to be enjoying the pure air of Hounslow Heath and Finchley Common! Mob quality in hackney coaches, and South-Sea squires in their own, resorted to Pinkethman's booth to divert themselves with his “comical phiz, and newly-imported French dancing dogs!” The mountebanks were all alive and merry, and a golden harvest was reaped in the Rounds.