Here in South London special arenas were built for the spectacle of bear-baiting, and it is no chance that as early as in the time of Richard III the most popular tavern of this quarter was called “The Bear.” It stood near London Bridge, and was frequented especially by aristocratic revelers. In these scenes of rough amusements for the people the muse of Shakespeare introduced the gentle dramatic arts. Here his “Henry V” was introduced for the first time, perhaps, with its solemn chorus: “Can this cockpit hold the vasty fields of France?” Still more than these artificial and butchery sports of the citizen, the real joys of the hunter found their echo in the productions of the sign-painters. There is hardly an English town without a “White Hart Inn.” Since the days of Alexander the Great, who once caught a beautiful white hart and decorated his slender neck with a golden ring, since Charlemagne and Henry the Lion, the white hart has been a special favorite of the hunter, whose joys no poet perhaps has sung so charmingly as Shakespeare in these lines of “Titus Andronicus” (II, ii and iii):-- “The hunt is up, the morn is bright and grey, The fields are fragrant, and the woods are green: Uncouple here * * * * * The birds chaunt melody on every bush; The snake lies rolled in the cheerful sun; The green leaves quiver with the cooling wind, And make a chequer’d shadow on the ground: Under their sweet shade, Aaron, let us sit, And--whilst the babbling echo mocks the hounds, Replying shrilly to the well-tun’d horns, As if a double hunt were heard at once once-- Let us sit down....” Another group of signs celebrates Master Reynard. We see him harassed by dogs and riders on the sign “Fox and Hounds” in Barley (Hertfordshire). We miss only the sportive ladies who dip their kerchiefs of lace in the poor devil’s blood to show that they, too, were in at the finish. This sign, by the way, was used long centuries ago, since we hear of a “Fox and Hounds Inn” in Putney that claims to be over three hundred years old. The German Nimrod took no less pleasure than his English cousin in seeing a hunter’s sign on the tavern door, as is amply proved by the many golden harts, flying in great bounds, or our George sign from Degerloch, daintily wrought in iron. The German poets, too, sang many a song celebrating the adventures of the chase. [Illustration: ZUM HIRSHEN WINNENDEN] Not so often do we find on the Continent the so-called “punning sign,” which might well be called an English specialty, since England’s greatest poet used to indulge a great deal in punning,--“mistaking the word” as he calls it. In a dialogue full of quibbles in the “Two Gentlemen of Verona” he admits himself that it is a weakness to yield to it:-- “_Speed._ How now, Signior Launce? What news with your mastership? “_Launce._ With my master’s ship? Why, it is at sea.