When the Show Folk were wanted in the City it was easy for them to go across: they were ready at a moment's notice to arrange a pageant, or to take part in one: they could provide the beauteous maidens in white with long fair tresses who stood on platforms in Chepe and scattered gold rose nobles made of paste on the heads of the crowd: they found hermits, and constructed caves for those godly men in the midst of Gracious Street: they found the music for the dragging of the traitor on a hurdle: for the march of the rogue to the pillory: for the riding of the Lord Mayor: for the procession of the Company on its feast day. For a miracle play they presented the parish church with the Fall of Man: the Raising of Lazarus: the Pilgrims of Emmaus: David and Goliath: or any other episode from the Bible—how many excellent players there were among them whose names have long since been forgotten! They knew how to present a Masque—not, perhaps, with the same splendour as one by Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones—who commanded the King's purse—but a neat and creditable affair, with dresses appropriate, full of surprises, and furnished with mythological characters, for the Hall of a City Company on the day of the Annual Feast. For young gentlemen of the more debauched kind they had another kind of entertainment, with singing, dancing girls, tumbling and posturing; with rare jests—pity they were not rarer—and excellent fooling by their clowns. The modern art of acting did not begin at the Globe Theatre: there has never been any time when the actor was unknown: the only difference is that he was not formerly allowed to be anything but a buffoon: that he had little but buffoonery in his répertoire: and now he is an artist and scorns the tricks of the buffoon. Nor is the art of entertainment of modern invention. The Company of Parish Clerks, for instance, were great promoters of sacred plays. Their poets—whose names are entirely lost—provided the words and arranged the scenes; the members of the company played the parts: the Show Folk 'mounted' the piece: they provided the monsters; the red flames for the mouth of Hell; the troops of angels or of devils, the stage business and the music. Many of the Parish Churches had their annual play on their Saint's Day. Thus the Parish Church of St. Margaret, which was taken down when St. Mary Overies' became St. Saviour's, had its play on St. Margaret's Day (July 20), and often another on the Day of St. Lucy (December 13) as well. We have already observed that the Londoner of old never made any difference in the matter of Play or Pageant whether the time was summer or winter. He was like the Scythian, face all over: he felt no cold: he held his Riding, or his Coronation Procession, quite as readily in December as in July.
Another kind of Show Folk, but rougher and more brutal, were the people who looked after the bears and the dogs. Bull baiting, bear baiting, sometimes horse baiting, together with badger baiting, duck hunting, cock throwing, dog fighting and cock fighting, were the chosen and common sports of the people. Baiting of every kind there was wherever there were dogs and bulls and badgers, but the centre and headquarters of the sport was South London, in the place called Paris Gardens. The popularity of the sport is shown by the simple facts that there was not only bull and bear baiting in Paris Gardens, but also two rings or amphitheatres for bull and bear baiting outside the gardens behind Bankside, and that in the High Street itself, nearly opposite St. George's Church, there was permanently established the bull ring to which an animal could be tied whenever one was found fit for the purpose of affording an hour's sport by the madness of his rage or the agonies of his death.
The present Blackfriars Bridge Road cuts through the site of Paris Gardens, leaving a portion on either side. They extended to the distance of about a quarter of a mile south of the river: sluggish streams and ditches ran across and round the gardens, which were so thickly planted with trees as to be dark in the summer. Both in summer and winter the place was noisome with exhalations from the marshy soil. These gardens were the chief home of the rough and cruel sports already mentioned: here were kept under the King's bearward the King's dogs; the Mayor's dogs; and the bears whom they baited. It does not appear that bulls were also kept here: for baiting purposes it was generally a young bull that was chosen, and he was baited to death. The bears were not killed, they were all known to the people by name, such as Harry Hunks and Sackerson, and were valued in proportion to the sport they afforded. The dogs, who with the bears were fed upon the offal and refuse brought over every day from the Shambles of Newgate, were incredibly fierce and savage. In these days we hardly know what a savage dog is, even the bull dog has become peaceful: formerly, the best defender of the house was the dog who was unloosed at night: they fed him chiefly on meat: he was trained to fly at the throat of a stranger: he was a terror to wayfarers—remember the dog in the second part of the 'Pilgrim's Progress:' he was always biting and rending some one: he had the ferocity of the wolf redeemed only by affection for his master: we have no such dogs in these days. Accompanied by one or two such fierce mastiffs or bull dogs who feared no one but their master, a man might journey from end to end of the country armed with nothing but a club. Such a dog would fight and would overcome a man. Kept in the kennels, with insufficient exercise, with stimulating food, the creatures became fiercer than wolves and stronger than tigers. The bull they loved to bait: he had horns and hoofs to dodge: but the bear afforded the best sport both for man and dog: he presented a nose and ears and a thick fur on which to spring, and to fasten the canine teeth upon. What joy to hang on to those ears, torn and bleeding, the whole dog quivering with rapture even though in the end one stroke of the bear's hind paw dragged out the inside of the dog, with the heart and the breath of life!
It was a Royal sport, a sport offered to ambassadors. In a contemporary Diary it is related that the French Ambassadors, on May 25, 1559, were entertained at Court with a dinner, and after dinner with a bull and bear baiting, the Queen herself looking on from a gallery: the next day they were taken down the river to see the bull and bear baiting at Paris Gardens. Forty years later James the First entertained the Spanish Ambassador after dinner with the bears fighting with greyhounds and with a bull baiting. About the same time the Duke of Wirtemberg paid a visit to London and saw the baiting at Paris Gardens:
'On the 1st of September his Highness was shown in London the English dogs, of which there were about 120, all kept in the same enclosure, but each in a separate kennel.
'In order to gratify his Highness, and at his desire, two bears and a bull were baited; at such times you can perceive the breed and mettle of the dogs, for although they receive serious injuries from the bears, are caught by the horns of the bull, and tossed into the air so as frequently to fall down again upon the horns, they do not give in, [but fasten on the bull so firmly] that one is obliged to pull them back by the tails, and force open their jaws. Four dogs at once were set on the bull; they, however, could not gain any advantage over him, for he so artfully contrived to ward off their attacks that they could not well get at him; on the contrary, the bull served them very scurvily by striking and butting at them.'
BEAR GARDEN
And another contemporary account of a bear baiting is furnished by Hentzner in 1598: