Bear Baiting In Elizabethan

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Calvin Nguyen Smith English 2, Period 1 16 October 2014 Bear Baiting/Black Death/ Shakespeare & Misogyny Bear baiting, Bull Baiting, and Cock Fighting: While there were many types of entertainment in the Elizabethan era, one of the most popular attractions had to do with putting animals into arenas and watching them either fight be baited into a state of anger--the eighteenth century version of a gladiator match. Various animals could be brought into the ring; the main animals however, were bears, bulls, and chickens. Elizabethan Bear Baiting was an immensely popular sport in Europe, so popular that even Queen Elizabeth herself watched the sport in her leisure time. The main goal of the sport was to bait anger from the bear using a dog. The…show more content…
It’s really important because the ways of entertainment back then were vastly different from now and watching two chickens fight each other to the death is now illegal in the US. Bear baiting seemed really relevant in English culture because if Queen Elizabeth took time off to see the sport then it must have been really good. It was also a way for people to enjoy some entertainment in an age without electronics. Seeing how culture changed throughout the centuries is extremely interesting and engaging and really makes me want to read more Shakespeare so I can understand it more. Culture is really important because it defines how society acted at the time and we saw how back then they enjoyed watching animals fight to the death. If I traveled back in time I would get culture shock because frankly the idea of enjoying two animals fight to the death is preposterous! Reading articles about this topic has really changed my life for the better because when I grow up, I’ll look back on this experience and compare it to how America has changed over time as I grew older. Bear baiting has really grabbed my attention towards Shakespeare in a way that no other topic has. (240…show more content…
This helps me learn about Shakespeare because in various plays such as Romeo and Juliet many people die and there are not happy endings. This is important because this can apply to real life also because not everyone can be happy. Reading these articles reminds me of today’s ebola articles and I start to feel concerned that the same thing might happen again. However, the chance of that happening is extremely low because of modern medicine and infrastructure so there should be nothing to worry about. I think that the plague was really interesting because it was the biggest epidemic at that time and it nearly wiped out one third of Europe’s population which I found amazing. Learning this information is very beneficial to me and my peers because knowing the context behind a book helps you understand it better and sometimes even more interested in it. Maybe learning about this disease will help me understand scenes from the book better because now I know major topics of that time period. (205
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