called Broadgate, Oxford, now Pembroke. Heywood’s spirit of fun, his
humour, and his readiness at repartee made him a favourite with More,
who was fond of spending leisure hours with him,--a man of whom it was
said that “he had wit at will, and art was all he missed.” Heywood,
moreover, was a good vocalist, and no mean instrumental player.
Previous to his introduction to the King, More presented him to the
lady (afterwards Queen) Mary, who found his merriment so irresistible
“that it moved even her rigid muscles,” says Warton; “and her sullen
solemnity was not proof against his songs, his rhymes, and his jests.”
Mary, however, was more easily moved to mirth than Warton and those
whose opinions were followed by him, suspected. Even in her womanhood,
when we are accustomed to think of her as one solemnly severe, she
could (albeit moody and melancholy at times) laugh heartily at a
mountebank. In 1556, Strype speaks of her as holding a grand military
review in Greenwich Park, at which “came a tumbler, and played many
pretty feats, the Queen and Cardinal (Pole) looking on; whereat she was
observed to laugh heartily.” Long ere she had ascended the throne, she
had learned to laugh at, with, or through John Heywood. Of the latter,
Warton says that “he was beloved and rewarded by Henry VIII. for his
buffooneries;” and, indeed, that monarch was so satisfied with the
quips of his daughter’s favourite, that, as previously stated, he named
John “King’s Jester.” He seems to have been a favourite also in the
mansions and at the tables of the nobility; and a specimen of his wit
there is offered us by Puttenham.
“The following happened,” he says, “on a time, at the Duke of
Northumberland’s board, where merry John Heywood was allowed to sit at
the board’s end. The Duke had a very noble and honourable mind to pay
his debts well, and when he lacked money, would not stick to sell the
greatest part of his plate. So had he done some few days before.
“Heywood being loath to call for his drink as often as he was dry,
turned his eyes towards the cupboard, and said, ‘I find a great miss
of your Grace’s standing-cups.’ The Duke, thinking that he had spoken
it of some knowledge that his plate was lately sold, said somewhat
sharply, ‘Why, Sir, will not _these_ cups serve so good a man as
yourself?’ Heywood readily replied, ‘Yes, if it please your Grace, but
I would have one of them stand still at my elbow, full of drink, that I
might not be driven to trouble your man so often to call for it.’
“This pleasant and speedy reverse of the former words, helped all the
matter again, whereby the Duke became very pleasant, and drank a
bottle of wine to Heywood, and bade a cup should always be standing by
him.”
His boldness with the Queen was quite that of the privileged jester,
and he was recompensed for his puns and conceits when men more
meritorious were neglected. The following contains good proof of his
license. When the Queen once remarked to him that the priests must
forego their wives, John exclaimed (and he was a very strict Catholic
too), “Then your Grace must allow them _lemmans_ [sweethearts], for
the clergy cannot live without _sauce_.” This epigrammatic turn was
very strong upon him; and indeed many of his epigrams, of which he was
the author of hundreds, are said to have been versifications of his
own jokes. I have already noticed the audacity of his jests with the
sovereign, a further instance of which we have in an incident connected
with one of his visits to the palace.
“Now, Master Heywood,” said Mary on the occasion in question, “what
wind blew you to court?” “There were two,” answered audacious John;
“one, that I might see your Majesty, and the other, that your Majesty
might see me.” When he was told that a certain Master of Arts had
assumed the ordinary attire of the court fool, “There is no great
harm in that,” remarked Heywood, “he is merely a wise man in a fool’s
coat; the evil is, when the fool puts over his motley the wise man’s
gown.”--“How do you like my beer?” asked a host of him, “is it not
well hopped?” “So well,” said Heywood, “that had it hopped a little
further, it would have hopped into water.” This reminds me of a far
wittier saying by a brighter English wit than Heywood--the late Douglas
Jerrold; and which is better worth recording. At an hotel at Hastings,
Jerrold was dining with two friends, one of whom, after dinner, ordered
among other pleasant things, “a bottle of _old_ port.” “Waiter,” said
Douglas, with that twinkle of the eye which was always a promise of
wit, “Mind, now; a bottle of your _old_ port, not your _elder_ port.”
Heywood never equalled _that_, though he gave utterance to as many
witty thoughts as the wittiest man of his time. Among them was his
remark, to a person complaining that the great number of lawyers would
spoil the profession. “Not so,” exclaimed John; “for the more spaniels,
the more game!”
His familiarity with Mary, was doubtless founded on his long service.
When she was a mere little girl at Greenwich, Heywood officiated as
manager of the troop of child actors who performed in her presence. On
one occasion he appears to have received six and eightpence for his
pains. Later, he wrote ballads for her, sometimes making herself the
subject of them. When her coronation procession passed St. Paul’s,
_there_ was mirthful John, seated beneath a vine; and, as the Queen
approached, he arose and delivered an oration. When Mary was ill, he
went to her chamber and recited verses or read plays to her; and when
she was dying, says Flögel, he stood by her death-bed, and solaced her
with music; “Er war auch ein berühmter Musikus, und musste der Königin
Maria von England, auf ihrem Todbette, mit seiner Musik aufwarten.”
This could not have been, however, when her death was very near.
Lingard simply says, that “on the morning of her death, Mass was
celebrated in her chamber; she was perfectly sensible, and expired a
few minutes before the conclusion.”
With the reputation of having been “King’s Jester,” Heywood is also
known to us as a poet, a dramatist, and a writer of epigrams. In the
first capacity, his most laboured piece is the least successful. I have
tried in vain to read through his ninety-eight chapters, in octave
stanzas, devoted to the subject of “The Spider and the Fly,” in the
gaily-bound copy in the British Museum. I quite agree with Harrison’s
description of it (quoted by Warton), that “neither he himself that
made it, neither any one that readeth it, can read unto the meaning
thereof.” It is far less amusing than the comic song, with the same
title, by the old free-and-easy poet, Tom Hudson.
As a dramatist, Heywood was among the earliest of English writers of
comedy. He was not among the best for delicacy, humour, or decency.
All these are of the roughest and dirtiest, such as might have been
expected from Will Sommers. I must however differ in some degree from
Warton, unassailable as his judgments generally are, when he describes
Heywood’s plays as “altogether void of plot, humour, and character.”
Yet, I confess, detestable as I hold idleness to be, a man were better
occupied in doing nothing than in reading these productions. They
hardly repay the curiosity of the student of literature, and even _he_
must rise from the perusal sorely in need of civet wherewith to sweeten
his imagination.
It is as an epigrammatist that this honorary jester was most
celebrated, and continues to be best known to the few who care to
cultivate acquaintance with him. Of the epigrams I will select a few
specimens. Bearing in mind that they are often the versification of his
jests, and that the latter must frequently have had allusion to passing
subjects, the following probably points at a then living prince. It is
entitled:--
OF AN ILL GOVERNOR CALLED JUDE.
A ruler there was in a country afar,
And of the people a great executioner,
Who by name, I understand, was called Jude.
One gave him an ass, which gift when he had view’d,
He asked the giver, for what intent
He brought him that ass. “For a present
I bring, Master Jude,” quoth he, “this ass hither;
To join Master Jude and this ass together,
Which two joined in one, this is brought to pass,
I may bid you good even, Master Jude--ass.”
“Maccabee or Iscariot, thou knave?” quoth he;--
“Whom it pleaseth your mastership, him let it be!”
The following, too, is very much after the fashion of the French “_fous
à titre d’office_” when they repelled the unwelcome familiarity of
certain courtiers.
TWO, ARM-IN-ARM.
One said to another, on taking his arm,
“By license, friend, and take this for no harm.”
“No, Sir,” (quoth the other,) “I give you full leave
To hang on my arm, Sir, but not on my sleeve.”
Here is a jester’s definition of
WIT, WILL, AND WISDOM.
Where will is good, and wit is ill,
There wisdom can no manner skill.
Where wit is good, and will is ill,
There wisdom sitteth silent still.
Where wit and will are both too ill,
There wisdom no way meddle will.
Where wit and will well-ordered be,
There wisdom maketh a trinity.
And the following is not a bad specimen of the ordinary fool’s mock
sermon put into rhyme, with the title of
CERTAIN FOLLIES.
To cast fair white salt into wise man’s meat,
To make them count salt, sugar, when they eat,--
A folly.
To bear a man in hand he itcheth in each part,
When the man feeleth an universal smart,--
A folly.
To speak always well and do always ill,
And tell men those deeds are done of good will,--
A folly.
Thy lusty-limbed horse to lead in thy hand,
When on thy lame limbs thou canst scanty stand,--
A folly.
Of sticks for cage-work to build thy house high,
And cover it with lead, to keep thy house dry,--
A folly!
From a sermon, to those who needed the instruction that ought to
be afforded by one, is not going wide apart. Such a person Heywood
seems to have met, and to have reproved by a Latin pun which was
unintelligible to this
MERRY WOMAN.
There came by chance to a good company,
A lady, a wanton, and eke a merry.
And though ev’ry word of her own show’d her light,
Yet no man’s words _that_ to her might recite.
She had all the words, which she babbled so fast,
That they being weary, one said, at last,
“Madam, you make my heart light as a ‘kix,’
To see you thus full of your _meretrix_.”
This trick thus well trick’d out in good Latin phrase,
Brought to this tricker neither muse nor mase.
She nought perceiving was no whit offended,
Nor her light behaviour no whit amended;
But still her tongue was clapping like a patten.
“Well,” said the said man, in language of Latin,
“I never told woman any fault before,
Nor never, in Latin, will tell them fault more.”
It would be hard to say whether Queen Mary laughed or not, when “John,
the King’s Jester,” either read to her the following epigram, or
recounted the story, by way of joke; but it is worth quoting here,
though not so much as a specimen of the royal favourite’s wit, as
another proof that in the old pronunciation of the word _ache_, the
latter had the _ch_ soft.
OF THE LETTER H.
H is worst among letters in all the cross row,
For if thou find him either in thine elbow,
In thine arm or leg, in any degree,
In thy head or teeth, in thy toe or knee;--
Into what place soever H may pyke him,
Wherever thou find _ache_ thou shalt not like him.
Heywood has a few epigrams touching fools. The following will show
that what Selden said of evil-speaking, in reference to James’s court
fool, Stone, in courtly prose, had been uttered before him by Mary’s
court wit in shambling verse.
A FOOL’S TONGUE.
Upon a fool’s provocation,
A wise will not talk,
But ev’ry light instigation,
Will make a fool’s tongue walk.
And again, on a fool whose foolish wit was called wisdom, Heywood said
and sang:--
Wisdom and folly in thee (as men scan)
Is, as it were, a thing by itself; fool,
Among fools, thou art taken a wise man;
And among wise men thou art known a fool.
In the same strain is this quatrain:--
OF EARS AND WITS.
Thin ears and thin wits be dainty;
Thick ears and thick wits be plenty.
Thick ears and thick wits be scant;
Thin ears and thin wits none want.
The following belongs to the satirist:--
OF THE WIFE’S AND HER HUSBAND’S WAIST.
“Where am I least, husband?” Quoth he, “In the waist;
Which cometh of this, thou art vengeable strait-laced.”--
“Where am _I_ biggest, wife?” “In the waist too,” quoth she,
“For all is waste in you, as far as I can see.”
Finally, here is a fling at farthingales, for which any modern
epigrammatist might do what Pope effected for Donne, smooth the
versification, and, in addition, turn the point against crinoline.
“Alas! poor verdingales must lie in the street;
To house them no door in the City’s made meet.
Since at our doors they in cannot win,
Send them to Oxford, at Broadgate to get in.”
Soon after the death of Queen Mary, in 1558, her orthodox jester, who
hated and ridiculed Protestantism as vigorously as any French court
fool launched his little quips against the faith of the Huguenots,
withdrew from England, and took refuge in the fair Flemish city of
Mechlin. It was a likely place of refuge for a lively and “orthodox”
voluntary exile. Mechlin, like Troyes in Champagne, was worthy of
supplying any Court with fools, for it was the wise men of that city
who once tried to put out the moon! It was a jovial place also. Near
the gate of St. Catherine, on the Antwerp side, stood the church and
monastery of St. Alexis. This monastery contained fifteen hundred
nuns, and full as many lady boarders. The good sisters enjoyed the
very merriest of privileges. They were not only permitted to receive
all sorts of visitors within the monastery, but to return the visit
when and wheresoever they pleased. They might, if they chose, live
unrestrained in the city; and might either marry or leave it alone,
just as their humour prompted. The old and anonymous author of ‘Les
Païs Bas’ (Bruxelles, 1692, p. 123), assures his readers that the
old-established custom had never been followed by ill effect; and
that the pious and pretty sisters had even employed themselves in
respectable and praiseworthy matters, to the edification of the
population which had before them so excellent an example.
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.