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.
The last fool in Armin’s ‘Nest,’ is “Blue John.” There is nothing of
him however worth narrating. He was an idiot, protected, lodged, and
boarded at Christ’s Hospital. He joined in the processions of the boys,
imitated the preachers who held forth before them, ran on many messages
and made more mistakes, was void of wit, and yet was sufficiently
esteemed to induce his patrons to have his portrait taken. They who are
curious to see the counterfeit presentment of this species of fool, may
gratify their desire by a visit to the “Hospital,” where the boys still
wear the colour that was worn by “Blue John.”
I may perhaps fittingly notice here, that, during the reign of the
Tudor and Stuart dynasties especially, there was a species of “fool” to
be found in great households, who was there for the profit rather than
the amusement of the master of the house. “It is very strange,” said
Charles II. to some of his courtiers, “that every one of my friends
keeps a tame knave.” The _tame knaves_ thus spoken of (in the ‘Lives
of the Norths,’ ch. ii. p. 247), were persons who had been pronounced
each _Fatuus purus et idiota_, by a jury; and it was a common practice
to beg such a man for a fool, that is to apply to the crown, for the
applicant to have custody of the lands and person of the so-called
“fool.” In illustration of this practice there are several anecdotes
cited by Mr. W. J. Thoms in his ‘Anecdotes and Traditions derived from
MS. Sources,’ and edited by him for the Camden Society. The following
illustration is from the manuscript papers of Sir Nicholas L’Estrange,
and has reference to the reign of which I am now treating.
“Lord North held old Bladwell in his custody as a lunatic, and carried
the poor fellow about with him. His lordship was desirous of having and
holding Bladwell as his fool, but the obstacle was, not that Bladwell
wanted wit, but that he could not be proved to be a fool at all. He
had some spirit of mischief in him, of the fool’s quality; as, for
instance, when Lord North, taking Bladwell with him to a gentleman’s
house, left his lunatic companion in the dining-room, while lord and
gentleman conferred together in another room. Bladwell, left alone,
amused himself with looking at the figures on the tapestry, and
happening to espy that of a jester among them, he quickly cut the
figure from the costly arras, and laid it flat on the ground. When
the gentlemen returned to the dining room, the owner of the house,
observing the damage done to his tapestry, was very indignant; but
Bladwell sought to appease his wrath by remarking, “Pray be content,
Sir, I have saved your property, and not injured it; for if my lord
there had seen the fool, he would have wanted to have and hold him in
his own household; and you would have lost that which you may now keep.
I have done you a service, Sir.”
During the reign of James I., Sir Christopher Paston was pronounced
by a jury, to be in the same condition as “old Bladwell” (who was a
wealthy Norfolk gentleman). The knight’s family seem to have had
charge of their kinsman, whose infirmity was made the ground for a
retort, as will be seen by the following incident, recorded also by Sir
Nicholas L’Estrange. “Jack Paston began one time to jest upon Capon
(who sat very silent and replied nothing), and told him merrily, that
he never met with such a dull, clay-pated fool, that could not answer a
word, and bade him remember he out-fooled him once. ‘No, faith,’ says
Capon, ‘I were a fool indeed, to deal with you at that weapon. I know
the strain of the Pastons too well, and you must needs be right bred
for it; for I am sure your race has not been without a good fool these
fifty years and upwards.’”
It would seem, too, that ambassadors carried in their train individuals
who represented the jesters at the court from which the envoys were
despatched, even as the latter represented the sovereigns by whom they
were commissioned. Thus, when the Earl of Carlisle repaired to the
court of France, in 1616, deputed by James I., he went thither at the
head of an extraordinary retinue. “The Lady Haddington,” says Mr. John
Chamberlain, in a contemporary letter, quoted in Nichols’s ‘Progresses
of James I.,’ “hath bestowed a favour upon him that will not easily
fall to the ground, for she says, the flower and beauty of his embassy
consists in three mignards, three dancers, and three fools or buffoons.
The mignards are himself, Sir Harry Rich, and Sir George Goring. The
dancers, Sir Gilbert Hoghton, Auchmuty, and Abercromby. The fools,
or buffoons, are Sir Thomas Jermyn,[E] Sir Ralph Sheldon, and Thomas
Badger.”
These knights were not the only individuals of the court of James I,
who might aspire to fill the office of fool, either in foreign palaces
or at home. Sir George Fitz-Jeffrey might have ranked with any of
the above. L’Estrange (quoted by Mr. Thoms) says, he might have been
“begged for a fool;” and in proof of the good ground he has for the
assertion, tells the following incident, which occurred at Royston in
1607. “Fitz-Jeffrey being brought up a backstair to the King, to be
knighted, was turned out another way, to pass through the presence
chamber, which he entered, with his cap on his head, and many of the
nobility of the court being there bare, and he, like the Egyptian Apis,
thinking they did ‘Sir reverence’ to the new knight, he came to them
very courteously, and desired them to be covered, for truly it was more
than he expected at their hands, though his Majesty had conferred a
great honour upon him. They thanked him very kindly, and desired to be
excused, for they knew their duties, and so long as he was in the room
they would not be covered. Upon that, away goes the fool, so puffed
and swollen with his new honour, as when he comes home, he stuffs the
clothes he was knighted in, and hangs them up in his hall for ensigns
and monuments of an incomparable coxcomb, worthy to be begged by his
respective gentleman of the presence-chamber.”
When such “tame knaves” might be had for nothing, it is almost a matter
of surprise that the Sovereign cared for other buffoons about him.
But, at the court of James I. both King and Queen found pleasure in
maintaining official fools upon their household. Of the fool of Anne of
Denmark, that sovereign lady who purchased precious stones so liberally
of the father of Herrick the poet--old Herrick, the jeweller--we know
little but the name. In the accounts of John Lord Harrington, of Exton,
as Treasurer of the Chambers to the wife of James I., Horace Walpole
found an item--“Paid to T. Mawe, for the diet and lodging of Tom Derry,
her Majesty’s jester, thirteen weeks, 10_l._ 18_s._ 6_d._” At between
sixteen and seventeen shillings per week, Tom Derry cannot be said to
have been a very expensive toy to her Majesty. He was of importance
enough to have his name given to a gallery at Somerset House, in which
he used to loiter and exchange jokes with lords and ladies. An entry in
the weekly accounts of the time of Charles I. proves this, inasmuch as
mention is there made of an order “for colouring Tom Derry’s gallery
at Somerset House.” Tom is also incidentally mentioned in the extracts
from the accounts of revels at court, edited for the Shakespeare
Society by Mr. P. Cunningham; and to this extract my attention was
kindly directed by Mr. Cunningham himself;--“To Thomas Derry, her
Majesty’s jester, upon a warrant signed by the Lord Chamberlain, dated
at Whitehall, 16th July, 1612, for the diet of the said Thomas Derry,
and John Mawe his man, from the 25th day of December, 1611, to the 24th
of June following, being 26 weeks, at 7_s._ the week, 9_l._ 2_s._” It
is curious that the sum put down for the weekly diet of two persons
is less than half of that named in the former entry for the diet and
lodging of _one_. The first entry may have applied to two persons; and
in calculating cost, it is necessary to multiply the sum by five, to
obtain an idea of its real value as represented in modern currency.
Before Anne possessed Tom Derry to find her in mirth, she used to tax
her own ladies in waiting, with whom, when at Winchester palace, she
would wile away long winter evenings by playing with them at ‘Rise,
pig, and go,’ ‘Come, penny, follow me,’ ‘Fire!’ and, ‘I pray, my lord,
give me a course in your park.’ I only regret that Nichols, who tells
us thus much in the Appendix to his Progresses of James I., does not
add instructions for the playing these games.