minstrel. It must suffice here to say, that they who commenced like
gods, sank in course of time to a very degraded condition. The
minstrels certainly belonged to the class of poor jokers about the time
the law began to treat them as vagabonds. I can adduce an instance in
the case of Richard Sheale, the author of one of the versions of the
ballad of ‘Chevy Chace.’ Sheale was a minstrel by profession, and his
home was at Tamworth, on the borders of Staffordshire and Warwickshire.
Mr. R. White, in his Appendix to his ‘History of the Battle of
Otterburn,’ affords us the following glimpse into the private and
public life of this minstrel. “His wife was a ‘sylke woman,’ who sold
shirts, head-clothes, laces, etc., at the fairs of Lichfield and other
neighbouring towns. Being once in possession of above threescore
pounds,--a large amount in those days,--and intending probably to
settle various accounts contracted by his wife in her business, he
left Tamworth on horseback, having his harp with him, and had the
misfortune to be robbed by four villains who had lain in wait for him
near Dunsmore Heath. The grief of his wife and himself at his loss--the
coldness of worldly friends--the kindness of his patrons--the exertions
of his loving neighbours at Tamworth, who induced him to brew a bushel
of malt, and sell the ale for his benefit--and his appeal to the public
for assistance, that he might clear off encumbrances, are all related
in his ‘Chaunt,’ and show him to have been a simple, harmless man. But
both this poem and the ‘Farewell’ afford humiliating evidence of the
sorry life to which the poor minstrels were subjected in the early part
of Queen Elizabeth’s reign.”
But leaving the descent of the English jester from the minstrel, or the
question of their identity, to be decided upon by my readers, let us
turn to the English poets for such information as they can afford us.
The incidents there to be found in connection with this question, have
doubtless reference to the English “fool” alone, in whatever country
the poet may have located him. We meet with him however in England,
in the tragedy of King Lear. The relation of fool and master, not a
relation of the period of the play, but of a much later age, is very
distinctly marked. Lear strikes a gentleman, only for chiding Lear’s
fool; but the King keeps a whip for the latter, to be used when the
jester’s truths smacked rudely, or were thrust forward unnecessarily.
And these truths are occasionally of the very roughest quality, as, for
instance, when the fool tells Lear, that he had given away all his
titles save “fool,”--the one he was born with.
It is perhaps more by the comment of the jester than by the conduct of
the King’s daughters, that Lear has fully revealed to him his state of
terrible destitution; and if it be not an old traditionary saying of
some jester, the advice is admirably in the jester’s way, which shows
that if a man would rise in the world, it were better for him to let go
a descending wheel, and to hang to one going up-hill.
The Yorick of _Hamlet_ is probably a reminiscence of an English jester.
He had carried the young prince on his back a thousand times, and the
childish cavalier had kissed the merriest of fellows often. These were
common incidents in a family where there was a household fool. Yorick
however poured a flagon of Rhenish on the head of the gravedigger; but
an English joculator would have drunk off the wine, and broken the
gravedigger’s head with the flagon.
The whip was certainly ever present in the house that held an official
Motley, in spite of the boasted license of speech supposed to be
enjoyed by the latter. Touchstone is told that he shall be whipped for
taxation. His qualities are, being able to string rhymes together in a
butter-woman’s jog-trot pace to market; he has a memory for old verses;
is full of smart sayings against the corrupt in fine linen, and has the
faculty of making an honest calling seem uncleanly. He is a droll sort
of philosopher, with a taste of the knave in him; and so far imitates
the vices of his patrons, by being marvellously ready to seduce and
betray. Rosalind tells him that he speaks wiser than he is aware,
which a fool only seemed to do: it was part of his office. One of his
happiest expressions has often been uttered by travellers who have gone
abroad only to be disappointed: “Here am I in Arden. The more fool I!
When I was at home, I was in a better place!”
The Duke admirably describes a first-rate jester when he notices
Touchstone as “swift and sententious,” and that he “wore his folly as
a stalking-horse, and, under presentation of that, shoots his wit.”
Touchstone too is a gentleman in his way, seeing that he has “undone
three tailors!”
The cynicism of the English fool is no doubt alluded to in _Timon
of Athens_, where he is looked upon as a form of the old cynic
philosopher, as indeed he was everywhere. To a sharp sentence of
the fool, the churlish sage remarks, “That answer might have become
Apemantas.”
Perhaps the truest likeness of Shakespeare’s fools to the actual
Motleys, is the Clown in _Twelfth Night_. He preaches and quotes
Latin with the facility of Chicot, and as if he had been much with
the parson. The threat to hang him or turn him away, may show that
loss of service was held to be a disaster; while the way in which
(upon permission) he shows his mistress to be a fool, is an excellent
illustration of the liberty arrogated by the professor of wit. Malvolio
saw him put down in contention with an ordinary fool. These trials of
wit were not uncommon when the household buffoon was common also; but
it was all in jest. Nothing the jester uttered, however he meant it,
was ever taken for serious. “There is no slander,” says Olivia, “in an
allowed fool.” This shows the worth attached to Motley’s sayings; the
clown, too, very accurately defines his own standing, when he says, “I
am not her fool, but her corruptor of words;” and Viola exquisitely and
perfectly portrays all that the fool should be, in the words:--
“This fellow’s wise enough to play the fool;
And to do that well craves a kind of wit:
He must observe their mood on whom he jests,
The quality of persons and the time;
And, like the haggard, check at ev’ry feather
That comes before his eye. This is a practice,
As full of labour as a wise man’s art:
For folly, that he wisely shows, is fit;
But wise men, folly fallen, taint their wit.”
It is impossible that any pen could better describe the requirements of
the jester, his qualifications, the duty to be performed, and the way
to perform it. No court fool of Shakespeare’s time or memory could have
sat for the portrait. Neither Patch, nor Pace, nor Chester, nor Clod
could have done so; perhaps Heywood comes nearest to it, but he was
probably not in Shakespeare’s mind, when he imagined a more brilliant
fool than ever sat at the hearth of a prince and railed at his patron.
Beaumont and Fletcher, in the _Mad Lover_, cannot be said to be nearly
so successful in their description of the fool and his quality, though
there is allusion in it to the would-be professors, worth noticing.
“Every idle knave that shows his teeth,
Wants and would live, can juggle, tumble, fiddle,
Make a dog-face, or can abuse his fellow,
Is not a fool at first dash. You shall find, Sir,
Strange turnings in this trade.”
In the _Wit Without Money_ of these authors, we have a glimpse of a
sort of household joker of those times, in the person of Shorthose,
the widow’s fool, who grows dull in the country, brightens up by town
associations, loves good living, dislikes morning prayers, and has
a turn for clever similes and smart sayings, in the style of stage
valets. He is superior, after all, to Tony, in _A Wife for a Month_,
who is a mere low-comedy fool, with a wit to which Shakespeare’s
jesters would scorn to condescend. In this piece, however, we again
trace the presence of the whip, as a permanent menace against offending
Motley, in English houses. The usurping Frederick, indeed, says to him,
“Thou art a fool, and may’st do mischief lawfully;”--nevertheless,
not only the fool’s master, but others of less authority, frequently
threaten to chastise this official with an undefined position.
Geta, in the _Prophetess_, is described as a “jester,” but he is
little more than a stage servant, who alludes to “turn-spits,” and
who becomes duller the higher he rises in station. Villio, in the
_Double Marriage_, is a type of the philosophical fool, of whom there
were many; and who, with the wit of common sense, judges content in
a cottage to be better than a throne with a thorn in the side of the
king who sits on it. We have still fewer reflections of the jester
in Penurio and Soto, of _Woman Pleased_, and in Jaques and Pedro of
_Women’s Prize_. Beaumont and Fletcher have more success in painting
the household dwarf than the household fool. The fidelity of Zoilus,
dwarf to a duke’s son, in _Cupid’s Revenge_, is a compliment to his
class. He is as ugly as most of these creatures were, who moreover
lived in constant feud with the more gigantic jester, if there was one
in the house. Zoilus is described as being “an ape’s skin stuffed; with
a pudding in ’s belly;” and yet his lady loves him, for which, however,
he is sent to death. Even Base, the jester to the passionate lord, in
_Nice Valour_, is but a weak representative of our official friend. He
has but one jest, and that is but a poor one. A servant says, “There
comes a Cupid drawn by six fools.” To which Base replies, “That’s
nothing, I ha’ known six hundred fools drawn by one Cupid.” There is a
finer touch of the real Motley in Massinger’s Calandrino (_Great Duke
of Florence_), when he remarks:--
“I confess,
I am not very wise, and yet I find
A fool, so he be parcel knave, in court
May flourish and grow rich.”
And his distinction between country and court air is quite in the
fool’s vein:--
“As this court air taught me knavish wit,
By which I am grown rich, if that again
Should turn me fool and honest, vain hopes, farewell!
For I must die a beggar.”
Calandrino, however, is but the “merry servant” to the nephew of the
Great Duke, and has only the attributes of the official jester, without
actually exercising the office.
It will be remembered that against all fools, and especially against
those introduced on the stage, Sir Philip Sidney made eloquent protest;
and all that Puttenham could advance in support of the professional
household jester, was that something amusing was to be found in
listening to the pretended foolishness of a jester, who had the wit to
be wise when he chose so to direct it.
The stage fool expired in 1662, in a prologue spoken by a “fool.”
The play is a long-since forgotten piece called ‘Thorney Abbey,’ and
the motley speaker of the prologue affects to reproach the author
for writing a drama with a king and court in it, and omitting the
time-honoured character of the jester.
Meanwhile, the buffoon was a prominent character, not only at court,
but in corporations, where he measured out gaiety for the mayor and
his guests; and in great households, when, for all his license, he
sometimes got whipped for telling stories rather too coarse, in
presence of ladies who could listen to a great amount of that sort of
thing without blushing. We find him also in taverns, where he amused
the topers by his rude jests and ruder minstrelsy, just as Dionysius,
in his exile, is said to have done, when he enacted buffoon in a
barber’s shop, for his daily bread; and finally, the buffoon was
_that_, and bully too, in other establishments open to the public, but
less favourably considered by the law.
We leave these, to follow more exclusively the court and household
fool. The office of the jester was one which, says Fuller, in his
‘Holy State,’ “none but he that hath wit can perform; and none but he
that wants it, _will_ perform.” There is little doubt of this, for
wit had its miseries, as Lodge graphically pointed out, in 1599, in a
book which, under the title of ‘Wit’s Misery,’ has especial reference
to this subject. The author, after pointing out the immoderate and
inordinate jollity which was the stock-in-trade of the fool,--his
comeliness of person, and his courtliness of dress,--adds that, after
all, he was more of an ape than a man, and that his chief duties were
to study the coining of bitter jests, to practise quaint and antique
motions, to sing immodest songs, to laugh intemperately on very small
occasion for it, and, when the wine was in his head, to mouth and gibe
at all around him. The fool, says Lodge, “dances about the house, leaps
over tables, outskips men’s heads, trips up his companions’ heels,
burns sack with a candle, and hath all the feats of a lord of misrule
in the country; feed him in his humour, you shall have his heart; in
mere kindness, he will hug you in his arms, kiss you on the cheek, and,
rapping out a horrible oath, cry, ‘God’s soul, Tom, I love you; you
know my poor heart; come to my chamber for a pipe of tobacco; there
lives not a man in this world that I more honour.’ In the ceremonies,
you shall know his courting; and it is a special mark of him at the
table, he sits and makes faces. Keep not this fellow company; for in
juggling with him, your wardrobe shall be wasted, your credit cracked,
your crowns consumed, and your time (the most precious riches in the
world) utterly lost.” This was written in 1599; but only thirty-five
years later, 1634, we find that some jesters at least had not a very
miserable time of it; for Stafford tells us, in his _Code of Honour_,
that “he had known a great and competently wise man, who would much
respect any man that was good to his fool.”
In many cases, the latter was as much a household servant as mere
jester, and was equally at home at the master’s board, or in the
kitchen, where he received such whippings as he chanced to earn.
That he was occasionally as much relished by the retainers as by his
patron, there can be no doubt, and his position among these is so
well described by Thornbury, in his rattling ‘Songs of the Cavaliers
and Roundheads,’ that, in place of illustrating that position by
citing old ballads and ballad-makers, I will place before my readers
the lively picture portrayed by a skilful and living artist,--in ‘The
Jester’s Sermon.’--
“The jester shook his hood and bells and leaped upon a chair;
The pages laughed, the women screamed, and tossed their scented hair;
The falcon whistled, stag-hounds bayed, the lap-dog barked without;
The scullion dropped the pitcher brown,--the cook railed at the lout;
The steward, counting out his gold, let pouch and money fall:
And why? Because the jester rose to say grace in the hall!
“The page played with the heron’s plume, the steward with his chain;
The butler drummed upon the board, and laughed with might and main;
The grooms beat on their metal cans, and roared till they turned red;
But still the jester shut his eyes and rolled his witty head;
And when they grew a little still, read half a yard of text;
And waving hand struck on the desk, then frowned, like one perplexed.
“‘Dear sinners all!’ the fool began, ‘man’s life is but a jest,
A dream, a shadow, bubbles, air, a vapour, at the best.
In a thousand pounds of law I find not a single ounce of love.
A blind man killed the parson’s cow, in shooting at the dove.
The fool that eats till he is sick must fast till he is well.
The wooer who can flatter most will bear away the bell.
“‘Let no man halloo he is safe till he is through the wood.
He who will not when he may, must tarry when he should.
He who laughs at crooked men should need walk very straight.
Oh, he who once has won a name may lie abed till eight.
Make haste to purchase house and land, be very slow to wed.
True coral needs no painter’s brush, nor need be daubed with red.
“‘The friar, preaching, cursed the thief (the pudding in his sleeve).
To fish for sprats with golden hooks is foolish, by your leave.
To travel well, an ass’s ears, ape’s face, hog’s mouth, and
ostrich legs.
_He_ does not care a pin for thieves, who limps about and begs.
Be always first man at a feast, and last man at a fray.
The short way round, in spite of all, is still the longest way.
“‘When the hungry curate licks the knife, there’s not much for the
clerk.
When the pilot, turning pale and sick, looks up, the storm grows
dark.’
Then loud they laughed; the fat cook’s tears ran down into the pan;
The steward shook, that he was forced to drop the brimming can;
And then again the women screamed and every stag-hound bayed:
And why? Because the motley fool so wise a sermon made!”
The preacher, in conclusion, probably took the pearl spoon he wore
in his cap, and ate his porridge with it; and, his day’s duties
terminated, turned to the kennel, and slept the night out with the
hounds. He might have been worse lodged. There however we will leave
him, to treat, henceforward, more with the especial individual than
with the order generally.
ENGLISH COURT FOOLS, FROM THE REIGN OF EDMUND IRONSIDE.
It is a singular but incontrovertible fact, that there are many
individuals now living, who are indebted for various benefits, and
even no inconsiderable wealth (in their corporate capacity), to the
liberality of long-departed jesters at our English Courts. The estates
so long held by the Cathedral Church of Canterbury, at Walworth, were
originally the pious gift of the first English jester on record.[C] The
name of this joculator was Hitard, perhaps Hit-hard, from the success
of his sayings. He belonged to Edmund Ironside, who, out of gratitude,
bestowed on him the town of Walworth, in the year 1016. That most
gallant King could have had little leisure to listen to the wit of
Hit-hard, for his entire reign was comprised within seven months of the
year last mentioned, and he was fighting against Canute and his Danes
nearly the whole time. Hit-hard was more fortunate, for he continued
landlord of Walworth during the reigns of Canute, Harold Harefoot,
Hardicanute, and a portion of the reign of Edward the Confessor. In
the latter reign, after a quiet enjoyment of his dignity for about
thirty years, Hit-hard resolved to proceed to Rome, there to live the
remainder of his days, and there to die. Previous to setting out, he
performed a grateful act most gracefully. He drew up a deed by which he
conferred the whole of his possessions at Walworth,--that was, in fact,
the whole of Walworth itself,--upon the Cathedral of Canterbury. He
even went down to the ancient city, and entering the church, placed the
deed of conveyance, with his own hands, upon the high altar. And then
the venerable ex-jester to the gallant Ironside set off to the Holy
City, helped on his way, no doubt, by many a “Pax vobiscum!”
In the stormy times that followed, we have no record of any individual
court jester, though there is no reason to doubt of the presence of
that official at our Courts before the Conquest. William, both as Duke
and King, possessed this ordinary gay appendage to his household. He
loved mirth, as he loved good living; and as we know that he conferred
a manor on his cook, for making an excellent soup, we may be prepared
to find that he was not an indifferent patron to a meritorious fool.
Accordingly, the great Conqueror, solemn man as he sometimes was, did
not think his household complete without the jester. Indeed, we hear
of more than one. They were princely fellows, and had a right princely
master. One of these, Gollet, or Gallet, a native of Bayeux, hearing
of a conspiracy against William’s life, went to his chamber-door, and
roused the great Duke out of his first sleep, by beating against it
with an iron hammer, and crying out at the same time, according to the
rhymed edition of the story, by Robert Waice:
“Ouvrez, dit-il, ouvrez, ouvrez!
Jà morrez tout; levez, levez!”
This good turn merited great recompense; but we know not what Gollet
got for his faithful service. On the other hand, we hear of a guerdon
to another of William’s fools, but we are not told of any special
act of which it was the reward. The lucky personage was Berdic, the
_Joculator_, who retired from Court and merry duty, the lord of three
towns, with five carucates of land, and all rent-free; notice of which
will be found in Domesday Book, under the head of “Gloucester.” So
cunning was Berdic in mixing sweet and pungent together, that he died
a sort of Crœsus, but he was neither the first nor last of court fools
who left land and gold-pieces, at his death. It is a pity that the
Norman could not take a joke as readily as he could reward a jester. We
all know how, by resenting the sarcasm of the French King Philip, on
his obesity, he lost his own life.
We hear of no fool of merit at the bachelor and uproarious Court
of William Rufus. That King, indeed, hardly needed one, for he was
accustomed not only to make his own jokes, but to laugh louder at them
than any other person. We know that the fool often combined the office
of servant with that of jester, and it is, perhaps, not unreasonable
to conclude that the chamberlain of Rufus was also his joculator. He
certainly fooled his master. Witness the occasion when Rufus burst into
a fit of fury at the chamberlain bringing him a pair of boots that had
cost but three shillings. “Son of an ass!” exclaimed the ruby-faced and
flaxen-haired monarch, “bring me a pair that costs a silver mark!” The
chamberlain obeyed, after a court fool’s fashion. He changed the boots
for a pair of inferior value, charged Rufus a higher price, and laughed
in his sleeve at seeing the King well pleased, and unconscious that he
had been tricked.
There was one other person at this Court who had something of the
jester in him;--namely, that well-known priest Ralph, whose wit raised
him to an eminence that cost England rather dear. When he was in power,
and the King ordered a tribute to be levied, Ralph ordered one of
double the amount, and exacted it with stringent severity. At this
process Rufus would laugh heartily; and he had little cause to pay a
fool, when he possessed a witty follower like Ralph, whose tricks were
so much to the taste and so greatly to the profit of this rude but
discriminating monarch.
The court of his brother and successor, Henry I., was less riotous, but
not less luxurious or licentious, than his own. Henry was naturally
prodigal, and in his Queen, Matilda, he possessed a partner who helped
him pleasantly on the road to ruin. Matilda cared less for the jester
than for the minstrel, and accordingly, she wasted much of her wealth,
her husband’s, and that of the public, on melodious clerks, foreign
joculators who could chant a merry stave, and “singing scholars,” who
crowded to a Court where they found, in return, as good entertainment
as they could give.
Among these gay fellows, or minstrels, was an individual of some
celebrity, a Picard or Norman, it is not exactly known which, and who
is sometimes described as a “barber.” His name was Rahere, and of
all court minstrels or jesters he is the one above all others whose
memory hundreds of living people have good reason to bless daily. Stow
speaks of Rahere as “a pleasant-witted gentleman, and therefore, in his
time, called the King’s Minstrel.” There have been writers who have
questioned the correctness of this description, but it is, in a very
great measure, supported by the author of a paper in the Cottonian
Manuscripts.[D]