Bull-baiting Bull-baiting Author Natasha Neudorf Ediger Supervising Editor Melissa Walter Editor Kate McPherson Copy Editor Leah Hamby Senior Encoder Leah Hamby Encoding and Metadata LEMDO Team Copyright Holder (Content) Kate McPherson Copyright Holder (XML and interface) University of Victoria Early Modern England Encyclopedia EMEE

Anthology Leads: Kate McPherson and Kate Moncrief.

 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Mitacs Globalink Research Internship Utah Valley University

Released with Early Modern England Encyclopedia 1.0a

 University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform

Intellectual copyright in this entry is held by Kate McPherson on behalf of the contributors. Copyright on the TEI-XML markup is held by the University of Victoria on behalf of the LEMDO Team. The content and TEI-XML markup in this file are licensed under a CC BY-NC_ND 4.0 license. This file is freely downloadable without permission under the following conditions: (1) credit must be given to the authors, EMEE, and LEMDO in any subsequent use of the files and /or data; (2) this availability statement must remain in the file; (3) the content cannot be adapted or repurposed (except for quotations for the purposes of academic review and citation); and (4) commercial uses are not permitted without the knowledge and consent of the authors, EMEE, and LEMDO. Neither the content nor the code in this file is licensed for training large language models (LLMs), ingestion into an LLM, or any use in any artificial intelligence applications; such uses are considered to be commercial uses and are strictly prohibited.

Early Modern England Encyclopedia

By Natasha Neudorf Ediger, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions

Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines

This document uses Canadian English spelling

 Document Types All documents in LEMDO are either born-digital documents or primary documents. Within those two general categories, LEMDO offers additional ways to categorize a file. Born-digital Born-digital documents are anything other than primary texts Critical Critical material, such as a general introduction or a textual introduction. Responsibilities Responsibilities Author A person, family, or organization responsible for creating a work that is primarily textual in content, regardless of media type (e.g., printed text, spoken word, electronic text, tactile text) or genre (e.g., poems, novels, screenplays, blogs). Use also for persons, etc., creating a new work by paraphrasing, rewriting, or adapting works by another creator such that the modification has substantially changed the nature and content of the original or changed the medium of expression. LEMDO uses the term author in two contexts: (1) to indicate the author of a primary work or document (such as Hamlet), and (2) to indicate the author of a secondary text (such as the Critical Introduction to <title level="m">Hamlet, by David Bevington). Editor A person, family, or organization contributing to a resource by revising or elucidating the content, e.g., adding an introduction, notes, or other critical matter. An editor may also prepare a resource for production, publication, or distribution. For major revisions, adaptations, etc., that substantially change the nature and content of the original work, resulting in a new work, see author. LEMDO uses the general term editor only in edition metadata and only to indicate when a person is responsible for editing all parts of an edition. Otherwise, use the more granular terms to describe the precise nature of the editorial role. Supervising Editor An editor who supervises the work of a student editor. Copy Editor LEMDO uses the term owner for the person who checks facts, quotations, and citations; may make formatting changes; may convert from one citation style to another; may suggest wording changes; and enforces conformity with the project style guide. Markup Editor A person or organization performing the coding of SGML, HTML, or XML markup of metadata, text, etc. Gloss needed. Copyright Holder A person or organization to whom copy and legal rights have been granted or transferred for the intellectual content of a work. The copyright holder, although not necessarily the creator of the work, usually has the exclusive right to benefit financially from the sale and use of the work to which the associated copyright protection applies. Normally the editor is the copyright holder for an LEMDO edition. EMEE Keywords Culture Learn about the customs, beliefs, and daily lives of people in early modern England. Daily Life Animal Baiting Bear Gardens Published file. Updated metadata proofed Review of article finished. added url to figDesc added figure and citation updated author respStmt. Created File. Michael Best Michael Best

Michael Best is Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria, BC. He founded the Internet Shakespeare Editions in 1996, and was Coordinating Editor until 2017, contributing two editions to the ISE: King John and King Lear (the latter also available in print from Broadview Press). In print, he has published editions of works of Elizabethan magic and huswifery, a collection of letters from the Australian goldfields, and Shakespeare on the Art of Love (2008). He contributed regular columns for the Shakespeare Newsletter on Electronic Shakespeares, and has written many articles and chapters for both print and online books and journals, principally on questions raised by the new medium in the editing and publication of texts. He has delivered papers and plenary lectures on electronic media and the Internet Shakespeare Editions at conferences in Canada, the USA, the UK, Spain, Australia, and Japan.

 Natasha Ediger Natasha Ediger

Natasha Ediger was a student at the University of Fraser Valley.

 Leah Hamby Leah Hamby

Leah Hamby is the primary encoder for the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Aside from encoding, she also works as an editor for the project and contributed several articles of her own. She has been working on the EMEE since February 2023. As of February 2026, she is soon to graduate with honours from Utah Valley University with a major in history and a minor in creative writing. Her other work with the LEMDO program includes remediating William Kemp’s Kemp’s Nine Day’s Wonder for the Digital Renaissance Editions.

 Navarra Houldin Navarra Houldin

Training and Documentation Lead 2025–present. LEMDO project manager 2022–2025. Textual remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them) completed their BA with a major in history and minor in Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. Their primary research was on gender and sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America. They are continuing their education through an MA program in Gender and Social Justice Studies at the University of Alberta where they will specialize in Digital Humanities.

 Kate McPherson Kate McPherson

Kate McPherson is Professor of English and Honors Program Director at Utah Valley University (Orem, UT, USA). In 2015, she began working to redevelop Shakespeare’s Life and Times, created by Michael Best, into the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Her other publications include commentary on Pericles and The Comedy of Errors for the New Oxford Shakespeare (2016); the co-edited volumes Stages of Engagement: Drama and Religion in Post-Reformation England with James Mardock (Duquesne University Press, 2014) and Shakespeare Expressed: Page, Stage, and Classroom in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, with Kathryn M. Moncrief and Sarah Enloe (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2013). With Kathryn M. Moncrief, Kate has also two edited collections, Performing Pedagogy in Early Modern England: Gender, Instruction, and Performance (Ashgate, 2011) and Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate 2008). She has also published numerous articles on early modern maternity in scholarly journals. Kate participated in the 2008 National Endowment for the Humanities Institute, Shakespeare’s Blackfriars: The Study, the Stage, the Classroom, at the American Shakespeare Center. She also served as Play Seminar Director, a public humanities position, for the Utah Shakespeare Festival in 2017 and 2018.

 Melissa Walter Melissa Walter

Melissa Walter is Associate Professor of English at the University of the Fraser Valley. Her research focuses on early modern English drama and English and European prose fiction. She is the author of The Italian Novella and Shakespeare’s Comic Heroines (U of Toronto, 2019), and co-editor, with Dennis Britton, of Rethinking Shakespeare Source Study: Authors, Audiences, Digital Technologies (Routledge, 2018). Her work on English theatre and the European novella has appeared in several edited collections, including Transnational Exchange in Early Modern Theater (Ashgate, 2008), and Transnational Mobility in Early Modern Theater (Ashgate, 2012). She has also written about Translation and Identity in the Dialogues in English and Malaiane Languages (Indographies, ed. Jonathan Gil Harris. Palgrave 2012). At the University of the Fraser Valley, she is a lead coordinator of UFV’s Shakespeare and Reconciliation Garden.

 LEMDO Team The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators, encoders, and remediating editors. University of Victoria https://www.uvic.ca/
A black and white image of a bulldog and a bull getting ready to attack each other in a pen while another bull runs away. Etching by F. Barlow of a bull and a dog preparing to attack eachother. Date Unknown. Courtesy of Wellcome Collection. Public Domain. https://wellcomecollection.org/works/n9ztjj5w/images?id=h6xp3uth.
Introduction

The ferocious sport of bull-baiting was one of the main bloodsport pastimes for English citizens in the early modern period, attracting men and women of all ages. In bull-baiting, chained bulls were attacked by dogs who had been released into the arena. The English enjoyed this blood sport as much as they enjoyed any other friendlier form of amusement, such as plays, puppet shows, sports like wrestling, and music. Some people opposed this form of entertainment, mainly the Puritans. Prominent Puritan critic of the theater Philips Stubbes lamented What Christian heart can take pleasure to see one poor beast rend, tear and kill another. Despite their efforts to eliminate it, bull-baiting continued to take place up until Parliament outlawed animal blood sports in 1835.

The Bloody Arena

Arenas were purposefully crafted in England to sustain this form of entertainment. Hundreds of dogs were separated by wooden boards, while bulls and bears were kept in larger pens. Surrounding the open space where these baitings occurred were stands which cost viewers two pennies to access. In the 16th century, evidence indicates London may have had separate bloodsport arenas right beside each other, one adapted to entertaining its viewers with bull-baiting and the other with bear-baiting, but only one remained after 1583. Early modern Londoners took delight in watching experienced bulls and dogs attack each other until severely wounded or dead.

Why Bull-baiting?

Queen Elizabeth herself thoroughly enjoyed watching all different kinds of animal blood sports. In one 1575 entertainment she attended, 13 bears were provided, although some of them may have been performers rather than involved in baiting. Bear baiting and cockfighting were also popular in London and around England. One widely believed theory was that bull-baiting made the bull’s meat both safe to eat and more tender.

Attitudes of English Citizens in the Early Modern Period

Readers in the 21st century may wonder why the English in the early modern period were fascinated rather than distraught by bloodsports like bull-baiting. In her book Brutal Reasoning: Animals, Rationality, and Humanity in Early Modern England, Erica Fudge lays out some of the principal attitudes towards bull-baiting during this time period: English people struggled to determine whether animals had reason or not. Animals were used as a tool to make humans feel superior (192).

From the Theatre to the Arena

Macbeth himself refers to animal baiting when considering his final encounter with his foes, stating they have tied me to a stake; I cannot fly, / But, bear-like, I must fight the course. (Macbeth 5.7.1–2) Here reference is made to bear-baiting, a blood sport identical in nature to bull-baiting. The same people who consistently attended these bull, bear, dog, and other animal baiting scenes, also attended live theater, thus revealing the variety and contrast of English pastimes in the early modern period.

Key Print Sources Dawson, Giles E. London’s Bull-Baiting and Bear-Baiting Arena in 1562. Shakespeare Quarterly, vol. 15, no. 1, Folger Shakespeare Library, The Shakespeare Association of America, Inc., Johns Hopkins University Press, George Washington University, 1964, pp. 97–101, DOI 10.2307/2867963. Fudge, Erica. Brutal Reasoning: Animals, Rationality, and Humanity in Early Modern England. Cornell University Press, 2019. Shakespeare, William. Macbeth. Edited by Barbara Mowat and Paul Werstine, Folger Shakespeare Library, 1623.
Key Online Sources Andrews, Evan. The Gruesome Blood Sports of Shakespearean England. History, A&E Television Networks, 9 Jan. 2019, https://www.history.com/articles/the-gruesome-blood-sports-of-shakespearean-england. Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. Bearbaiting. Encyclopedia Britannica, 6 Mar. 2018, https://www.britannica.com/sports/bearbaiting. Accessed 5 Jan. 2023.
Image Sources Barlow, F. A Bull and a bulldog are about to attack eachother in an enlosure while another bull is running away. Etching. Wellcome Collection. https://wellcomecollection.org/search/images?query=n9ztjj5w#.