Note 63 — PROLOGUE TO THE PILGRIM.
Reading edition
The savage amusement of bear-baiting was much in fashion in England during the seventeenth century. Tom Dove, although equipped with a name not very expressive of his properties, seems to have been a bear of great celebrity. Dryden honours him by another notice in the second Prologue on the Union of the Companies:
They roar so loud, you'd think, behind the stairs, Tom Dove, and all the brotherhood of bears.