use the building also for
animal-baiting. According to the contract with the actors, the latter
were to "lie still one day in fourteen" for the baiting.[547] This may
not have been a serious interruption for the players; but the presence
of the stable, the bear dens, and the kennels for the dogs must have
rendered the playhouse far from pleasant to the audiences. Ben Jonson,
in the Induction to his _Bartholomew Fair_, acted at the Hope in
October, 1614, remarks: "And though the Fair be not kept in the same
region that some here perhaps would have it, yet think that therein
the author hath observed a special decorum, the place being as dirty
as Smithfield, and as stinking every whit."[548]

[Footnote 547: Greg, _Henslowe Papers_, p. 88; cf. p. 125, where
animal-baiting is said to be used "one day of every four days"--a
possible error for "fourteen days." In the manuscript notes to the
Phillipps copy of Stow's _Survey_ (1631), we are told that baiting was
used at the Hope on Tuesdays and Thursdays; but the anonymous
commentator is very inaccurate.]

[Footnote 548: The Rose Playhouse was likewise affected. Dekker, in
_Satiromastix_, III, iv, says: "Th'ast a breath as sweet as the Rose
that grows by the Bear Garden."]

In March, 1614,--that is, at the completion of one full year under the
joint management of Henslowe and Rosseter,--the amalgamated company
was "broken," and Rosseter withdrew, selling his interest in the
company's apparel to Henslowe and Meade for L63. The latter at once
reorganized the actors under the patent of the Lady Elizabeth's Men,
and continued them at the Hope.[549] The general excellence of the
troupe thus formed is referred to by John Taylor, the Water-Poet, in
the lines:

And such a company (I'll boldly say)
That better (nor the like) e'er play'd a play.[550]

[Footnote 549: Greg, _Henslowe Papers_, p. 87. The articles of
agreement between Henslowe and Meade and the company, are printed by
Greg on page 23.]

[Footnote 550: _Works_, Folio of 1630; The Spenser Society's reprint,
p. 307.]

But this encomium may have been in large measure due to gratitude, for
the company had just saved the Water-Poet from a very embarrassing
situation. The amusing episode which gave occasion to this deserves to
be chronicled in some detail.

With "a thousand bills posted over the city" Taylor had advertised to
the public that at the Hope Playhouse on October 7, 1614, he would
engage in a contes