[Illustration: THE HOPE PLAYHOUSE, OR SECOND BEAR GARDEN From Hollar's _View of London_ (1647).] Accordingly, on August 29, 1613, Henslowe and Meade signed a contract with a carpenter named Katherens to pull down the Bear Garden and erect in its place a new structure. The original contract, preserved among the Henslowe Papers, is one of the most valuable documents we have relating to the early theatres. It is too long and verbose for insertion here, but I give below a summary of its contents.[544] Katherens agreed: 1. To "pull down" the Bear Garden and "the stable wherein the bulls and horses" had been kept; and "near or upon the said place where the said game-place did heretofore stand," to "newly erect, build, and set up" a "playhouse, fit and convenient in all things both for players to play in, and for the game of bears and bulls to be baited in." 2. "To build the same of such large compass, form, wideness, and height as the playhouse called the Swan." 3. To provide for the building "a good sure, and sufficient foundation of bricks ... thirteen inches at the least above the ground." 4. To make three galleries: "the inner principal posts of the first story to be twelve feet in height, and ten inches square; in the middle story ... eight inches square; in the upper story ... seven inches square."[545] 5. To "make two boxes in the lowermost story, fit and decent for gentlemen to sit in," and in the rest of the galleries "partitions between the rooms as they are in the said playhouse called the Swan." 6. To construct "a stage, to be carried and taken away, and to stand upon tressels, good, substantial, and sufficient for the carrying and bearing of such a stage." 7. To "build the heavens all over the said stage, to be borne or carried without any posts or supporters to be fixed or set upon the said stage." 8. To equip the stage with "a fit and convenient tyre-house." 9. To "build two staircases without and adjoining to the said playhouse ... of such largeness and height as the staircases of the said playhouse called the Swan." 10. "To new build, erect, and set up the said bull-house and stable ... of that largeness and fitness as shall be sufficient to keep and hold six bulls and three horses." 11. "To new tyle with English tyles all the upper roof of the said playhouse ... and stable." 12. To have the playhouse finished "upon or before the last day of November," 1613. [Footnote 544: The contract is printed in full in Greg, _Henslowe Papers_, p. 19.] [Footnote 545: The height is given for the first story only. We may assume that the middle and uppermost stories were of diminishing heights, as in the case of the Fortune Playhouse, in which the galleries were respectively twelve, eleven, and nine feet in height.]