“Thou writest a hotch potch of some forty lines
About my play at Hope and my designs.”
On the rebuilding of the Globe, the Hope stood little chance against such a powerful rival; in fact, this building was never seriously regarded as a theatre. When the new Globe was entirely rebuilt the Hope gradually resumed its former occupation as a bear-baiting house, which in reality had never been discarded.
As a bear-baiting garden, a reference is found in Swetnam’s Arraignment of Women, 1617: “If you mean to see the bear-baiting of women then trudge to this bear garden apace, and get in betimes and view every room where thou may best sit for thy pleasure.”
The further history of the Hope after 1616 is quite unconnected with the drama. It flourished for many years. After Shakespeare’s death, Cunningham, in his Handbook of London, says that the best account of its last days is narrated in Howe’s MS., a continuation of Stow’s Survey; this must be by some other hand than Howe’s, as he died in 1631. “The Hope, on the bankside in Southwark, commonly called the Beare Garden, a playhouse for stage players on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, and for the baiting of the Beares on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the stage being made to take up and down when they please.”
It was built in the year 1610, and was pulled down to make tenements, by Thomas Walker, petticoat maker, in Cannon Street, on Tuesday, the 25th of March, 1656.
Seven of Mr. Godfrie’s Bears, by command of Thomas Pride, then High Sheriff of Surrey, were then shot to death on Saturday, the 9th of February, 1655, by a company of soldiers. A few years later, after the Restoration, the Bear Garden, was renamed, and continued giving exhibitions until 1691. In an advertisement, dated 1682, the Hope is still styled by its old name. This paragraph, which appeared in the Loyal Protestant, must refer to some new building, or perhaps the old name was still in use.