The second Cut represents the bull and bear-baiting theatres, as they appeared in their first state, A.D. 1560.  This spot was called Paris Garden, and the two theatres are said to have been the first that were formed near London.  In these, according to Stow, were scaffolds for the spectators to stand upon, an indulgence for which they paid in the following manner:  “Those who go to Paris Garden, the Bell Savage, or Theatre, to behold bear-baiting, enterludes, or fence-play, must not account of any pleasant spectacle unless they first pay one penny at the gate, another at the entrie of the scaffold, and a third for quiet standing.”  One Sunday afternoon, in the year 1582, the scaffold, being overcharged with spectators, fell down during the performance, and a great number of persons were killed or maimed by the accident, which the puritans of the time failed not to attribute to a Divine judgment.  These theatres were patronized by royalty:  for we read that Queen Elizabeth, on the 26th of May, 1599, went by water with the French ambassadors to Paris Garden, where they saw a baiting of bulls and bears.  Indeed, Southwark seems to have long been of sporting notoriety, for, in the Humorous Lovers, printed in 1617, one of the characters says, “I’ll set up my bills, that the gamesters of London, Horsly-down, Southwark, and Newmarket, may come in and bait him (the bear,) here before the ladies, &c."[2]

The third Cut includes the globe, rose, and bear-baiting theatres, as they appeared about the year 1612.  Of the Globe we have been furnished with the following account by a zealous correspondent, G.W.: 

The Globe Theatre stood on a plot of ground, now occupied by four houses, contiguous to the present Globe Alley, Maiden Lane, Southwark.  This theatre was of considerable size.  It is not certain when it was built.  Hentzner, the German traveller, who gives an amusing description of London in the time of Queen Elizabeth, alludes to it as existing in 1598, but it was probably not built long before 1596.  It was an hexagonal, wooden building, partly open to the weather, and partly thatched with reeds, on which, as well as other theatres, a pole was erected, to which a flag was affixed.  These flags were probably displayed only during the hours of performance; and it should seem from one of the old comedies that they were taken down in Lent, in which time, during the early part of King James’s reign, plays were not allowed to be represented, though at a subsequent period this prohibition was dispensed with by paying a fee to the Master of the Revels.

It was called the Globe from its sign, which was a figure of Hercules, or Atlas, supporting a globe, under which was written, Totus mundus agit histrionem, (All the world acts a play):—­and not as many have conjectured, that the Globe though hexagonal at the outside, was a rotunda within, and that it might have derived its name from its circular form.