Chapter VII: Part 7

One would have liked to have had a dozen of epigrams from merry John Heywood, on these lively ladies, who, to quote a proverb of his own, were “As nice as nuns’ hens;” but he may have been saddened by the aspect of the city itself, which had not yet recovered from the calamity which had fallen upon it in 1546. In the month of August of that year (near midnight of the 17th), a flash of lightning pierced the powder magazine, and the explosion levelled a fourth of the city, and blew hundreds of its inhabitants into the air. The ruins long encumbered the place; and it was among the remaining wrecks caused by this catastrophe, and the cheerful nuns of St. Alexis, ever busy and mirthful, that orthodox John Heywood passed the closing years of his life. The Papal favour, which had selected Mechlin as the scene of the jubilee of 1452, had gained for the city the title of “Mechlin the Happy.” Heywood could not go to Rome, as King Edmund’s joculator did, and as one at least of his own sons did subsequently; but, for religion’s sake, he pitched his tabernacle in a city that had been blessed by a Pope, blasted by lightning, and was kept merry by the most vivacious nuns that had ever been heard of, except at Farmoutier. Antony Wood (in his ‘Athenæ Oxon.’ vol. i. p. 150) sneers at the idea of a member of the ordinarily unprincipled profession of poets, going into voluntary banishment for the sake of religion. Perhaps, as far as regards Heywood’s case, Antony was not very much mistaken, if it be true that, when Heywood’s last hour arrived, in 1589, he spent it in laughter, jokes, gibes, and fearful jesting with that King Death who was summoning him to his court. Further towards that court we will not follow him; but will rather take leave of him with a glance at the portraiture of the living jester at the courts of Henry VIII. and Queen Mary.

The portrait of Heywood, prefixed to his poem of ‘The Spider and the Fly’ (edition 1556), has nothing in it of the appearance of the court fool. It represents, at full length, a very respectable, middle-aged, and not particularly good-humoured gentleman, with smooth shaven cheeks and chin. He is attired in a close-fitting coat, reaching to the middle of the thigh, surmounted by a long loose-sleeved cloak; the ends of what appears to be trunk-hose appear just below the kirtle portion of the coat; and up to the hose reach long, tight stockings, gartered both above and below knee. A flat cap with a protecting fall to keep the back of the head warm, is fixed tight upon that head, which seems as closely shaven as the cheeks and chin; at all events, there is no appearance of hair from beneath it. A dagger, suspended from a girdle, hangs across the thighs in front, and in this girdle John the Jester has passed the thumb of either hand; and he stands resting chiefly on the right leg, the left being slightly bent, and the owner of them having altogether something of the look of a man who would be “jolly” if he could, but who is disgusted at his ill success.

As there is no doubt of Heywood having been named by Mary’s father, “King’s Jester,” we may fairly conclude, assuming this portrait to be a true effigy, that the jester was now a higher personage than the fool. This was not the case in the time of Scogan, who, though a member of the University (as Heywood also was), hired himself out, according to Andrew Borde, as a household fool. We shall also find, in the reign of Elizabeth, that a difference was made between _jester_ and _fool_; that is, between a clever individual retained or invited to make good jests, without being always obliged to wear motley, and the ordinary fool who had his wages, his privilege of speech, his whipping occasionally, his cumbersome jokes, his freedom of the pantry, and his bed with the spaniels. Tarleton, for instance, was court jester to Elizabeth; but he was not always a wearer of cap and bells. He was not of such good condition by birth as either Scogan or Heywood; he was, what may often be found now in the same person, a tavern-keeper and a low comedian. But he was also “Gentleman of the Chamber” to the Queen; and by that title, he stood near Elizabeth’s chair and wagged his tongue boldly, though not always without rebuke.

It will have been noticed that it was not every King of England who cared to be moved to laughter by the exhibitions of comic minstrels or joculators. Some princes have indeed accounted laughter thus raised, as beneath the dignity of men of their rank. Thus Philip, son of the Christian Emperor Philip the Arabian, rebuked his own sire openly, for laughing at the jokes and sports of hired jesters who were doing their best to amuse the sovereign and an august body of spectators. The younger Philip read the elder Philip a severe lecture on his unseemly conduct, which seems to me to have been a greater offence against propriety, than his father’s merriment. The son’s contemporaries gave him the name of Philip Agelastos; and he has come down to us as Philip the Laughless. Old Puttenham, who wrote when court fools were flourishing, praises this impertinent and overstarched young prince. For, says he (in his ‘Arte of English Poesie’, p. 244, edit. 1589), “though at all absurdities we may decently laugh, and when they be no absurdities, not decently; yet in laughing is there an undecency in other respects, sometime, than of the matter itself.” The old man had in his memory, probably, some incidents of uncomely laughter at unseemly court jests of the days of the Tudors.

The dynasty of jesters was not yet overthrown; but I may observe that there were three things which helped to overthrow that dynasty, and to render the vocation a matter of history. When intense gravity of deportment ceased to be considered as warrant for aristocratic breeding, fashionable people, if I may so speak, did not require mirth to be provided for them; they manufactured a better article for themselves. Again, when reading and writing began to be common and yet dearly-prized luxuries, the readers found a richer enjoyment in old authors than in young jesters; and they who held the pen, discovered that occasionally they could be as witty as if they had been bred to the calling. Lastly, came freedom of thought and freedom of expression,--the latter sometimes exercised only with considerable daring; but against these, which symbolize an extending of civilization, the poor fool, his cap, bells, official stick, his quips, and his quirps, his whole freight of fun, made utter and irretrievable shipwreck. I find authority for some portion at least of what is advanced above, in a passage from Puttenham, the author, among other things, of the ‘Parthenaide.’ In that work he compliments Queen Elizabeth on her maidenly qualities. the subjoined paragraphs he commends her behaviour at court, while he treats of a court deportment generally. And he pays Elizabeth this compliment at the expense of the Emperor Ferdinand, whom he roundly scolds for “running up and down stairs with so swift and nimble a pace as almost had not become a very mean man who had not gone on some hasty business.” In mean men and fools, hurry is not very censurable. “But,” says Puttenham, “in a prince, it is decent to go slow, and to march with leisure and with a certain grandity rather than gravity, as our sovereign lady and mistress, the very image of majesty and magnificence, is accustomed to go generally; unless it be when she walketh apace for her pleasure, or to catch her a heat in the cold mornings. Nevertheless, it is not so decent in a meaner person, as I have discerned in some counterfeit ladies in the country, which use it much to their own derision. This comeliness was wanting in Queen Mary, otherwise a very good and honourable princess.” It was a “comeliness” which, when enforced, weighed heavily; and when it vanished, the heart enjoyed its own impulses, and was no longer attracted by the fool and his “marottes.”

It is certain, that with all Elizabeth’s refinement and taste, she had coarser men about her, as jesters, than her sister Mary. The uses to which some of them were put, is sufficiently remarkable. If Catholic Mary had her orthodox jester, the Reformed court of Elizabeth was not without its ultra-Protestant fool.

As we shall find a French jester employed to laugh down the Reformed religion and its professors in France, so in England, Pace, “the bitter fool,” is said to have been engaged in a particular way to support it, in England, by destroying certain outward and visible signs supposed to savour too strongly of Popery. According to this story, Pace was employed by Sir Francis Knollys, to break down a crucifix and remove the lighted tapers which Queen Elizabeth persisted in having in her private chapel, in spite even of the friendly and urgent remonstrance of Archbishop Parker, offered repeatedly, but without success. I do not know that there is any reliable authority for this story. Certainly, a jester might dare to do what a Lord Primate would only respectfully insinuate; and, perhaps, Parker remembers the improvement effected in the Queen’s chapel by the court fool, Pace, when, in his letter to Sir William Cecil (October, 1560), after recommending certain personages for church preferment, he says: “Now, if either of them, or any of us all, should be feared to hurt the state of our churches, by exercising any extraordinary _patesing_, for packing and purchasing, this fear might sure be prevented. We have old precedents in law, practised in times past for such parties suspected, to be bound at their entry, to _have the churches in no worse case, by their defaults, than they found them_; and then what would you have more of us?” Now Pace, if he destroyed the cross and tapers in the Queen’s chapel, may be said to have left the edifice in a worse condition than it was in when he entered it. It is quite certain that Sir Francis Knollys was violently eager for the destruction of these ornaments. Just a year previous to Parker alluding to “patesing” in churches, Knollys writes to that prelate: “Wishing you prosperity in all godliness, namely in your good enterprise against the enormities yet in the Queen’s closet retained (although without the Queen’s express commandment these toys were laid aside, till now a-late), I shall, with my hearty commendations, commit you and us all to the mighty protection of the living God.” A gentleman who could so boldly write of the “enormities in the Queen’s closet,” may well have ventured to employ a licensed jester to remove them. The editors of the Parker correspondence, John Bruce, Esq., and the Rev. T. Perowne, suggest that the word “patesing” refers to the _Pates_, Bishop of Worcester, in Mary’s time. This indeed is probable enough; but if it be true that, in 1559, Knollys employed Pace to disfigure the Queen’s closet, the term _may_ have reference to the act committed by her Majesty’s fool.

Pass we on now from Pace, and the question connected with him, to one of those fools who were rather hangers-on about court, than actually, exclusively and officially, engaged in the Royal service. Such a one seems to have been that Charles Chester, who resembled those official French jesters who found more delight in annoying the courtiers by his sarcasms, than amusing them, or his Sovereign, by his wit. Chester was especially severe in addressing coarse strictures on Raleigh and Lord Knollys, in their own hearing. Sir Walter resolved to be revenged; and to accomplish it, they invited Chester to supper. The buffoon accepted the invitation without any suspicion, and the two noble gentlemen made him exceedingly drunk at a repast at which he had eaten like Gargantua. Taking him in this condition, with the help of several servants, they fastened him up in a corner of a court-yard, and then some masons, engaged for the occasion, built a brick wall close round his person, and right up to his chin. They kept him there many hours, under a threat of building him in altogether. The jester was sobered by his terror, and begged piteously to be liberated. When ready to die with fear, indigestion, and other fatal influences, the frolicsome gentlemen exacted from him a solemn oath, that he would never again cut a joke or make a sarcasm at their expense; and the fool kept his word, if not out of a sense of honour, certainly out of a sense of terror.

Chester survived to be known to Ben Jonson, who has immortalized him as Carlo Buffone, in ‘Every Man Out of His Humour.’ In the character of the persons prefixed to that piece, this buffoon is described as scurrilous and profane; rich in absurd similes and audacious lies; a “good feast-hound or banquet-beagle;” a thorough parasite and glutton, and a stupendous swiller of sack. “His religion is railing, and his discourse ribaldry;” and it is added of this perverse fellow, that he loaded those with the heaviest reproaches whom he had the greatest reason to respect. Such a character accords well with the noisy, evil-tempered fellow depicted by Aubrey (Lives, ii. p. 14), who tells us that the fool so offended a knight at a tavern by his impertinence, that the angry gentleman beat him, and stopped his mouth by sealing his beard and moustachios together with wax!

It is, however, to be noted, that Carlo in the play is superior to Carlo as described in the persons of the drama. If Jonson’s picture be a veritable portrait, how exquisitely could this buffoon prattle of the advantage of being in debt--advantage so dear to fools of all classes in this present time! How admirably could he hit off an old over-scented lover, “who has his skin tanned in civet, to make his complexion strong, and the sweetness of his youth lasting in the smell of his sweet lady.” How dashingly he hits off a city gentleman; how frolicsomely he exposes the city wives! He alludes to “standing by the fire in the presence,” as if the ways of Court were familiar to him; and to taking tobacco with nobles, “over the stage in the lords’ room,” as if he had right of entry there. Some of his similes are drawn from his profession, for he describes a man’s shield of arms as being “of as many colours as ever you saw any fool’s coat in your life.” What a _vade mecum_ for asses is his instruction to dolts to show how they may pass for sensible fellows in society! How happily, yet briefly, does he paint a student learning to smoke! With what true fool’s satire does he exclaim, “_Friend!_ is there any such foolish thing in the world?” and what fool’s philosophy is there in the assertion that “Swaggering is a good argument of resolution!” We probably have something of the look of Chester afforded us in the remark of Macilente, “Pork! I think thou dost varnish thy face with the fat on’t, it looks so like a glue-pot.” And what a sharp touch of the jester’s fence is the reply, “True, my raw-boned rogue, and if thou wouldst farce thy lean ribs with it, too, they would not, like ragged laths, rub out so many doublets as they do.” When Puntarvolo seals up his mouth, as Aubrey’s knight did that of the real Chester, we feel that it could not be for the same reason; and when the vain-glorious cavalier tells us that “Carlo comes not at Court,” we are apt to think, that if Chester was of the times and not also of the household of Queen Elizabeth, she lacked a jester fit to rank with Clod.

This fool, who was an official court fool, must have been a fellow of as much humour as Yoric himself, if we may judge from one sample of his wit, which is no bad sample of his license also, and which is good warrant for his acuteness and discrimination, to boot.

At the court of Elizabeth there was many a cleric of the Vicar of Bray school, and among them Dean Perne, who had oscillated from one faith to another three or four times in about a dozen years, and who never felt in a state of finality anywhere. Perne, with Archbishop Whitgift, was in attendance on the Queen one wet day, when her Majesty was desirous of going out for a walk. The desire was an unwise one, for Elizabeth was in ill health; but the divines were not bold enough to dissuade her. But Clod, the Queen’s fool, was also present, and _he_ had the courage which the others lacked. “Madam,” said he, “Heaven dissuades you, for it is cold and wet; and earth dissuades you, for it is damp and dirty. Heaven dissuades you, too, by this heavenly man, Archbishop Whitgift; and earth dissuades you, by me, your fool, Clod, lump of clay as I am. But if neither can prevail you, here is the Dean Perne, who is neither of heaven nor of earth, but hangs between the two, and he too dissuades you.”

The above was witty license at the expense of a courtier; but Clod could exercise wit and audacity at the expense of the Queen. Elizabeth once reproached him with not altogether fulfilling the duties of his office. “How so?” asked Clod; “in what have I failed?” “In this,” answered the Queen, “you are ready enough to point your sharp satire at the faults of other people, but you never say a word of mine.” “Ah!” exclaimed the jester, “that is because I am saved the trouble by so many deputies. Why should I remind your Majesty of your faults, seeing that these are in everybody’s mouth, and you may hear of them hourly?” After all, this was not near so bold as the answers which (years after) Whiston used to fling at Queen Caroline, consort of George II. Whiston, if not kept at Court like the jester of earlier times, was so frequent a sojourner there, that George II. got weary of this heterodox divine, who did not hesitate to tell him, when the King was inveighing against freedom of inquiry in religious matters, that if Luther had been of that opinion, his Majesty would never have been King of England! But where I find Queen Caroline and Whiston nearly resembling Queen Elizabeth and Clod, is on that well-known occasion at Hampton Court, when Caroline said to the eccentric divine, that, bold speaker as he was, he was, perhaps, not bold enough to tell her of her faults. Whiston proved that her Majesty was mistaken, by denouncing her very unseemly behaviour at divine service. Caroline laid part of the blame on the King, acknowledged her fault, promised amendment, and asked what was her next offence. “Nay, Madam,” said Whiston, “it will be time enough to go to the second fault when you have fairly amended the first!” The eccentric character of Whiston procured for him from Caroline just that impunity which Clod and Chester and others found at the hands of Elizabeth.

Having had occasion to mention these two Queens in the same paragraph, I will take the opportunity of adding, that if the time had passed by when official fools had place at court, it was not because Caroline was more refined than Elizabeth. The contrary was the fact, if we may believe the following passage, in the ‘Reliquiæ Hearnianæ:’--“The present Duchess of Brunswick, commonly called Queen Caroline, is a very proud woman, and pretends to great subtlety and cunning. She drinks so hard, that her spirits are continually inflamed, and she is often drunk. The last summer, she went away from Orkney House, near Maidenhead (at which she had dined), so drunk, that she was sick in the coach all her journey, as she went along; _a thing much noted_.” In spite of the words in italics, the story must be taken with some allowance, for old Hearne was a furious Jacobite, and was likely to “embroider” a story to make it tell against a Hanoverian princess. One fact, however, is undisputed, namely, that no jester and king of the very coarsest times ever sat together and exchanged more licentious stories than Caroline and Sir Robert Walpole. The published life of the latter will support this assertion, though I need not make, in such a case, an especial reference. A study of the two reigns will, at least, serve to show that Elizabeth and her court fools were quite as refined as Caroline and her fine gentlemen.

The refinement of Elizabeth seems to have been justly appreciated by those who had to cater for her amusements. For instance, in the “Extracts from the Accounts of the Revels at Court,” edited for the Shakespeare Society, by Mr. P. Cunningham, there is an entry, in October 1573, to the following effect, made by the Master of the Revels:--“Item: sundry times for calling together of sundry players, and for perusing, fitting, and reforming their matters otherwise not convenient to be showen before her Majesty.” And again, in 1574, an entry of 40_s._ occurs, as the sum paid to a court official “for his pains in perusing and reforming of plays sundry times, as need required for her Majesty.”

We have seen Will Sommers sleeping among the spaniels, and there are not wanting instances to show how sharp was the toil and poor the rest of many of those who laboured to amuse the leisure hours of Elizabeth. The following are examples. An entertainment is about to be given in the metropolitan palace, and the properties have to be brought from Richmond or Hampton Court; the passage by water seems to have been slow and uncertain, as is shown in an entry:--“To the porters that watched all night at the Blackfriars Bridge, for the coming of the stuff from court, 2_s._” This “bridge” was doubtless a landing stage. To this same Blackfriars “bridge” are brought a number of children, who had been down to Hampton Court to perform in a masque before her Majesty. The little Cupids had looked warm and plump and rosy enough in the presence of the Queen; but they were all sent back (nine of them) in an open boat, in the winter of 1573, and in consequence, there is an entry which has little of the spirit of “Revels” in it, to this effect:--“To Thomas Totnall, for fire, and victuals for the children, when they landed, some of them being cold and sick and hungry, 6_s._ 6_d._”

Not to digress further from the taste of the Queen, as exhibited by her in connection with her court pleasures, I may further state that we have good evidence that Elizabeth was neither unrefined herself nor admired lack of refinement in those who were about her, whether friends, attendants, or jesters, in the frequently-printed account given by Bohun, in his ‘Character of Queen Elizabeth.’ “At supper she would divert herself with her friends and attendants; and if they made her no answer, she would put them upon mirth and pleasant discourse, with great civility. She would then also admit Tarleton, a famous comedian and a pleasant talker, and other such-like men, to divert her with the stories of the town and the common jests or accidents, but so that they kept within the bounds of modesty and chastity. In the winter-time, after supper, she would sometimes hear a song or a lesson or two played upon the lute; but she would be much offended if there was any rudeness to any person, any reproach, or licentious reflection used. Tarleton, who was then the best comedian in England, had made a pleasant play, and when it was acting before the Queen, he pointed at Sir Walter Raleigh, and said, ‘See, the Knave commands the Queen!’--for which he was corrected by a frown from the Queen; yet he had the confidence to add that he (Raleigh) was of too much and too intolerable a power. And going on with the same liberty, he reflected on the over-great power and riches of the Earl of Leicester; which was so universally applauded by all that were present, that she thought fit, for the present, to bear these reflections with a seeming unconcernedness. But yet she was so offended that she forbade Tarleton and all her jesters from coming near her table, being inwardly displeased with this impudent and unreasonable liberty.”

The maids of honour and the ladies in waiting seem to have been more inclined to follow the example set by their royal mistress than the male courtiers. There was one of these fine gentlemen who _would_ address himself to Mistress Mary Ratcliffe, one of Elizabeth’s maidens of honour, in such a tone that she relished neither his conversation nor discourse. At length, she told him “that his wit was like a custard, nothing good in it but the sop, and when that was eaten you may throw away the rest.”

The maids of honour were not at all disinclined to be frolicsome; but this was with no ill purpose. Observe, however, how this humour was indecently corrected by that same Knollys who was offended with the cross in the Queen’s chapel, and employed Pace, the court fool, to pull it down. Knollys “had his lodgings at court, where some of the ladies and maids of honour used to frisk and hey about, in the next room, to his extreme disquiet o’ nights, though he had often warned them of it; at last, he gets one to bolt their own back door, when they were all in, one night, at their revels, strips off [to] his shirt, and so, with a pair of spectacles on his nose, and Aretino in his hand, comes marching in at a postern door of his own chamber, reading very gravely, full upon the faces of them. Now let the reader judge what a sad spectacle and pitiful fright these poor creatures endured, for he faced them, and often traversed the room, in this posture, above an hour.”

I cite the above illustration of a court jest from the L’Estrange manuscripts, edited by Mr. Thoms. My esteemed and modest friend has supplied a word in brackets, for which, I fear, there is no warrant. I have no doubt that the MS. as it stands is correct, and Knollys was not the last courtier who thought it an excellent court jest to appear in the condition described. One of the greatest wits at the court of Vienna, the Prince de Ligne, is thus described by the Countess de Bohm in ‘Les Prisons de 1793:’--“Je l’ai trouvé le matin _entièrement nu_, recevant des visites, parlant à des fournisseurs. Il me présenta même à sa belle-fille logée près de lui.” If the court wit of Vienna could do this, and a lady not be startled thereby, in the last century, what may not a courtier have dared a century earlier? However this may be, we have seen that Elizabeth would not tolerate forwardness even in Richard Tarleton, who was, perhaps, the most celebrated of the court jesters to that Queen, and one of the most perfect low comedians that ever trod the stage. To the Leicester above-named he is said to have owed his introduction to Elizabeth. Tarleton was a Shropshire boy, and was keeping his father’s swine, near Condover, when an officer of the Earl’s household, on his way to the Earl’s estates in Denbigh, entered into conversation with the young swineherd, and was so struck by his “happy unhappy answers,” that he took the merry lout, nothing loath, with him,” and Tarleton seems to have passed thence to a higher court.

But, not immediately. It is, indeed, somewhat difficult to trace the early part of the career of this jester before he took office under the Queen. It is not, however, altogether impossible, since Mr. Halliwell edited a purified edition of Tarleton’s jests, prefaced it by a biographical sketch, and added elucidatory notes and confirmatory extracts from contemporary and other authors. From all these sources we make out that Tarleton served some sort of apprenticeship in London, and must have had a very fair education for one of his class, seeing that he is described as being “superficially seen in learning,” and having so much as “a bare insight into the Latin tongue.” Not so bad for a young swineherd,--whose wit stood him in good stead for what he lacked in book-learning. To what calling he was bound apprentice is not known: he is said to have been for some time a water carrier; and it was, perhaps, disgust at the drudgery, added to inclination for other liquids, that made of him a tavern-keeper. His grosser sense led him to tippling; but he had intellect enough to qualify him for writing ballads and composing historical pantomimes. Like many modern actors, he united the parts of player and vintner; starred on many stages, sometimes played more than one part in the same piece, and he shifted from inn to inn, as landlord, as he did from stage to stage, as an actor. He was Boniface respectively of three taverns, at least; at Colchester, and in London, in Gracechurch-street and Paternoster-row.

He had probably been for some years a player, slowly rising, by dint of his wit, his squint, and his flat nose, to pre-eminence, when in 1583 he was appointed one of the Queen’s players, and one of the grooms of her chamber. Stowe remarks, that till the year just mentioned, Elizabeth had no company of actors of her own, but that at the date named, and at the request of Sir Francis Walsingham, twelve of the best players were chosen from among the companies in the service of divers great lords; and that these were “sworn the Queen’s servants, and were allowed wages and liveries as grooms of the chamber.” Stowe notices “two rare men” among this selected troop, “viz. Thomas Wilson, for a quick, delicate, refined, extemporal wit; and Richard Tarleton,--for a wondrous, plentiful, pleasant, extemporal wit, he was the wonder of his time.”

As court jester, Tarleton became as famous and as influential as any official who ever wore clown’s suit. Fuller calls him a master of his faculty, who, “when Queen Elizabeth was serious, I dare not say sullen, and out of good humour, he could _undumpish_ her at his pleasure.” As in other courts, suitors to the Sovereign not unfrequently first presented themselves to the jester. “He was their usher to prepare their advantageous access to her.” He doubtless lined his pockets with pistoles thereby; and for his royal pay he also gave good measure of wholesome severities. “He told the Queen,” says Fuller, “more of her faults than most of her chaplains; and cured her melancholy better than all of her physicians.”

If the Queen admired Dick, the latter had a great measure of reverence for his mistress. He could compare her, he said, to nothing more fitly than a sculler; for, he added, “neither the Queen nor the sculler hath a fellow.” He nevertheless, and as a matter of course, could take great liberties with her. The very first of the ‘court witty jests,’ tells us of his attempting to draw the Queen out of a fit of discontent by “a quaint jest,” in which he pretended to be a thirsty drunkard, and called aloud for beer. The liquor was duly supplied to him, and that so liberally, that Elizabeth gave orders that he should have no more, lest he should turn beast, and shame himself. “Fear you not,” said Tarleton, “for your beer is small enough.” So, perhaps, was the jester’s wit, but the Queen thought well of it, for “her Majesty laughed heartily, and commanded that he should have enough.”

Elizabeth probably enjoyed fully as much the jests which her chartered buffoon made at the expense of her courtiers. Some of these were sorry enough; and he would be no less savage on the personal defects and deformities of ladies as well as lords, than the most unscrupulous of the “Fous du Roi” at the court of France. To a lady, suffering from an eruption on the face, and who consequently declined to drink wine with the rest, he exclaimed, “A murrain of that face which makes all the body fare the worse for it.” This rudeness, which drove the poor lady from table, was only rewarded by a shout of laughter.

Tarleton wore his fool’s attire when the Queen dined; and even attended her thus attired when she dined abroad, “in his clown’s apparel; being all dinner-while in the presence with her, to make her merry.” There seems to have been a distrust of the power of the host and the guests to make themselves agreeable, and so the Queen took her fool with her, even when she dined at the Lord Treasurer’s, at Burleigh House, in the Strand. It was to the gate of that house that Tarleton gave the name of “his Lordship’s alms-gate,” because, he said, it was for ever closed.

On one occasion, the noble owner of this mansion having thus entertained the Queen, besought her Majesty to remain all night; a request to which she would not for a moment listen. The lords present applied to Tarleton, offering him any reward if he could succeed in inducing the Queen to sleep at Burleigh House. The rest of the story is so strange, that I prefer leaving it to my readers as it is given in the Shakespeare Society’s reprint of the old jest-book.--“Quoth he, ‘Procure me the parsonage of Sherd.’ They caused the patent to be drawn presently. He got on a parson’s gown and a corner cap, and standing upon the stairs where the Queen should descend, he repeated these words:--‘A parson or no parson? A parson or no parson?’ but after she knew his meaning, she not only stayed all night, but the next day willed that he should have possession of the benefice. A madder parson was never; for he threatened to turn the bell-metal into lining for his purse, which he did, the parsonage and all, into ready money.”

Among his best similes, perhaps, was the one he made when asked by a lord what soldiers were like in time of peace. “They are like chimneys in summer,” said Tarleton, whose neat jest on this occasion seems to have passed off without laughter. But perhaps this was not said by him. Not all the jests set down to him were uttered by him. That which describes him as replying to a courtier who saluted him with a “Good morrow, fool and knave,”--“I can’t bear both; I’ll take the first, you are welcome to the other,”--is attributed to an Italian jester.

At this period the court jester was not bound to reside within the precincts of the court, and to wear no suit but his clown’s apparel, without permission to the contrary. This custom had even fallen into disuse in France, where it had prevailed for a very lengthened period. Tarleton’s official duties, however, kept him late at court. We find him on one occasion wending homeward at one in the morning, when it was unlawful for the lieges to be abroad after ten o’clock at night. He accordingly fell into the hands of the watch, to whom, on being challenged, he had announced himself as “a woman;” for what is the use, he asked, of my telling you what you know? The watch declared he must be committed for being out-of-doors after ten o’clock. “It is now past one!” cried the watch, emphasizing the enormity. “Good!” said Tarleton; “if it be past one o’clock, it will not be ten these eight hours. Watchmen had wont to have more wit; but for want of sleep they have turned fools.” The guardians of the night recognized the Queen’s jester, and they let him pass, rejoiced at being entertained for a moment by an official whose duty it was to entertain her Majesty’s sacred self.

On another occasion, when challenged in company with two others, he announced his companions as being makers of eyes and light. The pious custodes solemnly laid hold of him for flat blasphemy; but when he explained that one of his companions made spectacles and the other candles, of course the watch fell into uncontrollable laughter, as watchmen will do, even at smaller jests than this.

He was not always in such seemly society as the above; for we meet with him angering a certain huffing Kate, at a tavern; running up a score for sixteen dozen pots of ale at a country ale-house; bandying wit, at his own inn-door, with beggars, whom he sometimes found a match for him; and, after living for days at other hostelries, getting himself arrested as a Jesuit in disguise, and then refusing to discharge his account, because of the false arrest. At ordinaries he would expose the first he could find to his rascally purpose, to the ridicule of the company; and a finely-dressed gentleman passing down Fleet-street, was sure to have an unpleasant time of it, if he happened to be espied by Tarleton. His wife was as often the victim of his wit as any one else; but she was often as sharp as he, and the smart things said were, like Lady Mary Montague at a “Twitnam Assembly,” more smart than clean. When he was keeping an ordinary in Paternoster-row, he and Mistress Richard were invited out to supper, “and because he was a man noted, she would not go out with him into the street, but entreats him to keep on one side, and she another; which he consented to. But as he went, he would cry out to her and say, ‘Turn this way, wife;’ and anon, ‘On this side, wife,’--so the people flocked the more to laugh at them. But his wife, more than mad angry, goes back again, and almost forswore his company.” They kept together, nevertheless, at the ordinary, where his customers not only found wit in the royal jester, but wit in his mustard, as he proved, to his own satisfaction at least, when he said that mustard and the person dining, resembled “a witty scold meeting another scold; and knowing this scold will scold, begins to scold first: so the mustard, being licked up, and knowing that you will bite it, begins to bite you first!” It must surely have been brighter jokes than this that procured for him invitations to dinner at the houses of aldermen and justices, who thought it well to treat a Queen’s jester, and laugh at jokes that might have been dished up for their liege lady.

As a stage-player, Tarleton was the favourite clown of the people at large. They roared at the coarse extemporary songs which he rattled forth for their amusement and his profit. They shouted at his admirable “gagging,” his improvised speeches, his interlarded jokes with the audience, and his allusions even to religious controversies then raging. Learned physicians praised the voice which uttered, the comical face which heightened, the wit, and the head which was the very temple and head-quarters of facetiousness. It mattered little whether he was in or out of the vein, he was comic in spite of himself; in spite of themselves, people would laugh, and all essayers in his line were frightened out of their specialty, out of sheer despair of being able to be tolerated while he lived or was remembered. No wonder the Queen liked to see him act, as well as listen to his jests at court. The very rudest as well as the highest, could appreciate him as an actor--all but the county justice immortalized, although not named, by Nash, and in whose presence, as also that of the whole township over which this justice presided, Tarleton and his fellow-comedians were playing. The jester had scarcely made his head visible on the stage when the country auditory burst into fits of laughter. “Whereat,” says Nash, “the justice, not a little moved, and seeing, with his becks and nods, he could not make them cease, he went with his staff and beat them round about unmercifully on the bare pates, in that they, being but farmers and poor country hinds, could presume to laugh at the Queen’s man, and make no more account of her cloth in his presence.”

Metropolitan magistrates gave more license, and London audiences were not charged with disrespect of her Majesty, because they laughed immoderately at her jester. Tarleton was one night playing at the Bull, in Bishopsgate-street. The play was an old one, touching Henry V.; he, of course, played the clown, but the actor of Judge Gascoyne being absent, Tarleton good-naturedly undertook to play the Judge also. The actor who performed the part of the Prince, dealt the Judge such a box of the ear, when that pseudo-historical incident came on, that Gascoyne shook again, but he did not forget his dignity. He re-appeared as Clown, to whom is told the unseemly scene in court. “Strike a judge!” cried Tarleton. “It could not be but terrible to him, when the report so terrifies me that methinks the blow remains still on my cheek; that it burns again!” “The people,” adds the narrator, “laughed at this mightily;” and we may well fancy a clever and a favourite low comedian turning such an incident to capital account.

It was not exactly a time for jests when

“In the year 1588,” cried Philip, “the English I’ll humble.
I’ve taken it into my Majesty’s pate, and their lion, oh down he
shall tumble!”

We do not suppose, however, that the Queen’s jester fell sick at his lodgings in Haliwel-street, Shoreditch, because of the Spanish Armada. He is supposed to have been seized by the plague. On the 3rd of September, in the year just named, he, at all events, fell mortally ill; and he at once made his will: in this document he is described as “one of the Gromes of the Quene’s Majestie’s chamber.” He leaves all his goods and “cattells,” etc. etc., to his son Philip; but there is nothing to show that they exist anywhere. Nevertheless, he appoints guardians to his son, delivers to them “one penny of the good and lawful money of England,”--“to the use of the said Philipp Tarleton, by waye of possession and seisin of all my said goodes and cattells,” and having duly executed this deed, which is of some length, the Queen’s jester turned his face to the wall and died, on the evening of the day on which he had fallen ill. Before night had come on, he was lying in a grave of the parish churchyard; where many of the Elizabethan actors lie around him.

People reckoned from his time as from an era. “The year of Tarleton’s death” was as common a saying as “the year of the Armada.” His portrait was to be seen in every house; and in some residences, above the altar of Cloacina was suspended the _effigies_ of joyous Dick Tarleton.

At this period, the household fool was still, and he continued to be so for many subsequent years, to be found on most establishments of any consequence. Some of the best specimens of this class are to be found in Armin’s “Nest of Ninnies.” Before turning to the pages of the old literary actor, it may be as well to state that the ordinary dress of the jester of this period, is depicted by Mr. Douce, as consisting of a motley coat, with a girdle, bells at the skirt and, sometimes, at the elbows. The breeches and hose fitted close to the body, the colour on each leg being different. The hood covered not only the head, but the shoulders, and was crowned by the usual cock’s-comb. Some jesters carried a staff with a fool’s head at the end of it; others a staff suspended from which was a blown bladder with a few peas in it. This was the costume of the artificial fool. The natural fool was mostly attired in a long gown-like dress, occasionally of costly velvet, and adorned with yellow fringe,--_yellow_ being then commonly known as the “fool’s colour,” as dark blue was that of the serving man.

The first of the household fools named by Armin, “Jack Oates,” carried a small black-jack quart at his girdle, for Jack’s delight was in beer. He was tall, unwieldly, misshapen. He was given to sport, was quite as much given to swear, was conceited, gamesome, gleesome, “apt to joys,”--but “nastie.” He was the servant, or jester, of Sir William Hollis, whom he called “Willy,” and otherwise used with great familiarity. When strange servants came to the house, he was addicted to setting them at loggerheads; and once, when an earl, arriving on a visit, greeted Lady Hollis, at her husband’s side, by a kiss, Jack Oates gave him a box of the ear, for which Sir William gave the jester a whipping. He deserved as much, for his sorry excuse for giving a cuff to the Earl. “He asked the Earl where his hand was. ‘Here,’ quoth he. With that Jack shakes him by it, and says:--‘I mistook it before, not knowing your ear from your hand; being so like one another.’” The compliment was so ill-turned that Oates was scourged for this also.

This fool could not bear to be in the hall, like him in Mr. Thornbury’s ballad. “He was a little proud-minded, and was therefore altogether in the great chamber, at my lady’s or Sir William’s elbow. Sir William could arouse him to wrath, if not to wit, by threatening to hire a new jester, and yet he loved the fool above all, and that the household knew.” But the threat would sometimes cause Oates to run a muck through the hall, beating all in his way, and crying “Hang Sir Willy! Hang Sir Willy!”

It is difficult to fancy how such nuisances could be tolerated, much less loved; and indeed even Sir William Hollis, who loved his fool above all, seems, or pretended, to have got weary of him. There was at least a feigned hiring of a new jester, and the noble company at dinner, on hearing it, “ting’d with a knife at the bottom of a glass, as tolling the bell for the fool,” whose colour, we are told, came and went, “like a wise man ready to make a good end.” Jack, however, had more of the brute than the sage, and he so fell upon his rival that he nearly killed him, and did actually put out one of the poor fellow’s eyes. We can credit what follows, that “ever after Jack Oates would not endure to hear any talk of any other fool, to be there,” but one can hardly credit what is added, viz.--“that the Knight durst not make such a motion.” The influence of these fellows must have been great, if they were all like Oates, and the subserviency of their masters must have been on a par with their egregious folly.

As the fool ruled in the hall, so also would he try to establish a despotism in the kitchen; but the sovereign cook there could successfully banish him the territory by flinging over him a ladle of scalding soup. Such feuds were there in the Lincolnshire household of Sir William Hollis, who, on one occasion, had invited a number of friends to a repast, the chief feature of which was a magnificent quince-pie made of fruit “ready preserved at pothecaries,” in the county town. The cook expected to derive great honour from the dish, and Oates determined to foil his expectations. Jack feigned to be ill, and Sir William kindly led him by the hand to the kitchen fire-side, where the Knight left him seated, with charge to the cook to look to his comforts. Cook and fool, of course, speedily fell out, and Oates, to avenge himself, watched his opportunity, seized on the quince-pie as it was about to be taken out of the oven, and, hiding it beneath his long gown, ran off with it. The pie burnt him so terribly that he could think of no better place to eat it in, than the moat. Into this he plunged up to the shoulders, and, cooling the dish in the water, greedily devoured the whole of the contents. The cook, meanwhile, rushed to the dining-hall to make complaint to the host and his expectant guests. “They laught and ran to the windows to see the jest. Jack fed, and feeding greedily, ever as he burnt his mouth, with haste, dipt the pie into the water to cool it. ‘Oh!’ says the cook; ‘it is Sir William’s own pie, sirrah!’--‘Oh!’ says Jack, ‘hang thee and Sir Willie too.’... ‘Save Sir William some,’ says one. ‘Save my lady some!’ says another. ‘By James! not a bit,’ says Jack, and ate up all, to the wonder of the beholders.” Such was the amusement of nobles and gentles, in the days when fools were flourishing, a long time ago!

Armin gives other instances, in the case of “lean Leonard,” fool “to a kind gentleman who dwells in the merry forest of Sherwood,” and whose name Armin omits, “fearing I too much offend by meddling with his fool.” Leonard was a flaxen, curly-haired fellow, who

“Plays on thoughts, as girls with beads,
When their mass they stamber.”

He seems, moreover, to have been slightly deaf, long-necked, hook-nosed, thickly bearded, and sullen of visage. He was remarkable for a very expensive sort of boisterousness. He would play games of chance with imaginary adversaries, with whom he would fall out, and in fighting with which shadowy antagonists, he would injure or destroy the furniture of a whole room. When his appetite prompted, he would break open the dairy, swallow the new cheese-curds, destroy those he could not devour, overthrow the cream-bowls, and then abscond for awhile to Mansfield in Sherwood, till the short-lived anger of his master had passed away. On hearing his patron praise a hawk which he possessed, lean Leonard, taking the praise in a gastronomic sense, went and wrung the hawk’s neck, and nearly choked himself by trying to devour it, feathers and all. He seems to have been, at other times, employed in carrying manure from the stables to the garden, in a barrow in which he made his bed by night. One winter time, he showed his professional wit by lighting a fire in his barrow, to warm himself by. The fire seized on the barrow, and this, all in flames, he trundled into the hall, among the men and maids, severely burning several of the latter, and thence into the barn, which was filled with hay and straw, and which was with difficulty saved from destruction. “The world laughed a good deal at these jests,” says Robin,--which shows how mischief could tickle it. The only anecdote I can find of Leonard which may be fairly smiled at, is the one which tells us of a “country plow-jogger who, coming behind Leonard with a lump of shoemaker’s wax in his hand, clapt him on the head, and asked him how he did.” The fool felt the pitch ball, and enraged at not being able to get rid of it, fell to furious fight with the “plow-jogger,” who “belaboured the fool cunningly, and got the fool’s head under his arm, and bobbed his nose. The fool, remembering how his head was, strikes it up, and hits the fellow’s mouth with the pitched place, so that the hair of his beard and the hair of the clown’s head were glued together. The fellow cried, the fool exclaimed, and could not suddenly part. In the end, the people, after much laughing at the jest, let them part fair.”

Armin also notices a contemporary fool named Jack Miller, “one that was more beloved among ladies than thought can hatch or opinion produce.” His principal merit seems to have been in imitating players who dressed in the kitchens and played in the halls of gentlemen’s houses, and who led him into various mishaps, by practising on his simplicity. He was famous also for singing a song called Deryes Fair, and for speaking sentences full of the letters _b_ and _p_, which he could not pronounce without a world of stammering and stuttering, which was a wonderful provocative of mirth to noble lords and ladies who hired him on purpose. Armin saw and heard Miller once exhibit at “a gentleman’s not far from Upton upon Seuerne in Gloxestershire.” At the table were “many gallants and gentlewomen, almost the state of the country.” Well, this state company roared lustily at the fool; one elderly gentlewoman even fainted with exhaustion from immoderate hilarity, and “one proper young gentlewoman among the rest, because she would not seem too immodest with laughter,” confined herself to making a remark which caused ten times more mirth than the fool’s stammering, and which was received with an indulgence which a Roman Emperor especially extended to such comments, by imperial decree.