Amusements of the Fairs in the Middle Ages--Shows and Showmen of the
Sixteenth Century--Banks and his Learned Horse--Bartholomew Fair in
the time of Charles I.--Punch and Judy--Office of the Revels--Origin
of Hocus Pocus--Suppression of Bartholomew Fair--London Shows during
the Protectorate--A Turkish Rope-Dancer--Barbara Vanbeck, the Bearded
Woman.
Numerous illuminations of manuscripts in the Harleian collection, many of
which were reproduced in Strutt's work on the sports and pastimes of the
English people, having established the fact that itinerant professors of
the art of amusing were in the habit of tramping from town to town, and
village to village, for at least two centuries before the Norman Conquest
of this country, there can be no doubt that the fairs were so many foci of
attraction for them at the times when they were respectively held. As we
are told that the minstrels and glee-men flocked to the towns and villages
which grew up under the protection of the baronial castles when the
marriage of the lord, or the coming of age of the heir, furnished an
occasion of popular revelry, and also when the many red-letter days of the
mediæval calendar came round, we may be sure that they were not absent
from Bartlemy fair even in its earliest years.
Glee-men was a term which included dancers, posturers, jugglers, tumblers,
and exhibitors of trained performing monkeys and quadrupeds; and, the
masculine including the feminine in this case, many of these performers
were women and girls. The illuminations which have been referred to, and
which constitute our chief authority as to the amusements of the fairs
during the middle ages, introduce us to female posturers and tumblers, in
the act of performing the various feats which have been the stock in trade
of the acrobatic profession down to the present day. The jugglers
exhibited the same feats with balls and knives as their representatives of
the nineteenth century; what is professionally designated "the shower," in
which the balls succeed each other rapidly, while describing a semi-circle
from right to left, is shown in one of the Harleian illuminations.
Balancing feats were also exhibited, and in one of these curious
illustrations of the sights which delighted our fair-going ancestors, the
balancing of a cart-wheel is represented--a trick which might have been
witnessed not many years ago in the streets of London, the performer being
an elderly negro, said to have been the father of the well-known
rope-dancer, George Christoff, who represented the Pompeian performer on
the _corde elastique_, when Mr. Oxenford's version of _The Last Days of
Pompeii_ was produced at the Queen's Theatre.
Performing monkeys, bears, and horses appear in many of the mediæval
illuminations, and were probably as popular agents of public amusement in
the earliest years of Bartlemy fair as they can be shown, from other
authorities, to have been in the sixteenth century. That monkeys were
imported rather numerously for the amusement of the public, may be
inferred from the fact of some Chancellor of the Exchequer of the middle
ages having subjected them to an import duty. Their agility was displayed
chiefly in vaulting over a chain or cord. Bears were taught to feign
death, and to walk erect after their leader, who played some musical
instrument. Horses were also taught to walk on their hind legs, and one
drawing in the Harleian collection shows a horse in this attitude, engaged
in a mimic fight with a man armed with sword and buckler.
All these performances seem to have been continued, by successive
generations of performers, down to the time of Elizabeth. Reginald Scot,
writing in 1584, gives a lengthy enumeration of the tricks of the jugglers
who frequented the fairs of the latter part of the sixteenth century.
Among them are most of the common tricks of the present day, and not the
least remarkable is the decapitation feat, which many of my readers have
probably seen performed by the famous wizards of modern times at the
Egyptian Hall. Three hundred years ago, it was called the decollation of
St. John the Baptist, and was performed upon a table, upon which stood a
dish to receive the head. The table, the dish, and the knife used in the
apparent decapitation were all contrived for the purpose, the table having
two holes in it, one to enable the assistant who submitted to the
operation to conceal his head, the other, corresponding to a hole in the
dish, to receive the head of another confederate, who was concealed
beneath the table, in a sitting position; while the knife had a
semi-circular opening in the blade to fit the neck. Another knife, of the
ordinary kind, was shown to the spectators, who were prevented by a
sleight of hand trick from observing the substitution for it of the knife
used in the trick. The engraving in Malcolm's work shows the man to be
operated upon lying upon the table, apparently headless, while the head of
the other assistant appears in the dish.
That _lusus naturæ_, and other natural curiosities, had begun to be
exhibited by showmen in the reign of Elizabeth, may be inferred from the
allusions to such exhibitions in _The Tempest_, when Caliban is
discovered, and the mariners speculate upon his place in the scale of
animal being. It seems also that the practice of displaying in front of
the shows large pictures of the wonderful feats, or curious natural
objects, to be seen within, prevailed in the sixteenth century, and
probably long before; for it is distinctly alluded to in a passage in
Jonson's play of _The Alchymist_, in which the master of the servant who
has filled the house with searchers for the philosopher's stone, says,
"What should my knave advance
To draw this company? He hung out no banners
Of a strange calf with five legs to be seen,
Or a huge lobster with six claws."
Some further glimpses of the Bartlemy fair shows of the Elizabethan period
are afforded in the induction or prologue to another play of Jonson's,
namely, the comedy of _Bartholomew Fair_, acted in 1614. "He," says the
dramatist, speaking of himself, "has ne'er a sword and buckler-man in his
fair; nor a juggler with a well-educated ape to come over the chain for
the King of England, and back again for the Prince, and sit still on his
haunches for the Pope and the King of Spain." The sword and buckler-man
probably means a performer who took part in such a mimic combat of man and
horse, as is represented in the illumination which has been referred to.
The monkey whose Protestant proclivities are noted in the latter part of
the passage is mentioned in a poem of Davenant's, presently to be quoted.
We cannot suppose absent from the metropolitan fairs the celebrated
performing horse, Morocco, and his instructor, of whom Sir Walter Raleigh
says, "If Banks had lived in older times, he would have shamed all the
enchanters in the world; for whosoever was most famous among them could
never master or instruct any beast as he did." That Shakspeare witnessed
the performances of Morocco, which combined arithmetical calculations with
saltatory exercises, is shown by the allusion in _Love's Labour Lost_,
when Moth puzzles Armado with arithmetical questions, and says, "The
dancing horse will tell you." Sir Kenelm Digby states that the animal
"would restore a glove to the due owner after the master had whispered the
man's name in his ear; and would tell the just number of pence in any
piece of silver coin newly showed him by his master."
Banks quitted England for the Continent with his horse in 1608, and De
Melleray, who witnessed the performance of the animal in the Rue St.
Jacques, in Paris, says that Morocco could not only tell the number of
francs in a crown, but knew that the crown was depreciated at that time,
and knew the exact amount of the depreciation. From Paris, Banks travelled
with his learned horse to Orleans, where the fame which they had acquired
brought him under the imputation of being a sorcerer, and he had a narrow
escape of being burned at a stake in that character. Bishop Morton says
that he cleared himself by commanding his horse to "seek out one in the
press of the people who had a crucifix on his hat; which done, he bade him
kneel down unto it, and not this only, but also to rise up again, and to
kiss it. 'And now, gentlemen,' (quoth he), 'I think my horse hath
acquitted both me and himself;' and so his adversaries rested satisfied;
conceiving (as it might seem) that the devil had no power to come near the
cross."
We next hear of Banks and his horse at Frankfort-on-the-Maine, where
Bishop Morton saw them, and heard from the former the story of his narrow
escape at Orleans. Their further wanderings cannot be traced; and, though
it has been inferred, from a passage in a burlesque poem by Jonson, that
Banks was burned as a sorcerer, the grounds which the poet had for
assigning such a dreadful end for the famous horse-charmer are unknown,
and may have been no more than an imperfect recollection of what he had
heard of the Orleans story.
A hare which played the tabor is alluded to by Jonson in the comedy before
mentioned; and this performance also was not unknown to earlier times, one
of the illuminations copied by Strutt showing it to have been exhibited in
the fifteenth century. When Jonson wrote his comedy, the amusing classes,
encouraged by popular favour, were raising their heads again, after the
sore discouragement of the Vagrancy Act of Elizabeth's reign, which
scheduled jugglers and minstrels with strolling thieves, gipsy
fortune-tellers, and itinerant beggars. Elizabeth's tastes seem to have
inclined more to bull-baiting and bear-baiting than to dancing and
minstrelsy, juggling and tumbling; and, besides this, there was a broad
line drawn in those days, and even down to the reign of George III., as
will be hereafter noticed, between the upper ten thousand and the masses,
as to the amusements which might or ought to be permitted to the former
and denied to the latter.
In the succeeding reign the operation of the Vagrancy Act was powerfully
aided by the rise of the Puritans, who regarded all amusements as worldly
vanities and snares of the Evil One, and indulgence in them as a
coquetting with sin. As yet they lacked the power to suppress the fairs
and close the theatres, though their will was good to whip and imprison
all such inciters to sin and agents of Satan as they conceived minstrels,
actors, and showmen to be; and Bartholomew Fair showed no diminution of
popular patronage even in the reign of Charles I.
"Hither," says the author of a scarce pamphlet, printed in 1641, "resort
people of all sorts and conditions. Christchurch cloisters are now hung
full of pictures. It is remarkable, and worth your observation, to behold
and hear the strange sights and confused sounds in the fair. Here, a knave
in a fool's coat, with a trumpet sounding, or on a drum beating, invites
you to see his puppets. There, a rogue like a wild woodman, or in an antic
shape like an incubus, desires your company to view his motion; on the
other side, hocus pocus, with three yards of tape or ribbon in his hand,
showing his art of legerdemain, to the admiration and astonishment of a
company of cockoloaches. Amongst these, you shall see a gray goosecap (as
wise as the rest), with a 'What do ye lack?' in his mouth, stand in his
booth shaking a rattle, or scraping on a fiddle, with which children are
so taken, that they presently cry out for these fopperies: and all these
together make such a distracted noise, that you would think Babel were not
comparable to it.
"Here there are also your gamesters in action: some turning of a whimsey,
others throwing for pewter, who can quickly dissolve a round shilling into
a three-halfpenny saucer. Long Lane at this time looks very fair, and puts
out her best clothes, with the wrong side outward, so turned for their
better turning off; and Cloth Fair is now in great request: well fare the
ale-houses therein, yet better may a man fare (but at a dearer rate) in
the pig-market, alias pasty-nook, or pie-corner, where pigs are all hours
of the day on the stalls, piping hot, and would cry, (if they could
speak,) 'Come, eat me!'"
The puppets and "motions" alluded to in the foregoing description were
beginning to be a very favourite spectacle, and none of the puppet plays
of the period were more popular than the serio-comic drama of _Punch and
Judy_, attributed to Silvio Florillo, an Italian comic dramatist of the
time. According to the original version of the story, which has undergone
various changes, some of which have been made within the memory of the
existing generation, Punch, in a paroxysm of jealousy, destroys his infant
child, upon which Judy, in revenge, belabours him with a cudgel. The
exasperated hunchback seizes another stick, beats his wife to death, and
throws from the window the two corpses, which attracts the notice of a
constable, who enters the house to arrest the murderer. Punch flies, but
is arrested by an officer of the Inquisition, and lodged in prison; but
contrives to escape by bribing the gaoler. His subsequent encounters with
a dog, a doctor, a skeleton, and a demon are said to be an allegory,
intended to convey the triumph of humanity over ennui, disease, death, and
the devil; but, as there is nothing allegorical in the former portion of
the story, this seems doubtful.
The allegory was soon lost sight of, if it was ever intended, and the
latter part of the story has long been that which excites the most
risibility. As usually represented in this country during the last fifty
years, and probably for a much longer period, Punch does not bribe the
gaoler, but evades execution for his crimes by strangling the hangman
with his own noose. Who has not observed the delight, venting itself in
screams of laughter, with which young and old witness the comical little
wretch's fight with the constable, the wicked leer with which he induces
the hangman to put his neck in the noose by way of instruction, and the
impish chuckling in which he indulges while strangling his last victim?
The crowd laughs at all this in the same spirit as the audience at a
theatre applauds furiously while a policeman is bonneted and otherwise
maltreated in a pantomime or burlesque. The tightness of the matrimonial
noose, it is to be feared, materially influences the feeling with which
the murder of a faithless wife is regarded by those whose poverty shuts
out the prospect of divorce. And Punch is such a droll, diverting
vagabond, that even those who have witnessed his crimes are irresistibly
seduced into laughter by his grotesque antics and his cynical bursts of
merriment, which render him such a strange combination of the demon and
the buffoon.
The earliest notices of the representation in London of 'Punch's Moral
Drama,' as an old comic song calls it, occur in the overseer's books of
St. Martin's in the Fields for 1666 and 1667, in which are four entries of
sums, ranging from twenty-two shillings and sixpence to fifty-two
shillings and sixpence, as "Rec. of Punchinello, ye Italian popet player,
for his booth at Charing Cross."
_Hocus pocus_, used in the Bartholomew Fair pamphlet as a generic term for
conjurors, is derived from the assumed name of one of the craft, of whom
Ady, in 'A Candle in the Dark,' wrote as follows:--
"I will speak of one man more excelling in that craft than others, that
went about in King James's time, and long since, who called himself the
King's Majestie's most excellent Hocus Pocus; and so was he called because
at playing every trick he used to say, _Hocus pocus tontus talontus, vade
celeriter jubeo_--a dark composition of words to blind the eyes of the
beholders."
All these professors of the various arts of popular entertainment had, at
this period, to pay an annual licence duty to the Master of the Revels,
whose office was created by Henry VIII. in 1546. Its jurisdiction extended
over all wandering minstrels and every one who blew a trumpet publicly,
except "the King's players." The seal of the office, used under five
sovereigns, was engraved on wood, and was formerly in the possession of
the late Francis Douce, by whose permission it was engraved for Chalmers's
'Apology for the Believers in the Shakspeare MSS.,' and subsequently for
Smith's 'Ancient Topography of London.' The legend round it was, "SIGILL
: OFFIC : JOCOR : MASCAR : ET REVELL : DNIS REG." The Long Parliament
abolished the office, which, indeed, would have been a sinecure under the
Puritan rule, for in 1647 the entertainers of the people were forbidden to
exercise their vocation, the theatres were closed, the May-poles removed,
and the fairs shorn of all their wonted amusements, and reduced to the
status of annual markets.
There is, in the library of the British Museum, a doggrel ballad, printed
as a broad-sheet, called _The Dagonizing of Bartholomew Fair_, which
describes, with coarse humour, the grossness of which may be attributed in
part to the mingled resentment and contempt which underlies it, the
measures taken by the civic authorities for the removal from the fair of
the showmen who had pitched there, in spite of the determination of the
Lord Mayor and the Court of Aldermen, to suppress with the utmost rigour
everything which could move to laughter or minister to wonder. Among these
are mentioned a fire-eating conjuror, a "Jack Pudding," and "wonders made
of wax," being the earliest notice of a wax-work exhibition which I have
been able to discover.
Whether the itinerant traders who were wont to set up their stalls in the
fairs of Smithfield, and Westminster, and Southwark, found it worth their
while to do so during the thirteen years of the banishment of shows, there
is nothing to show; but we are not without evidence that the showmen were
able to follow their vocation without the fairs. Evelyn, who was a lover
of strange sights, records in his diary that, in 1654,--"I saw a tame lion
play familiarly with a lamb; he was a huge beast, and I thrust my hand
into his mouth, and found his tongue rough, like a cat's; also a sheep
with six legs, which made use of five of them to walk; and a goose that
had four legs, two crops, and as many vents."
Three years later, two other entries are made, concerning shows which he
witnessed. First we have, "June 18th. At Greenwich I saw a sort of cat,
brought from the East Indies, shaped and snouted much like the Egyptian
racoon, in the body like a monkey, and so footed; the ears and tail like a
cat, only the tail much longer, and the skin variously ringed with black
and white; with the tail it wound up its body like a serpent, and so got
up into trees, and with it wrap its whole body round. Its hair was woolly
like a lamb; it was exceedingly nimble, gentle, and purred as does the
cat." This animal was probably a monkey of the species called by Cuvier,
the toque; it is a native of the western regions of India, and one of the
most amusing, as well as the most common, of the simial tenants of modern
menageries.
"August 15th. Going to London with some company, we stept in to see a
famous rope-dancer, called _The Turk_. I saw even to astonishment the
agility with which he performed; he walked barefooted, taking hold by his
toes only of a rope almost perpendicular, and without so much as touching
it with his hands; he danced blindfold on the high rope, and with a boy of
twelve years old tied to one of his feet about twenty feet beneath him,
dangling as he danced, yet he moved as nimbly as if it had been but a
feather. Lastly he stood on his head, on the top of a very high mast,
danced on a small rope that was very slack, and finally flew down the
perpendicular on his breast, his head foremost, his legs and arms
extended, with divers other activities.
"I saw the hairy woman, twenty years old, whom I had before seen when a
child. She was born at Augsburg, in Germany. Her very eyebrows were combed
upwards, and all her forehead as thick and even as grows on any woman's
head, neatly dressed; a very long lock of hair out of each ear; she had
also a most prolix beard, and moustachios, with long locks growing on the
middle of her nose, like an Iceland dog exactly, the colour of a bright
brown, fine as well-dressed flax. She was now married, and told me she had
one child that was not hairy, nor were any of her parents or relations.
She was very well shaped, and played well on the harpsichord."
This extraordinary creature must have been more than twenty years of age
when Evelyn saw her, for the engraved portrait described by Granger bears
the following inscription:--"Barbara Vanbeck, wife to Michael Vanbeck,
born at Augsburg, in High Germany; daughter of Balthasar and Anne Ursler.
Aged 29. A.D. 1651. R. Gaywood f. London."
Another engraved portrait, in the collection of the Earl of Bute,
represents her playing the harpsichord, and has a Dutch inscription, with
the words--"Isaac Brunn delin. et sc. 1653." One of Gaywood's prints,
which, in Granger's time, was in the possession of Fredericks, the
bookseller, at Bath, had the following memorandum written under the
inscription:--"This woman I saw in Ratcliffe Highway in 1668, and was
satisfied she was a woman. JOHN BULFINCH." Granger describes her from the
portraits, as follows:--"The face and hands of this woman are represented
hairy all over. Her aspect resembles that of a monkey. She has a very long
and large spreading beard, the hair of which hangs loose and flowing like
the hair of the head. She is playing on the organ. Vanbeck married this
frightful creature on purpose to carry her about for a show."