The RED BULL was the sign of another of the inn-playhouses in Shakespeare’s time; but, like the Fortune, mostly frequented by the meaner sorts of people. It was situated in Woodbridge Street,[257] Clerkenwell, (its site is still called Red Bull Yard,) and is supposed to have been erected in the early part of Queen Elizabeth’s reign. At all events, it was one of the seventeen playhouses that arose in London between that period and the reign of Charles I. Edward Alleyn the actor, founder of Dulwich College, says in a memorandum, Oct. 3, 1617, “went to the Red Bull and received for the ‘Younger Brother’ [a play], but £3-6-4.” Killigrew’s troop of the king’s players performed in it until the theatre in Lincoln’s-Inn-fields opened. The place was then abandoned to exhibitions of gladiators and feats of strength. The names of the principal theatres at the time of the Commonwealth occur in the following puritanical curse:--
“---- That the _Globe_ Wherein (quoth he) reigns a whole world of vice, Had been consumed, the _Phenix_ burnt to ashes, The _Fortune_ whipp’d for a blind--_Blackfriars_, He wonders how it ’scaped demolishing I’ the time of Reformation; lastly he wished The _Bull_ might cross the Thames to the _Bear-gardens_, And there be soundly baited.”[258]
The BULL’S HEAD is often seen instead of the Bull; its origin may be from the butchers’ arms, which are azure two axes salterwise, arg. between two roses _arg._ as many _bulls’ heads_ couped of the second attired _or_, &c.; in Holland a carved bull’s head is always a leather-seller’s sign. At the BULL’S HEAD, in Claremarket, the artists’ club used to meet, of which Hogarth was a member, and Dr Ratcliffe a constant visitor. The Bull’s Head was already used in signs three hundred years ago, as we may see from an entry in Machyn’s Diary, which does not say much for the morality of the period:--
“The xij day of June (1560) dyd ryd in a care[259] abowt London ij men and iij women; one man, for he was the bowd and to brynge women unto strangers; and on women was the wyff of the _Bell_ in Gracyous Strett; and a-nodur the wyff of the _Bull-hed_ besyd London Stone, and boyth were bawdes and hores and the thodur man and the woman were brodur and syster and wher taken nakyd together.”