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delight in seeing an animal in agony: almost everyone loves the sight of animal blood – except the Puritans, that is. Why is this? You might point to a deep-seated psychological connection between blood and food, so that animal blood is indicative of God’s goodness in providing things to eat. Or you might think it is a respect for the nobility of the creatures to be killed, as with the modern Spanish bullfight. However, that second reason hardly applies to a cockfight: it is not the nobility of the chickens that engages the onlookers. Rather it is the huge bets that change hands. Life and death, money and chance – these are what captivate the audience.
    Cockfighting, or cocking, is a regular Sunday occupation, with special celebratory fights taking place on Shrove Tuesday. Men spend considerable amounts – £5 or more – on purchasing a fighting bird and having it trained. Henry VIII builds a cockpit next to the Palace of Whitehall, alongside Birdcage Walk, but in Elizabeth’s reign the most popular cockpits are in Jewin Street, Shoe Lane and at St Giles in the Fields; the last of these will become the Drury Lane theatre in the next reign. Thomas Platter describes the Shoe Lane cockpit in 1599:
In the centre of the floor stands a circular table covered with straw and with ledges round it, where the cocks are teased and incited to fly at one another, while those with wagers as to which cock will win sit around the circular disk. The spectators who are merely present on their entrance penny sit around higher up, watching with eager pleasure the fierce and angry fight between the cocks, as these wound each other to death with spurs and beaks. 37
    Entertainments can go on for four or five hours, with fight after fight leaving the straw all bloody. In the Shoe Lane establishment, strongspirits such brandewijn are given to the birds beforehand to enhance their viciousness in fighting. Hundreds of pounds can be bet on each fight. Lord North loses £13 on a cockfight in 1578. 38
    More exotic than Cockfighting are the bear-baiting contests. In London these take place most days, including every Sunday, at Paris Garden in Southwark. In 1570 a second theatre is constructed so that there is one for bears (the eastern one) and one for bulls (the western). 39 To watch the bear baiting you will need to pay 1d for the stalls or 2d for the gallery. The bear is brought in on a leash or chain and tied to the stake in the middle of the theatre. Great English mastiffs are then set upon the bear:
Now the excellence and fine temper of such mastiffs is shown for although they have been much struck and mauled by the bear, they do not give in but have to be pulled off by sheer force and their muzzles forced open with long sticks to which a broad iron piece is attached at the top. The bears’ teeth are not sharp – they have them broken short so they cannot injure the dogs. When the first mastiffs grow tired, fresh ones are brought in to bait the bear. When the first bear is weary, another is supplied, and fresh dogs to bait him, first one at a time, then more and more as it lasts, till they have overpowered the bear. 40
    Thomas Platter is entertained by the display although his nose recoils at the smell of the 120 mastiffs and thirteen bears in their cages and kennels beside the ring. The high value of the bears means that normally they are not allowed to be killed by the dogs, although many dogs are killed by a bear lashing out with its claws or grabbing a dog and ‘pinching’ (crushing) it to death. Some bears become celebrities. ‘Sackerson’ is the most famous – so famous that he is mentioned in Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor: ‘I have seen Sackerson loose twenty times and have taken him by the chain.’ Nevertheless you may be distressed at the sight of the bear enraged, its mouth frothing with saliva and its pelt red with its own blood and the blood of the dogs it has killed. Robert Laneham writes of a bear baiting