BLACKFRIARS THEATRE BUILDING 33 
neither the Swan nor the Hope could on an architect’s estimate 
- accommodate more than one-third the number De Witt guessed. 
The removable stage of each rested on “‘tressels’’® and could be 
taken up for bull-baiting or bear-baiting, and put down again for 
play-acting,’°—an impermanency and practice that further sug- 
gests less of fixed excellence in structure and adornment than 
De Witt gave compliment to.* 
There is no evidence of a pretentiousness of either the Swan 
or the Hope, built and used thus alike, that warrants a more gen- 
erous valuation than the liberal 500/. as already calculated, or a 
larger estimate of their capacity than that of the Fortune or the 
Globe. Rather do these estimates of value and size seem too large 
than too small. 
In the same year the Hope was built, the original Globe was 
"s 
i. 
bane 
Det See oy, 
*On comparative capacities, see 
infra, 50°. 
=07. tlope contract, \#.. s., 30°. 
The De Witt-Van Buchell sketch of 
the Swan, which is merely suggest- 
ive——in the main rightly but some- 
times wrongly suggestive,—and in 
no detail exact nor intended to be 
exact, shows a temporary prosce- 
nium ;—which however most prob- 
ably extended much farther back 
than there shown, with the posts 
also moved far rearwards, leaving 
the “heavens” unsupported and pro- 
jecting forward over the temporary 
stage, as specified in the Hope con- 
tract. 
*“The Hope on the Banks side 
in Southwarke, commonly called the 
Beare Garden, A Play house for 
Stage Playes on Mundayes, Wed- 
ensdayes, Fridayes and Saterdayes, 
And for the Baiting of the Beares 
On Tuesdayes and Thursdayes, the 
Stage being made to take vp and 
downe when they please.’—MS. 
notes in a copy of Stowe’s Annales 
or Chronicle (continued by E. 
Howes), 1631, in the Phillips col- 
lection, Thirlestone House, Chelten- 
ham; reported by Dr. F. J. Furni- 
vall, “The End of Shakspere’s 
Playhouses,”. in The Academy 
) 
(1882), XXII, 314-15. 
*When one considers De Witt’s 
description and sketch of the Swan, 
one is divided between gratitude for 
certain data and the suggestive il- 
lumination of our knowledge on the 
one hand, and admiration on the 
other for the exhilarating quality 
of, dramatic ale that made the dis- 
tinguished Dutch scholar and priest 
see the rather plain, moderate-sized 
plastered wooden bear-baiting and 
bull-baiting playhouse with gener- 
ous vision, even in pleasing retro- 
spect. 
Ben Jonson in closing The In- 
duction to his Bartholomew Fair, 
under date 30 Oct., 1614, the first 
play ever presented at the Hope, 
damned that bull-baiting theatre as 
not merely unaesthetic, but as “be- 
ing as durty as Smithfield, and as 
{tinking euery whit.” [The slush 
and filth of the cattle-market of the 
Bartholomew fair, held every Au- 
gust at Smithfield, was proverbial.] 
With the breath of this judgment 
blown suggestively across from the 
Hope to its model in structure and 
use, the Swan, it would seem that 
De Witt at a distance with his Latin 
prose was more poet than Jonson 
present with his English verse. 
147 
