Beside all these people Southwark contained the Show Folk of Bankside. When the Show Folk began to live in Bankside I know not: their settlement originally was in Westminster outside the King's Palace, where there was always a great demand for music, dancing, tumbling, mumming and such recreative performances; they were also, however, in great request in London by City Church, city company, and city tavern. Now there was no place for them within the walls: they had no company: there was neither a Musicians'; nor a Dancers'; nor a Singers'; nor a Mummers'; nor a Tumblers' Company. There was no company which would admit them; there was no ward where they could get a street for themselves: they were gently but firmly pushed out. And not only were they a class apart but they were a class in contempt. It was always held contemptible to provide amusement. No one, as yet, had made of music or of acting a fine art; no gentleman, as yet, and for a long time after, would take part in the buffoonery which the actor had then to exhibit: an atmosphere of disrepute attached to the calling, to those who followed the calling, and to the place where they lived: in the City, Aldermen had a way of connecting nocturnal disorders with these children of melody: where they resorted the taverns would carry on their revelries after curfew, even to midnight: if the street was alarmed by nocturnal ramblers it would prove to be after an evening with the dancers and the tumblers: the Church, especially the Church Puritanic, set her face against those who devised entertainments, on the ground that the devisers were an ungodly and dissolute crew. Therefore they crossed the river. On Bankside, in the Liberty of the Clink, where the City could not interfere, they 'went as they pleased.' They were dissolute, if they chose--Heaven knows whether they did choose--without reproach: their taverns kept open house as long as they would stop to drink: there was singing every day without interference: there was merriment without the rebuke of the sour face: there was no fear of being haled before the Lord Mayor, for making people laugh: there was no terror of pillory, and no man on their side of the river was 'put in stocks o' Monday, for kissing of his wife o' Sunday.' It was the Bishop of Winchester's Liberty, but he was content, on the whole, to leave the residents unmolested and in the possession of their guitars, their fiddles, their songs and their plays. [Illustration: THE GLOBE THEATRE (_From the Crace Collection_)]