Elizabeth I was the last monarch of Tudor England, before giving way to the Scottish Stuarts. She is also known as the contemporary of William Shakespeare. But the crowds watching the Bard of Avon’s plays in Elizabethan London would also have watched something much bloodier: Brown bears and English Mastiffs fighting each other to their deaths.
A new study has detailed how Bankside in the Southwark neighbourhood of London was a hub for animal-baiting. The blood sport involved pitting dogs against other animals like bulls and bears for public entertainment.
While the activity may not appeal to modern day sensibilities, it was an incredibly popular and culturally important form of entertainment in Shakespearean times and Early Modern England.
Animal baiting took place in London from 1540 to 1682 in formalised arenas on Bankside in Southwark, which was a key early modern entertainment hub, as per the study.
The researchers used zooarchaeological (animal remains), stable isotope and archival evidence from nine archaeological sites in Bankside to reach the conclusion.
The team from the Universities of York and Nottingham found that there were brown bears and dogs living on Bankside and eating the remains of old horses, as well as each other.
The Mastiffs were particularly large — some 60-80cm high at the shoulder. Their size was uncommon for dogs across England, which suggests that they were particularly used for baiting, according to a statement by the University of York.
Their findings also revealed that there were no bears in Bankside that were below four years of age.
“A bear was a very expensive animal — roughly eight times the cost of a horse — so their owners would not have wanted them to die as their replacements would have to be imported from overseas,” the statement observed.
The brown bear, like the grey wolf and lynx, had been wiped out in the British Isles during earlier periods of the islands’ history.
“The same may also be true of the dogs, as although some were found with bone fractures, their injuries had healed, indicating they survived for at least six or more weeks after being wounded,” the statement added.
It quoted Hannah O’Regan, Professor of Archaeology and Palaeoecology at the University of Nottingham, as saying that baiting was critical to understanding performance in Shakespeare’s England.
“The people who went to watch King Lear and Hamlet, would also have popped into the arenas to see a baiting. They saw no difference between the practices, and indeed baiting terminology, and even the bears themselves are threaded throughout early modern plays.”
Animal baiting was finally banned in England in 1835.
What does a bear-baiting assemblage look like? Interdisciplinary analysis of an Early Modern ‘sport’ has been published in the journal Antiquity.