The contract states that it was to be built like the Swan, a theatre erected nearly twenty years previously, a proof that few alterations or improvements were made in theatrical structures during this long period.
Most people interested in theatrical matters are aware that customs appertaining to the theatre are handed down from generation to generation, and innovations in stage tradition are seldom, if ever, introduced, even in such an improving age as our own.
This theatre is without any Shakesperean association, and the only stage play, so far as is known, publicly acted there is Ben Jonson’s “Bartholomew Fair,” in 1614. This play contains several theatrical allusions, one of which is defining the spectators of the pit as “the understanding gentlemen of the ground.” Shakespeare names the same audience as the “groundlings” in Hamlet’s speech to the players. For several days in the week the Hope was given over to bear-baiting and other sports. There is an account of one Fenner, who challenged Taylor, the Water Poet, to a combat of wits. On the day appointed, Fenner failed to put in an appearance, thereby causing the great enmity of Taylor, who wrote some rather poignant and sarcastic verses in memory of the event. Fenner replied by a mock epitaph:
“O! ’twas that foolish scurvie play At Hope that took his sense away.”
“Thou writest a hotch potch of some forty lines About my play at Hope and my designs.”
On the rebuilding of the Globe, the Hope stood little chance against such a powerful rival; in fact, this building was never seriously regarded as a theatre. When the new Globe was entirely rebuilt the Hope gradually resumed its former occupation as a bear-baiting house, which in reality had never been discarded.
As a bear-baiting garden, a reference is found in Swetnam’s _Arraignment of Women_, 1617: “If you mean to see the bear-baiting of women then trudge to this bear garden apace, and get in betimes and view every room where thou may best sit for thy pleasure.”
The further history of the Hope after 1616 is quite unconnected with the drama. It flourished for many years. After Shakespeare’s death, Cunningham, in his _Handbook of London_, says that the best account of its last days is narrated in Howe’s MS., a continuation of Stow’s Survey; this must be by some other hand than Howe’s, as he died in 1631. “The Hope, on the bankside in Southwark, commonly called the Beare Garden, a playhouse for stage players on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, and for the baiting of the Beares on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the stage being made to take up and down when they please.”