Every Sunday they will spend One penny or two, the bearward's living to mend. At Paris Gardens each Sunday, a man shall not fail To find two or three hundred for the bearward's vale.
Later on there was certainly an amphitheatre in Paris Gardens, because an accident happened there.
'The same 13th day of Januarie, being Sunday about foure of the clock in the afternoon, the old and under-propped scaffolds round about the Beare Garden, commonly called Paris Garden, on the south side of the great river Thames over against the citie of London, over-deluged with people, fell suddenly downe, whereby to number of eight persons, men and women, were slaine and many others sore hurt and bruised to the shortening of their lives. A friendly warning to all that delight themselves in the cruelties of beastes than in the workes of mercy, the fruits of a true, professed faith, which ought to be the Sabbath dayes exercise.' (Stow's 'Annals,' continued by Hawes.)
The amphitheatre would hold a thousand people.
The sport had other dangers: the bear, for instance, might get loose. Once the blind bear got loose: it was on December 9, 1554, and on the Bankside, probably at the amphitheatre outside Paris Gardens. He caught a serving man by the leg 'and bytt a grate pesse away, and after by the hokyll bone, that within iii days after he ded' (Machyn).
Wherever such sports were carried on there must needs spring up a rabble rout who made their living by them: the bearward, the serving man who kept the kennels, fed the dogs, exercised the dogs, fed the bears, looked after the amphitheatre, took the money, and above all provided the drink. In the little lane now called the Bear Garden, there is a small square place which I take to be the survival of an open court in front of the circus. There is here a small tavern: the house itself is not ancient, but I believe that it stands on the site of the house which provided wine and beer for the spectators of the bear baiting. These sports, with others such as wrestling and fighting: these great crowds of people gathering together: the music which accompanied everything: caused the creation of taverns and drinking-places. Another attraction to the place may be only hinted at in these pages. Suffice it to say that all the profligate, all the debauched, all the rowdy, all the lovers of sport among the citizens of London crossed over to Bankside every evening in the summer and every Sunday in the winter, and there they frolicked, drank, sang, quarrelled, fought, and tortured animals to their hearts' content.