Beargarden

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The beargarden in Claes Janszoon Visscher's Map of London , published in 1616, but depicts the city many years earlier
The Beargarden and Rose Theaters depicted in John Norden's Map of London from 1593

The Beargarden or Bear Pit was an entertainment venue with animal hunting , the so-called bear and bullbaiting , in and around London during the 16th and 17th centuries from the Elizabethan Age to the Stuart Restoration . Samuel Pepys attended an event with his wife in 1666 and described it as "a rude and nasty pleasure". The last traditional spectacle at this place was the chasing and killing of a horse on April 12, 1682.

place

The Beargarden was a round or polygonal building, open at the top, comparable to the theaters that were built in and around London since 1576. Contemporary illustrated city maps of London branch off a solid three-story building similar to the neighboring theaters. It was on Bankside , on the south bank of the Thames in Southwark , just opposite the City of London ; however, the exact position is not certain and changed over the years and the respective new buildings. Documents from the mid-16th century refer to a bearbaiting arena in Paris Garden , the Liberty at the west end of Bankside. The names of the establishment and its location are usually mixed up: John Stow , wrote about the venue in 1583 as “The Beare-garden, commonly called the Paris garden.” (“The Beargarden, commonly called the Paris Garden”). Late 16th century maps ( Speculum Britanniae from 1593 and Civitas Londini from 1600) show the Beargarden further east in the Liberty of the Clink , where it was northwest of the Rose Theater . The building could have been relocated, such as B. The Theater was demolished in 1598-12599 and rebuilt elsewhere as the Globe Theater .

One of the first cityscapes of London, 1633; Here in a reproduction from 1874

The year of construction of the first beargarden is also unclear. One of the first woodcut cityscapes of London shows the Beargarden in 1633. The question of the location and construction dates of the Beargarden is made difficult by the fact that animal fights were held at more than one location in Southwark during this period. The 1633 map shows both a bull and a bearbaiting arena that are close together (bulls in the west, bears in the east). John Taylor mentioned in the Court of Exchequer in 1620 or 1621 that “The Bearbaiting Pleasure was held in four different places: at Mason Stairs on Bankside [at what is now the Millennium Bridge ], near Maid [en] Lane on the corner of Pike Garden [about Park Street] in Beargarden, which was on property owned by William Payne and where they are now being held. "

Another venue in the Paris Garden stood out in the public eye. William Fleetwood, a distinguished attorney in high office, described the place as “a meeting place for foreign ambassadors with their informants and intelligence agents; At night the place is so dark and shaded by trees that it needs 'cat's eyes' to see. ”Ambassadors and travelers were often to be seen in the Beargarden; on September 7, 1601, the famous French nobleman Charles de Gontaut, duc de Biron, was seen together with the navigator and spy Sir Walter Raleigh .

Events

On Sunday, January 13, 1583, eight spectators were killed and many injured when a grandstand in the Beargarden collapsed under their weight. The Puritans , hostile not only to animal fights but to all worldly recreational activities, commented on this accident in response to God's displeasure. The Beargarden closed for a few months after this disaster.

The English court had an official bear guard ("Bearward"), an "officer responsible for his bears, bulls and mastiffs ". This post has existed at least since the reign of Richard III. (Mastiffs were the breeding forerunners of the bulldog , whose name comes from this animal hunt.) In 1573 a Ralph Bowes was appointed Queen Elizabeth's "Master of Her Majesty's Game at Paris Garden." (Like other aristocrats of the day, Elisabeth was a great fan of animal fighting).

In 1604 Philip Henslowe , who had a commercial interest in animal hunting as early as 1594, and his son-in-law Edward Alleyn acquired the royal permit (orig. "The royal office of the mastership") for £ 450, and ran the animal fighting business alongside their theater productions . Henslowe took over Alleyn's stake in 1611 for £ 580. However, this fell back to him when his father-in-law died in 1616. In 1613, Henslowe and his new partner Jacob Meade laid down the Beargarden and replaced it with the Hope Theater the following year . The Hope was designed as a multifunctional building for theater and animal fights. The theater stage was designed to be easy to dismantle for this purpose. However, the proportion of popular animal fights was greater than the spectacles, certainly one of the reasons that the Hope was still called Beargarden. Naturally, there were also stables on the building. After one of the first theatrical performances ( Bartholomew Fair ) by the author of the play Ben Jonson, the place was described as "as dirty as Smithfield and stinking every whit" ("dirty as Smithfield [London borough with cattle market and slaughterhouses] and smells just like that").

spectacle

A bear hunt in the beargarden

Traditional descriptions of the conversations presented in the Beargarden seem very strange these days. The crowd enjoyed themselves u. a. about whipping the old blind bear "Harry Hunks" until the blood ran down his shoulders. (Some bears, probably the toughest and most admired, have been given names such as "George Stone," "Ned Whiting," or "Sackerson." The latter also achieved some notoriety.)

The bears, with their claws and fangs removed, were tied to a pole in the center of an arena with a nose ring or necklace. Then dogs were admitted (three to four according to contemporary descriptions), which attacked the bear and tried to grab him by the throat or by the muzzle. If this goal was achieved, the combatants were separated and the combat round was over. The entire fight was only over when the bear was visibly exhausted. Lions were hunted less often (in the 1604/1605 and 1609/1610 seasons). Bears and lions were very expensive to acquire and the death of the expensive animals was not the aim of the event. In the case of cheaper horses and bulls, however, it is. Especially since afterwards they could serve as necessary food for the bears, lions and dogs.

An early report from the visit of Juan Esteban Manrique de Lara y Cardona Duke of Nájera in 1544 described the variant "Ape on Horseback":

"... a pony with a monkey tied on its back and to see how the animal kicked at the dogs with the monkey's screams; to see the mutt hanging from the ears and neck of the pony was really a laughing matter. "

Pepys describes how a cop hurled a dog into a spectator's box. Other accounts describe how the bulls tossed the attacking dogs into the air and impaled the falling animals with their horns.

The shows also offered a supporting program; according to contemporary descriptions, music, fireworks and special effects are said to have been used. In 1584 the German traveler Lupold von Wedel described in detail the dramaturgy and variants of such an event:

  1. Bear chasing: one after the other three bears of different sizes are chased by dogs
  2. Horse rush: a horse is sent into the arena to loosen up
  3. Bull chasing: a bull is chased
  4. Men and women come into the arena dancing, improvising and fighting. A man throws bread into the crowd. Above the audience is a rose that is set on fire and then loses apples and pears. The spectators fight for the treasures and are additionally excited by the mixed fireworks.
  5. Big final fireworks

The last traditional spectacle at this place was the hunt of "a fine but vicious horse" in honor of the Moroccan ambassador on April 12, 1682. The horse is said to have killed several people and horses [lurid Promotion?]. It survived the attacks and put the dogs to flight. In order to appease the dissatisfied raging audience, the horse was killed with a sword stab.

additions

  • In the old place on Bankside there is still an alley called Beargarden.
  • The term beargarden is used today by a manufacturer of teddy bears and soft toys from Surrey .
  • Another location for these animal fights was called Hockley-in-the-Hole and was in Clerkenwell , northwest of the City of London.
  • Bullbaiting, like other animal chasing and cockfighting, was banned in England and Wales under the Cruelty to Animals Act of 1835. Scotland followed the ban in 1895.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ IA Shapiro: The Bankside Theaters: Early Engravings. in Shakespeare Survey 1 (1948), pages 25-37
  2. ^ A b c Frank Ernest Halliday (1903–1982): A Shakespeare Companion 1564–1964. Penguin Verlag, Baltimore 1964, pages 55, 56, 188-189, 490
  3. ↑ a b Thomas Fairman Ordish (1854–1924) London Theaters. London, Elliot Stock, 1894. pp. 127 and 140
  4. ↑ Calendar of States Papers Domestic , 1547-1580; P. 595.
  5. ↑ George Chapman wrote a two-act play about him, The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron .
  6. ^ Text from Bartholomew Fair in archive.org
  7. ↑ a b c d Edmund Kerchever Chambers : The Elizabethan stage , 1923, p. 455 (read online)
  8. ^ Henry Benjamin Wheatley, Peter Cunningham: London Past and Present: Its History, Associations, and Traditions ( limited preview in Google Book Search)
  9. ↑ Jesse, George R. Jesse: Battles of Wild Beasts in Notes and Queries , 4th series, edition. 12 (July-December 1873), pages 272-273.
  10. ↑ 1835: 5 & 6 William 4 c.59: Cruelty to Animals Act

Coordinates: 51 ° 30 ′ 30 ″  N , 0 ° 5 ′ 44 ″  W.