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The Playhouses at Bankside in the Time of Shakespeare (1885, Walford's Antiquarian, vii. 207, 274; viii. 55), Paris Garden and Blackfriars (1887, 7 N. Q. iii. 241, 343, 442). Some notes of Eu. Hood [Joseph Haslewood] in 1813 and A. J. K[empe] in 1833 are reprinted in The Gentleman's Magazine Library, xv (1904), 74, 117. Other writings on Paris Garden are by W. H. Overall (1869) in ''Proc. Soc. Antiq.'' 2nd series, iv. 195, J. Meymott, The Manor of Old Paris Garden (1881), P. Norman, ''The Accounts of the Overseers of the Poor of Paris Garden, Southwark, 1608-1671'' (1901) in ''Surrey Arch. Colls.'' xvi. 55. Since I wrote this chapter, C. L. Kingsford (1920, Arch. lxx. 155) has added valuable material.]

It is convenient, in connexion with the Hope, to deal with the whole rather troublesome question of the Bankside Bear Gardens. The ursarius or bearward was a recognized type of mediaeval mimus, and the rewards in which his welcome found expression are a recurring item in many a series of municipal or domestic accounts. Thus, to take one example only, the corporation of Shrewsbury entertained between 1483 and 1542 the ursinarii, ursuarii, or ursiatores of the King, the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, the Marquises of Dorset and Exeter, the Earl of Derby, and the town of Norwich. On more than one occasion the payment is said to be pro agitacione bestiarum suarum. The phrase is perhaps not free from ambiguity. The dancing bear was, until quite recently, a familiar sight in provincial England, and I have seen one even on the sophisticated slopes of Notting Hill. And illuminations dating back as far as the tenth century bear evidence to the antiquity of his somewhat grotesque tripudium. But in the robust days of our forefathers there was an even more attractive way of agitating bears. The traditional victim of an English baiting was no doubt the bull. A Southwark map of 1542 shows a 'Bolrynge' in the middle of the High Street and a neighbouring alley still bore the name in 1561. The maps of Höfnagel (c. 1560) and Agas (c. 1570) show another ring, marked 'The bolle bayting' and with a very palpable bull inside it, upon the Bankside, not far from where the Hope must afterwards have stood. But the bear was also baited in London, at least from the twelfth century. Erasmus is often cited as declaring that