At Pye-corner end, mark well, my good friend,
’Tis a very fine dirty place;
Where there’s more arrows and bows, the Lord above knows,
Than was handl’d at Chivy Chase.
Then at Smithfield Bars, betwixt the ground and the stars,
There’s a place they call Shoemaker Row,
Where that you may buy shoes every day,
Or go barefoot all the year I tro’.[288]
In 1699, Ned Ward relates his visit to the Fair:—
“We ordered the coachman to set us down at the Hospital-gate, near which we went into a convenient house to smoke a pipe, and overlook the follies of the innumerable throng, whose impatient desires of seeing Merry Andrew’s grimaces, had led them ancle deep into filth and nastiness.—The first objects, when we were seated at the window that lay within our observation, were the quality of the Fair, strutting round their balconies in their tinsey robes, and golden leather buckskins, expressing such pride in their buffoonery stateliness, that I could but reasonably believe they were as much elevated with the thought of their fortnight’s pageantry, as ever Alexander was with the thought of a new conquest looking with great contempt from their slit deal thrones, upon the admiring mobility gazing in the dirt at our ostentatious heroes, and their most supercilious doxies, who looked as aukward and ungainly in their gorgeous accoutrements, as an alderman’s lady in her stiffen-bodied gown upon a lord mayor’s festival.”[289]
At the Fair of 1701, there was exhibited a tiger which had been taught to pluck a fowl’s feathers from its body.
In the reign of queen Anne the following curious bill relates part of the entertainment at one of the shows:—
“By her majesty’s permission, at Heatly’s booth, over against the Cross Daggers, next to Mr. Miller’s booth, during the time of Bartholomew Fair, will be presented a little opera, called The Old Creation of the World new Revived, with the addition of the glorious battle obtained over the French and Spaniards by his grace the duke of Marlborough. The contents are these, 1. The creation of Adam and Eve. 2. The intrigues of Lucifer in the garden of Eden. 3. Adam and Eve driven out of Paradise. 4. Cain going to plow; Abel driving sheep. 5. Cain killeth his brother Abel. 6. Abraham offereth up his son Isaac. 7. Three wise men of the east, guided by a star, come and worship Christ. 8. Joseph and Mary flee away by night upon an ass. 9. King Herod’s cruelty; his men’s spears laden with children. 10. Rich Dives invites his friends, and orders his porter to keep the beggars from his gate. 11. Poor Lazarus comes a begging at rich Dives’ gate, the dogs lick his sores. 12. The good angel and Death contend for Lazarus’s life. 13. Rich Dives is taken sick, and dieth; he is buried in great solemnity. 14. Rich Dives in hell, and Lazarus in Abraham’s bosom, seen in a most glorious object, all in machines descending in a throne, guarded with multitudes of angels; with the breaking of the clouds, discovering the palace of the sun, in double and treble prospects, to the admiration of all the spectators. Likewise several rich and large figures, which dance jiggs, sarabands, anticks, and country dances, between every act; compleated with the merry humours of Sir Jno. Spendall and Punchinello, with several other things never exposed. Performed by Matt. Heatly. Vivat Regina.”
A writer in the “Secret Mercury,” of September 9, 1702, says, “Wednesday, September 3, having padlocked my pockets, and trimmed myself with Hudibras from head to foot, I set out about six for Bartholomew Fair; and having thrown away substantial silver for visionary theatrical entertainment, I made myself ready for the farce; but I had scarce composed myself, when bolts me into the pit a bully beau, &c. The curtain drew, and discovered a nation of beauish machines; their motions were so starched, that I began to question whether I had mistaken myself, and Dogget’s booth for a puppet-show. As I was debating the matter, they advanced towards the front of the stage, and making a halt, began a singing so miserably, that I was forced to tune my own whistle in romance ere my brains were set straight again. All the secret I could for my life discover in the whole grotesque, was the consistency of drift of the piece, which I could never demonstrate to this hour. At last, all the childish parade shrunk off the stage by matter and motion, and enter a hobletehoy of a dance, and Dogget, in old woman’s petticoats and red waistcoat, as like Progue Cock as ever man saw; it would have made a stoic split his lungs, if he had seen the temporary harlot sing and weep both at once; a true emblem of a woman’s tears. When these Christmas carols were over, enter a wooden horse; now I concluded we should have the ballad of Troy-town, but I was disappointed in the scene, for a dancing-master comes in, begins complimenting the horse, and fetching me three or four run-bars with his arm, (as if he would have mortified the ox at one blow,) takes a frolic upon the back of it, and translates himself into cavalry at one bound; all I could clap was the patience of the beast. However, having played upon him about half a quarter, the conqueror was pursued with such a clangor from the crusted clutches of the mob in the sixpenny place, that for five minutes together I was tossed on this dilemma, that either a man had not five senses, or I was no man. The stage was now overrun with nothing but merry-andrews and pickle-herrings. This mountebank scene was removed at last, and I was full of expectations that the successor would be pills, pots of balsam, and orvietan; but, alas, they were half empirics, and therefore exeunt omnes.”
We learn something of the excesses at the Fair from “The Observator,” of August 21, 1703:—“Does this market of lewdness tend to any thing else but the ruin of the bodies, souls, and estates of the young men and women of the city of London, who here meet with all the temptations to destruction? The lotteries, to ruin their estates; the drolls, comedies, interludes, and farces, to poison their minds, &c. and in the cloisters what strange medley of lewdness has that place not long since afforded! Lords and ladies, aldermen and their wives, ’squires and fiddlers, citizens and rope-dancers, jack-puddings and lawyers, mistresses and maids, masters and ’prentices! This is not an ark, like Noah’s which received the clean and unclean; only the unclean beasts enter this ark, and such as have the devil’s livery on their backs.”