IX 'l'HE

OF THE FOOL
IN THE
A 11ftesis .fo)' the Degree
0./ llI(fsteJ' 0.( Arts in tlte
Unit'ersity oj'London
BY
OLIVE l\lAltY nUSBY, l\I.A.
HUl\[PIIREY
OXFOHD UNIVEHSITY PHESS
LONDON EDINBUHGH GLASGOW COPENHAGEN
NEW YOHK TOHONTO l\lELBOUHNE CAPE TOWN
BOMBAY CALCUTTA l\IADHAS SHANGHAI
1!J28
PRINTED IN ENGLAND
AT THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
BY FREDERICK HALL
CHAPTER
}:-';TIWDUCTIO:-';
CO"NTENTS
1. TilE ORIGI:-';S OF THE E:-';GLISH STAGE FOOL
II. TilE EYOLUTIO:-'; OF THE FOOL AS A DIL\MA'I'IC
PAGE
G
8
CIlAIL\CTEH. 25
III. TIlE EVOLUTIOX OF 'rIlE FOOL CIIAHACTERIZA-
TIOX-LI:\"ES OF
IV. TIlE OF CIIAIL\CTER-
IS'rICS
CO:-';CLUSIOX
41
G3
83
STUDIES IN TIlE DEVELOPl\fENT OF
'fI-IE - :FOOL IN TilE ELIZABETH.AN
1) Rl\l\[A
IN'rRODUCTION
Some talk of things of state, of puling stnff:
There '8 nothing in a play to it clown
t
if he
Have the grace to hit 011 't; that's the thing indeed:
The king shows well, but he sets off the king.
TilE dramatic ideals expressed by the 11ayor of Queenborough
in these words are fairly representative of those of the Elizabethan
playgoer in general. The was one of the.
most striking features of the ElJglish at the time of its greatest -
__ L.- ____ .
glory. It can he pro\-ed m'er and over again from contemporary
references, usually satirical outbursts fmm writers whose taste and
sense of propriety were outraged by the intrusion of the buffoon into
the sphere of seriolls drama, in flagrant defiance of classic precedent.
(
These critics spent their strength largely in vain; the delight of the
people ill the clown 1 was, for a long time, at least, strong enough to
1 pre\'ail Ol'er academic criticism. Hall, Jonson, and others might
satirize the taste of the public, hut in spite of their sarcasms the
fool remained for many a year in th;-pop':!.!ar
in the an attraction he exerted is
prm'ed by the stress usually laid on his role in the titles of the plays.
It was not sufficient to advertise a piece as A Knack to know a ]{nave ;
special mention had to he made of 'Kemp's applauded 11errimentcs
of the men of Goteham '. 'Yithout a fool, unless some other powerful
attraction was a play was liable to hecome 'cal'iare to
the general '. And this the drallIatists recognized, llnd ,,-jth
bllt few exceptions they yielded to the cry of the playgoers, :lIld ga ve
them what they dem'lIIded, the more ,-eadily WIH'Jl they callle to
realize that' to intermingle merry jests ill a serious matter' is 110
1 The terms (clown' and (fool' will he 1lsed synonymously in this study,
gene! ally the the I,lays themscl\'(' s_ -
G TIlE l"OOL I1\" THE ELIZABETHAN DHA:\IA
, indecorum " but I'ath('r a mor(' faithful representation of lIat\1l'e than
drama that is wholly comic or wholly tragic.
'Yhence this of the f<)r the
huffooneries of the fool? In the case of the earliest forms ot drama
one reaSOII is and cdifyin..?, no
; doubt, but the latter in particular m1lst frequcntly' hecome
, wearison1(', especially to the less devout members of the audience;
tll<; :Qedl the Vice were provide a little
\ (liversion in the form of buffoonen', always dear to the uncultn' afea
' mind, and conspicllOllS of popular drama. This
de,-elopment, howe\,er, was by no means peculiar to England. It
' was directly paralleled, as ,,,ill be shown later, by the introduction of
n. fool into the French :1\1 ysteries. Doubtless, too, thc stage fool
'satisfied ;lJ)otbel' want the desire of th .. for a satiJical com- 1
on the life and events of the largely hy
, Punch' and his lesser brethren, but then impossible except under the
protection of the cap and bells. But this function, again, cannot he
regarded as the chief S011rce of the peculiar love of the English people
for the fool. In England he played a mnch more prominent part in
the history of the drama than elsewhere, for there he enjoyed not
only a far longer life hut also a far wider range and licence than in
other European countries, where he had no snch recognized entree
into serious and e'-en tragic drama. It seems, therefore, as if the
extraordinary vogue of the English clown 11111St have been due to
some quality inherent in the English nature. Such (\ quality
undoubtedly exists, but its nature is easier to illustrate than to
define. It is that same instinct which prompts the Englishman to
take refuge in a joke whenever he feels in danger of lippearing unduly
sentimental or serious, and to jest in the face of misfortune, peril, or
even certain death . [he .. . close blending of comedy and tragedy
of the Elizabethan being paralleled daily five
in the almost incredible stories from OUI' trenches and
at which laughed irresistibly, but with a
in the .. throat.
And as delight in the stage fool was a particularly English taste,
so too the fool himself, in consequence of the importance of his part
upon our stage, and the care bestowed upon it by our dramatists,
acquired all essentially English character. The French fools men-
tioned above are in the main conventional jesters, and we do not
feel that they are French in the same way that the English clowll ;
in spite of the ,-ariety of influences which seem to have be(,11 at "'ork
in his ne,'elopment, is Eng-lish. Hi!' distinctive character was

....
I
c\'ident Iy rccog'lIized in other countries. From the time that
Ellglish playN!\ began to yisit Germany) I we find constallt references
to ' John, the Ellglish clown " IIOt OJ'lly in connexioll with the English
adors bllt also ill the titles of German plays, into which, owing to
his great SIlCCCSS in Germany, the clown was introduced. SIIC1.
a play is Ayrer's Tyranny of Queen Gout, where a. prominent character
is 'Jahn Klan, del' cngellendisch Narr '.
"'hat then was this famous' Ellglish c1oWIl'?
fools are, and knows they the t t
Yery c.!owIUlge. Bllt they are too often regarded as
separate g'!"owths, creatioll., of Shakespeare's genius,
instead of being considered in to the host of fools who exist
in worlZ"s _or" other dramatists-fools who are often
\yorthy of merits, and always as showing
the g-eneral de\' elopment of clownage ..... The object of this study) then,
is not to deal with Shakespeare's clowns.i!!... would
be superfluous labour-but to take the average', Elizabethan clown,
to trace his origin and the lines all 11e den'loped, both as
a dramatic and as an indiYidual chal'actel'. And in the course of this
process, the fact will, I hopt', incidentally appear, that ShakespeaJ"{"s
fools are no independent growth, but have their place in the regular
sllccession of stage merry-makers, owing mnch to their predecessors,
and ill their tllrn handing on the tradition, infinitely enriched, to
their successors. Yet this comparison of Touchstone....and his brother
fools with the less noted Elizabethan fools (a comparison which
call1lot always be made formally, but will continually be, kept ill
view) should at the same time show more vividly than e\'er how
infinitely, ill c10wlIage as in all other respects, Shakespeare's genius
transcended that of his rivals. Good clmnls, as it will be seen, are
1I0t lacking in the works of other dramatists, but llot even the best
of them can approach Lear's fool, Touchstone Feste ttoHh-
Apart from theIr m eriol'ity in wit and humour and in dramatic ,
importance) they ha\'e allother constant !:;Ir,ely -l
more than downs, fools are human
If thcf;e poillts are brought out in this study, it will not ha\'e failed
of its purpose.
I Abollt ],')90. Sec COIIll, Shakesprrlrl' ill (Jerma llY,
CI-IAPTER I
THE ORIGINS OF THE ENGLISH STAGE FOOL
, STULTORU:\I numerus infinitns est.' This, the fa\'ollrite text of
the mediacyal satirists, also describes One prominent feature of
mediaeval life. For the fools of the 1iiddle Ages, if ]]ot cxactly
infinite in number, at least formed a goodly host, and were by no
means confined to anyone part of the life of the times. The
and great households had as a matter of course their professional
fools; the church had its Feast oJ.F...9J21s.; Fool Societies carried on
the tradition of the Feast in secular life; and literature had its' Ship
of Fools' and many other writings of a similar type. Hence it was
only natural that when the mediaeval drama arose the stage too
should have its fool. Moreover, since'Jhe fools of the
varied, it was natural being subject to so
many influences., should be complex character; and
this is undoubtedly the case] The difficulty in dealing with his origin
is not to find possible sm;ces-of these there is no lack-but to
decide what part each played in determining his character. It may
be admitted at once that the complete performance of this task is
impossible. Many of the stage clown's comic devices are part of the
common stock-in-trade of merry-makers of all ages-crude and
boisterous horse-play, coarse personal satire, gibes at women and
love, and the like-and in the case of other characteristics it is
impossible to decide from which of several likely sources they werc
drawn. All that can be done here is to indicate each of the various
possible sources of influence, pointing out any characteristic which
seems to hase been derived from that source rather than from any
other. The use which the English stage fool made of these character-
istics will be described more fully later; the object of this chapter is
rather to show what influences were at work during his development,
and how they operated.
1'he <?ldest of these is probably that exertcd by those
strolling variously joculators, jugglers,
jongleurs) and many other names, who wandered all over 'Vestern
Europe in the Middle Ages, earning a precarious livelihood by their
performances in the vctriolls tOWIlS and great houses. For these
OF TIlE FOOL n
appear to the Illcdiac\'al SlIc('('ssors of the buffooll s
llf the Homan drama in the time of its decay. \Yith this qucstion in
gelleml it is not 11(
1
cessary to deal at lcngth here, the c\'idcnee,
consisting mostly of attad,s on the stage and, later, of attacks on the
minstrels or joculators, alrmdy he(,l1 collected Illorc than once.
1
Fragml'lItary as it is, almost certainly there emerges from it the fact
th:tt the jongleurs combined in \'aryillg proportions the qnalities of
thC' honollred hard of Germanic times and the coarse lllHl licentiolls
buffoons of the latel' Roman stage, often adding to thesc, acrobatic
and other tricks acquired from other strolling entertainers of the
iddle l\ges.
Proof is not wanting that performers of this type fonnd their way
to England at an early date. In the eighth century we fbHI the
beginlling of a series of clerical attacks on the oncere\cred (scop '-
are not jllstifiC'd by anything in his poetry, and can
ollly be explained by the supposition that the type had becomc
debascd by the influence of performc,'s of a lower class. This
hypothesis is supported by the confusion of nomenclatnre in Anglo-
Saxon glosses and \'ocabularies, where such different terms as' mim liS',
'comicus',' joculator', ' cantatol", ' poeta " arc impartially translated
as 'gligmoll' or ( scop '.2 In all probability the intcrcourse between
Englalld and the Contillent in ecclesiastical mattei's was largely
respollsible for the early introduction of the jongleurs into England,
bnt doubtless this ilwasioll became much more considerable after the
Conquest. ",. e hear, for example, of the importation of 'jocnla-
tores' by \Villiam Longchamps. That there was a great number of
entertainers of various kinds in England by the twelfth century is
c\ident from J aIm of Salisbury's attack 011 'mimi, salii vel saliares,
halatrones, aemiliani, gladiatol'es, palaestritac, gignadii, praestigia-
tOl:CS, malefici quoque multi, ct tota joculatorlllll scena,'
It is possihle) therefore, to tl'ace the origin of the English llOmadic \.
buffoons of the Ages to the Roman mimes, but it is a morc
difl1cult matter to detcrmine the exact nature of their influence upon
the stage fool, since our kllowledge of the nature of their performances
is unfortunately extremely vague. In the first place it is necessary
to differcntiatc between tile various types or jongleur, as docs Thomas
of Cahham ill his attack in his Penitential:" OIH'ionsly allY illfluellce
C'xertcd by the jOllgleurs UpOll the clown must lun'c cOllle from those
, ( :hamhcrs, {rite Mer/inc1'fd Sffl!Je; '"01. i; al so :\Iantzills, llis/ory f!!ThNltril'lll
Art, "01. i, for the Itonm;, butfooriS:--'
2 \Vrig-ht-\\'iileker, Latin fmd An,'1/o-Sfuon
3 i. R (r. 11M.). Thomas dierl ill 131:1.
] 0 TIlE FOOL IN THE DHA!\L\
classes which Thomas condemns-' Quidnm transformnnt et trans-
figllrnllt corpora sua per turpes saltus et per turpes gestus ... vel
induendo horribiles larYas ... Sunt etiam alii qlli nihil operantur, sed
sequuntur curias magnatum ('t dicullt opprobria et ignominias de
absentilms lit plac('ant aliis.' From other accounts "'e gather t.hat
fl
: jesting formed lIll important part of these entertaillments, aIHI it is
ellsy to see that a perfol'mallce includillg dancing, g-estnre, ann
masldng, accompallied by jests, Illight easily develop into son)(>thing
I, of the nature of drama. _-J
is certain proof as far as England is COIl-
cerned that the performances of the jongleurs ever took definitely
dmmatic form; but there are se\'eral pieces of evidence that this was
the case in France,! alld in view of the close intercourse between the
two countries, it seems fairly safe to extend the application to
England. And the absence of undoubted traces of plays given by
jongleurs in England in no way proves that those plays did not
exist, for such rude, unliterary pieces, largely improvised, and oft.en,
probably, never written down, would only sun'ive by accident. The
.... Roman mimes were essentially players of farces, and it seems
ulllikely that their Sllccessors, the jongleurs, dropped this form of
entertainment altogether during the Middle Ages, particularly as
they took it up again later:..! "Then the regular drama arose and the
bettel' class of minstrels decayed, the buffoons preser\"ed themselves
by becoming actors too, and these travelling companies of 'players
of interludes', as they were now called, survived throughout Tudor
times.
It seems likely, though there is not much evidence to prove it, that
the important part of comedian in the religious plays given by the
amateur performers of the guilds, was sometimes filled by one of
these professional jesters. Gringore's fl'iend, Pontalais, a popular
strolling actor, was hired in this way to play the fool in the French
mysteries; and in the records of Bllngay we find a payment to
a ' vice in 1558 for' pastyme) before and after plays which seem to
have been If . .the descendants of the
Roman mimes were Probably, tOo, the strolling
buffoons sometimes took part in the performances of the Fool
1 '111ere are references to plays givell by jougleurs, c. g. at Abbe\'ille (sec
Lonandre's JIistory of .A Ubcvil!e) , and sC\'eral rudimentary farces sUn'i\'e, c. g.
L'BlIfallt et I'Ateugle. The fragmcnt known as the Illterilldiuw de Clc1"ico ct
Pilella may possihly have formed part of a farce played by thejouglenrs in England.
On French jonglenrs sce Faral, Lcs .Tollg/curs ClI Frallec all .Moycn .Age.
2 Churchwardens' Accounts for Bungay Haly Trinity.
OF TIlE STAGE FOOL 11
of ,,hich more will be said later. But ill any the
jongl(>m' undoubtedly exercised an illfluence Oil the English clowll, in
that hy his performances-his singing, dancing, and tumbling feats
accompanied hy crude patter and coarse jokes-he established a.
tradition of comic acting- before the rise of the literary drama.
III t his he' was assisted by a closely-connected
court or domestic fool. Enough has been written 011 this subject to
render account here, but it may be said by
way of reminder that the fool, either natural idiot or profe8sional
jester, was all institution in courts great" households long before .....
the n.sG. ,.of the written drama., in England. (Some, indeed, ,,"ould
trace a connexion between the Teutonic' pyle' and the court fool.)
Hence, sillce he continued to flourish in England until Commoll-
wealth times, he was a well-known figure in society throughout the
whole period of the Elizabethan drama, and it was inevitable that he
should playa prominent part in the deyelopment of the Elizabethan
stage clown.
One way in which his influence was exerted has already been
indicated-the establishment of a tradition of comic acting. As
Symollds has said of the court fools, 'The occasional and
these--lllt'll passed- by degrees-mtif settlell-
types DLpresentatioll .. _ .. 'Yhen formal plays camc.jnto fashio.,!l by
the labour of the learned, these professional comedians struck the
key-not; clmracter.' lIatural that dramatists, especially
court dramatists, should in sketching their buffoons draw their
in!'piration largely from ",hom they were so well acquainted.
And it was not only in the households of monarchs and nobles that
the fools were known. The court fools at least were public per-
They- accompanied the king- 011 his progresses, and the
frequency with which rewards to them are mentioned in town records
suggests that they played a somewhat important rUle on these
occasiolls. Their jokes arc quoted alld their trid:s described ill COII-
temporary writillgs, ancI their names seem to have been household
words.
Moreover, thc court jesters often came into close cOllnexioll with
the stage. It is clear frolll extant records rallging from Henry II's
reign to Elizabethan times that they frequently took an active part
ill court rCWIS-lIltlllllllillgs, masques, and the like.
l
III the time of
thc Tudors tller'c was a distinct dramatic clement III these re,"eh'i('s,
and regular plays \\"('re beginning" to form part of thelll, so it is
/
J
\.
'IQ TIlE FOOL TIlE ELIZABETH.A:\,
that somctimcs the court fool hecame fur the nOllce a stag-c
fooC- -l n-'H.ny-ellse, tlli s colinexioll with thc !'-tage is significant.
It appears th:it -t1;c an(rd6111cStic began to inflllc1]ce the
stage clown in the earliest stage of his existence-that is, while he
was rcpresented hy t he Vice. S ome altogether deny the
conllexion of the Vice and the domestic fool, or at least date it very
late, when the Morality was in process of decay.l This question is
part of the larg-er problem of the essential nature of the Vicc, which
,,ill he discussed flIlly later, hut that part of the problem which
relates to the domestic fool must be considered here.
In the earliest extant Pride of Life,2 which probably
dates from about 1400, the character or Solas, in whom we
may perhaps see the germ of the later Vice, strongly suggests the
court jester, though an lll1usunlly acti"e one. He is the king' s
professional merry-maker, as well as his messenger, beloved hy his
master for the amllsement which he proyides. The king says of him:
and solas he can make
And ren so t.he 1'0;
Lightly lepe oure the lake
Quher-so-c\'er he go;
and he remarks himself as he runs off gaily singing:
I am Solas, I must singe "
O\'er al quhel' I go.
lt may be objected that such a doubtful character as :Mil'th is no
proof, and as so fen' plays of the fifteenth century ha\'e been pre-
served, it is difficult to find early corroborative evidence. But a strong
piece of such evidence may be found in Skelton's J.lfagn{ficence,
dating from the beginning of the next century, fo'r Fancy and Folly,
though they both play a prominent part in leading :Magnificence
astray, also bear unmistakable resemblances in many respects to the
domestic foo1.
3
AlJusiQnS.J!:Lya.rious parts of their dress prove fairly
clearly that._they -wore the cOllyentionalo garb of -folly,
falcon and Folly's mangy dog would be suitable and natural appur-
tenances of domestic fools. There fire some hints, too, that Fancy
is a dwarf-allother fool.z-
-and both--he Fq}ry- iudulg.tUti iayourite fool's such as
inconseque;;t answers and nonsense rimes. 1\10reover, the two
characters- are differ'entiated; -apparently representing the two types
1 e. g. Cushman, Devil and Vice ill Buglish LiteratUre before Shakespeare.
2 En. "r aterhom:e, NOIl-c''l/rle .Mystery Plays.
3 For a full discussion of Fancy and Folly see Ramsay' s edition of ]Ilaguijiccure:
Introduction.
OF TIlE E:\GLISII STAGE FOOL 13
of fool. Fauey, although thl' 11100'ing spit'it ill the iutt'igue, strougly
suggests the Ilatural fool, for he is gellerally ackuo\\'le<lged e\'ell by
i1illlself to be wcak-witted, Folly descrihes him l'lldl'ly :
Thou art so feehle-falltastycall,
Awl so hraYlIsyke therwithall,
.\11<1 thy wit wandryngc here alld tlH're,
That thou eallllyst 1I0t growl' oute of thy boyes gere :
aud this deseriptioll is justified ft'equently by Fallcy's beha\'i otll',
<IS when he makes tactical blullders ill dealing with 0('
lets Folly cheat him, Folly, 011 tile other i1aud, seems to repres(,llt
the professioual jester. His part in the plot IS
Unused. He 181;; shrewder tlmn Fancy, whom he cheats in their
chafferillg on'r the dog, and he is quick at repartee. l\IallY epithets
suitable to the artificial and lIatural fool respecti,'ely are applied
to him and Falley,
The illl1uclIce of the domestic fool appears again ill Heywood's
Vices, the first personages so called, Heport; ill particular (ill
The Play_of the lVetha, 1534), is a merry-maker pUJ'e and simple,
bearing a strong reselllhlallce to the court jestl>r, He euters
as usher, alld jests with all the suitors who cOllle to tIl(' court.
Apparelltly, too, he wears fool's dress, for Jorc objects at first to his
C light behaviour and array'.
No other ulldoubted Vices be:lr such defillite resemblauces to tlw
domestic fool as do Heywood's, though the pI'eSCllCl' of the jester
Hardy-Dardy ill Godl!/ QHee'n Ifestel', written bcfore 1561, is
suggesti\'e. But the co Il1 III OIH'r type of Vicc also has tricks
of tl1e protesslOll.ul. allswers, quiO-
bling, aBcl_ the like, It rtmy be noted, too, that ill ol'(ier to lead
mankind astray, tl\(, Vice frequelltly elltcrs his service, alld becomes,
1I0t his fool, perhaps, but at least his of the Rcvels) amI ill
some dcgl'ee his jester,l III view thell of the fact that the earliest
Vices so called .al'e of thc dOlllcstil: fool, and
of the occurrence of such characters as Fancy alld Folly amI Hardy-
Dardy) also of thc fact that comic devices used by thcse personagcs
cOllstalltly recut' ;11 the roles of other Vices, it sccms saf(' to cOllclude
tl1ilt the court or domestic fool was from thc first largely illstrumental
ill thc
-'-
,. I II the regular drama, curiously enough, the domestic fool proper is
a comparatively ;;lre figure. Apart from Shakespeare's fools there ,/
arc barely a dozclI examples ill the whole of the Elizahethall drama. 4
I e. g, Appetite ill The FUllr t:11'1t1l'lIh.
1-1 TIlE FOOL IN TIlE DHAl\L-\
But ill lllall)' cases it is dillicult to distillguish the down-proper frolll
the dom(,stic fool; and this likellcss, which rcnders classificatioll
. dillicult, proves that the com'entional stage clown lllust have inherited
a good deal from the domestic tool. -' The nature of this inhcritance
more chapter. One prominent
........ 0\- I featul'c of it is betweell fool amI master,
so characteristic of Shakespeare's loolS-.- n - lswh-el:C we see -tliiS'
pel'soual attachment, where: as iii thecase of some of Thomas Hey-
wood's clowns, we see the senant followillg his master's fortunes
throughout the play, often gl'lllnbling at his hardships, real or
imagined, offering cynical comments on the Rituation, and jesting
--:}
\
in and out of season, but often, too, conveying sOllnd advice in his
jests, and sometimes showing true devotion-it is there that we may
assume with certainty the indebtedness of the clown in question to
the domestic -. ------ . ...- .--
A nd still more than in the case of the Vice, in the regular drama
some of the clown's tricks seem to owe their origin to the professional
jes.ter. Doubtless some of these weye haJHled '-down from the Vice,
while others were derived directly. The clown's love of quibbling
and playing at cross-purposes, a faV'Durite trick of the all-licensed
domestic fool; his high opinion of his importance, a natural character-
istic of so popular i.L personage as the court fool; his habit of referring
to his wisdom in comparison with others' folly; his quaint names,
often those of animals or common objects, with which may be com-
parel' John Goose, my lord of Yorkes fole' 1, all these points, and
\ probahly others, too, the influence the professional fool.
The question of influence in dress will be discussed later .
. One other point which appears suggesti\'e is the fact that the stage
fool disappea.red at about the same time that the custom of maintain-
ing a; d court fools fell into decay. This point, however,
must not be over-emphasized, since the clown had begun to lose
favour on the stage while the fool was still an institution in the court
alHLthe mansion,
S,o much then for the professional fools. But these were not the
only class to don the mask of folly. There were also the
....... merry-makers of the Feast of Fools and the Fool Societies which
carried on the traditions of the religious festival; and these, too, had
their share in the development of the English stage clown. TIesides
doubtless helping to suggest and popularize the introduction of the
fool on the stage, they left several distinct traces on the rule. The
1 Prit:1J Purse Expenses of EIi.<::aoetlt of ed. Nicolas, p. 2.
OF TIlE STAGE FOOL 1G
lIIost characteristic of these was that left by the' Sl'l"IIlOlIS jo),eux "
those l:idiculous lIlt'tllt.'ys of Illock-pions exhortatiolls, leamed allusiolls
alld scurrility, full of dog'- Latin and ]"(lligious tags, which, origillating
iIi the lIlock sen,icl's of the Feast of Fools, iater played prolllinellt
part ill the performances of Fool to parody
both the religious sCI:mon alld the rhetorical disquisitioll of the schools. 1
Of the formal 'sermon joycux) therc arc hut two exallJples in the
English drama-that delin'rell by Folly at the close of thc 'Satire of
the Threc Estaits', descI'ibing variolls classes of fools, :tllll the dis-
course of Herod's fool ill Archi-Proplietll,2 based nomina]]y on the
opening \'erses of Gellesis, hut in reality consisting of a disquisition
on folly and satire of society, particularly \romen. It concludcs :
Quid est Patriarchus? Patriarchlls. Et quid ('!St
morio. Ql1i{J foemina? quid? nisi fatua.
Et spiritus DOlllini motus per aquas fuit.
But the' sermons joyellx' had a \\,ider illllllcllce than this, as will be
shown and coarse as these effusions often were, they
contained the germ which \vas to develop into the delightful lllock-
learned disquisitions or soliloquies of the best of the Elizabethan clowns.
Another form of entertainment characteristic of the Fool Societies ....
which Sel'lllS to ha\'c illfluenced stage clo\\'nage ill some measure is the
-r;;ttie '. It is useless to look for lUuch influence as regards
charactcrizatioll from the fools of these plays, for they are usually
only types. As J ulle\'ille says, 'Le sot ... symholise l'holllllle ell
general et les grands ell particulier, abandonnes it la bctise et au vice
qui sont all fond de nos instincts. POl 11' les representer dans tOllS
leurs rules, Ie fOll n'est jamais llli-Illeme; il cst tour a tour roi, papl',
etc .... et tOlljours fOll sous ses di\'ers costumes.' Influence UPOll
the dowll is rather to be ill the gelll'ral characteristics and the
underlying idea of the' sottie', an idea parallel to that which illspired
the Feast of Fools-the cOllception of the whole world gi\'cn lip to
the service of Folly. I n all probability this was largl'ly instrumelltal
in lllaking the down a vehicle for satire, f!!..!:..... the' sottie' was in its
a,)?atire of society. A typical example is one which ends
with the resol\'e of t Ie 'Vorl(1 to cease to attempt to set himself right,
alld to yield 11l11'esel'\'edly to Folly. Political satire is also sometillles
t'oulld, as in L' Astrolo!Jue. I II the Ages liberty of !Speech
l'ou]d ollly he enjo)'{'u under the lIIask of folly, hut under that mask
it was completc; and the' sottie' introduced this liberty tlpOli the
stage. The social satire which is so fret.'ly uttt'rpd hy thc English
1 For examples see Leroux de Liner's eollcclioll.
2 Gri llIalll, A ii, U (15-1i).
1G TIlE }'OOL THE ELIZABETIIAN DUAl\lA
dowlls, such as Pompey's court, camp, city and country' news', or
politiclil satire sHch as that of the jigs, is of tell sufficiently reminiscent
of the lllalllier of the' sotties' to suggest illflucnce from that source.
l
I t has also been pointcd out that the chop-logic of Heywood's intcr-
hales, which is the forerunner of the rough wit-combats of the
clOWIIS, may owe sOlllcthing to the dialogue of the
, s . , Another point which lllay have some bearing on the clowns'
style is thc Ilumber of p)"(werbs and 'dictolls popnlaires' found in
these plays-sollletimes in "cry large BUill bcrs, as ill Les lJl ewus
Propos.
It will be noticed that the' sotties' mentioned above are all Frcnch.
It seems likely that the influence exerted by the Fool Festivals and
Fool Societics on the English clown came largely by way of Frallce,
for ncither the religions nor the secular revels appear to ha\'e pre-
railed at all generally in England. There are a few references to the
Feast of Fools during the thirteenth and fourteellth cellturies, hut
apparently the attacks which they represent 2 were soon successful,
for after 1391 we hear no more of the Feast, though references to the
allied festival of the Boy Bishop continue until the sixteenth century.
And of the Fool Societies there is hardly a trace; 3 therefore it seems
reasollable to conclude that they can never ha\'e obtain cd any vogue
in Ellgland. But in France the Feast was 110t definitely suppressed
till the middle of the sixteenth century, and the Fool Societies
flourished throughout the whole period of the rise of the Elizabethan
drama. In view, then, of the constant intercourse between England
J and France, it seems possible that the influence of the Feast of Fools
1
_ upon the English clown operated largely through the 'societes
joyeuses ' of France.
This hypothesis would help to explain the resemblances which exist
between the English clown and the fool who appear in several
French :Mysteries, dating from the middle of the fifteenth century.
In some cases it is impossible to form auy clear idea of these French
fools, but ill at least one :Mystery, St. Didier, performed ill 1482, we
find a well-developed jester, worthy as regarqs the (luality of his
humour to rank with English buffoons of a later date. But though
direct interaction between these fools alld the English Vice is possible,
1 For' sotties' see Picot's collection.
2 e.g. Statutes of Arundel for the Government of Beverley Minster, 1391
(Poulson, Reverlac, p. 592).
3 Practically the only trace is a mandate of Bishop Grandisson in 1348 to the
Dean of Exeter and Rector of Paul's, commanding the prohibition of
a certain disreputable society known as the' Order of Brothelyngham '.
OHIGINS OF THE ENGLISH STAGE FOOL 17
it is hardly neccssary to snppose it. of the com mOil charactcl'-
istics are the cOll\'entional qualities of buffoonery ill a}] ages; alld
a noticeable point of difference hetween the French fool and the Vice
is the abscnce of any attempt to connect the former with the main
action of the play, Possibly, thereforc, the rescmblances hctween the
El1gEsh amI F,"ench merry-makers were the result of pamllcl de,"elop-
meut. All1lost certainly the fool came illto the French mysteries
from the Fool Societies, and it is not difficult to imagine how that
de\"elopment took place, as it appears that after the secularization of
the religious plays, the C societes joyeuses' sometimes joined forces
with the gra,'er societies who produced the 'Mysteries to give joint
performances. If, then, the French Fool Societies also influenced the
English clown, up to a certain point there might well be pat'allel
deycloplllent ill the two countries, since the jongleurs and pro-
fessional fools, the other early sources of influence, were common
to both.
The French' sotties' were paralleled to some extent by the German
C Fastnachtspiele', or carnival plays, which often resembled them in
subject. No definite proof of the direct influence of these plays can I
be traccd, though a. resemblance between them and Heywood's inter-
ludes has been noted; but they lllllSt at least be mentioned, in dew
of their prohable influence upon the German fool literature, which
culminated in Brandt's lVarrenschijf, published at Basel, one of the
chief centres of the carnival plays. The influence exerted on the
English clown by this book, translated into English hy Barclay ill
1509, and imitated by various writers, cannot be doubted. 1 11\
probably acted chiefly along the same lines as did the C sottie " \ ,J
emphasizing the of the reign of folly, and tending to poplllarize\ }-
the fool, amI to make him a satire. 1'he \
resemblance of the one extant jig, Tarlton's Horse-Load of Fools, to
literature of this type is significant. It lllay he noted, too, that the
series of vidd portraits which composes the Ship of Fools (almost all
embryonic drama, indeed), aided the transition from the abstractions
of the to the concrete figures of the regular drama. One
more point may be mentioned-the prevalence 9f proverbial expressions
ill the Ship of Fools-but the clowns' provprbs have already heeu
noticed in connexion with the' sotties', and must be noticed again in
conllexion with the rustic. \
Another type of German literature which certainly left its mark 011
the clown was the jest-hook, Seyeral of the collections of a\lecdotes I
1 For German and English fool literature see Herford, Literar!J Rdutiuw, of
Germa1lY und 1 .. 'ugllllld in tlte Sixteenth Centur!J"
l!
18 TIlE FOOL TIlE ELIZABET II l\N DHA:\J.t\
which gathcrc d roulld tllc Ilames of Rlllem;pi egel, and othet
famous ttaditional jesters, sometimes court fools, sometimes persoll-
ages of more popular origin, were translated into English during the
sixteellth century, and imitated ill such English collections as Skelton's
Tales, or Scoggin's Tales, 01', later, and most note"'orthy of all,
Tarlton's Jests. From the jest-books, German and English, was
undoubtedly deri\'cd much of the' picaresque' element in the fool's
role, his roguery, his rude practical jokes, and his coarse jests-the
, humour of filth " as it has been called.
But here, as in other respects, foreign influence mnst not be
exaggerated. It must never be forgotten that bpsides those influences
common to the whole of 'Vestern Enrope, there was also a purely
nath'e influence at work in the development of the 'Stage fool. For
alongside of the religious plays which represent the earliest stage of
the literary drama of England, a popular drama existed, and had
existed in some form for centuries, e\'er since the old pagan rites on
which it was founded lost their original signification.
1
A' French
writer' quoted by 'Varton, states that the object of the institution of
the religious plays was to 'supersede the dancillg, music, mimicry, and
profane mnmmeries' beloved of the people. And doubtless at an
early date buffoonery of some kind fonnd a place in the' mimicry and
profane mummeries'. How soon the fool proper appeared we do not I
know, since pre-Tudor references to folk-festivals are few and brief,-
but it is clear that he was an institution by the fifteenth century 2_
that is, in the early days of the period-and probably he had
existed in some form long before. Hence it seems reasonable to
suppose that the fool of the regular Rtage owed something to this '
popular buffoon. That there should be interaction between the I
literary and the popular drama was inevitable. Proof of it is seen at
an early date in the Croxton Play of the Sacrament, where the leech
(and possibly also his jesting servant, of whom more will be said later)
is undoubtedly borrowed from the spring play, in which the doctor is
an essential character. Another indication of interaction is the fact that
the devil, who appears as it comic character in the religious plays, is
also one of the buffoons of the folk-plays, though here it is doubtful
on which side the indebtedness lies. Ordish has suggested that,
the influence of the popular on the literary drama operated largely
through the guilds, essentially Saxon institutions, maintaining much
1 On the folk-drama see Chambers, .Mediaeral Stage; Ordish in Folk Lore;
Beatty, The St. George or :JfmJl1llers' Play; Sharpe, Su:ord lJallces, &c.
2 An engraving of a morris dance dating from about 14GO shows a fool.
j
OF THE STAGE FOOL ID
of the old native tradition en' n whell their allcient sacrificial ritcs
",el'e rl' placed by miracle plays.]
Unfortunately, it is impossihle to determinc cxactly what part the
fool of the folk-festi,'als played ill the development of the stage fool.
The buffoon of the mummers' plays as they now exist is not of Illuch
"'eight as evidence, since there is no meaI1S of dating his development
to his present form, :lmi it is clear that literary and sophisticatillg
intlllences have been at work. AmI as to the naturc of the character
ill the carly days of its existence there is practically no evidcllce.
Popular, cidc, and even court re,'els are often so imperfectly dis-
tinguished in the scanty records which remain, that to disclltangle the
various elemellts is a hopeless task. To complicate the question
further) there are suggestions of confusion between the folk-revels
and the Feast of Fools. But that there was influence from the folk
fools OJI !!lC fools scems certain. Perl1aps tlre---most- detlnite I
tracc is the tail which sometimes forms pillt of the latter's dress 2_
constantly worn by the former and undoubtedly a relic of the animals'
skins WOI'll by the worshippers who were their protagonists. One of
other possible links is the apparent adaptation by the Vice of 111.ankind
of a joke found in many versions of the spring play.3 These points
are minor ones, but they are significant of an important one-the
influence of llati,'e alld tradition upon the stage fool. Though
we ignorant of" theextent nature of this influence we may be
Sllre of olle thing-that it was responsible for the distinctive and
nati,'e character of the English clown.
'Ve hm'e now enumerated the various types of fool from which an
English dramatist of the beginning of the sixteenth century might
draw inspiration. But the most common type of English clowll is
not merely fool or jester; he has other qualities which are 1I0t fA
prilllarily fool characteristics. V cry early he shows the illfluence of '
the comic servant-all allciellt tradition in the drama. Thc eady A
Ellglish religious plays, which have no regular fool, prodde several - \
examples of this character. Some of these figures, such as the Ship-
man's hoy in J.lfary llfagdlllene, are little more than suggestiolls of
ill-disposed boys, and their parts contain practically Ilothing that can
he called humour. There are, howeyer, se,'eral better developed
characters, who may be represented by rrrmvle, the shepherd's boy of
the Chester Plays, discolltented with his wages alld food, alld ready
1 III Folk Lore, 18!)}.
2 rices ill ]{illg iJarills awl AIMoll ]{lIig/d, auu 'rill Cricket ill Wily
/Jegllilef/,
:I Furlli,'all and Pollard, Macro IJlays, p. 1(j.
II
1
TilE FOOL IN THE ELIZA.BETHAN DHAl\IA
to quarrel and fight. Like him, but more vindictive, arc the
torturers' attendants of the Townley 1 and Cornish 2 plays, who
quarrel with their masters, but not through any sympathy with their
victims, towards whom they show (luite as much ill will as the
tOl'tUI'ClS themselves.
closely connected with the clown, apparently, are servants of
another class-thosc who instead of merely wrangling and fighting
openly with their masters, ridicule them in nsides to the audience, and
them more or less jngelliously.- Such a one is Pike-harness,
I Cain's boy,3 who while Cain is crying their peace through the land
after murdering Abel, mocks him in audible riming asides:
Cain: I command YOll in the kyngis nayme,
Garcio: And in my masteres, fals Cayme,
C: That no man at theme fynd fawt ne blame.
G: Yey, cold rost is at my masteres hame.
A better developed character is Colle, the leech's man, already
mentioned. He enters seekiilg his master, and makes a proclamation
giving a rude description of him, but when he appears Colle greets
him effusively and assures him that:
Nothyng, Master, but to your reverense,
I have told all this audiense-
And some lyes among!
When ordered to proclaim his master's skill he does so in ambiguons
but decidedly suggestive terms:
What dysease or sykl1esse that ever ye have,
He will never leve yow tyll ye be in your grave.
4
Too much stress must not be laid on the comic devices of these
servants, since it is impossible to date them with certainty, and
possibly other of their roles besides that of Brewbarret in the York
Plays may be later interpolations, influenced by the buffoons of the
rtoralities. The important point proved by the servants of the re-
ligious plays is the early establishment of the tradition of the
Eomic servant, acting as comic to his master's speeches or
; las a parody of his actions. We may safely conclude that this
J tradition was established by the middle of the fifteenth century, and
1 Buffeting Play.
2 Beunans Meriasek, translated by Stokes, pp. 207, 217.
8 Townley plays, .Mactacio Abel.
4 Play oj' the Sacrament, ed. \Vaterhollse, Non-Cycle Mystery Plays, pp. 73
and 74.
OF THE STAGE FOOL Ql
therefOl'e at l('ast a century before the appearance of . the regular
Elizabethan elown.
And about the time of his appearance, this impulse seems to ha\'e
g-ained strength from a second source-the Zanni or cOIllic servant of
the Italian' eom,nlCdia dell' arte'. It is certain that the Italian drama
was well -known in England in Elizabethan times, for not only do
Illany tl'ans]ations and adaptations of the more literary type of play
('xist, but also there arc numerous references to the various ' masks'
of the' commedia' in the works of Shakespeare and his contemporaries I
-references which sometimes suggest connexion between the Zanni I 7
and the English clown. in 1598, explains' Zane' as a llame \
for 'a simple vice, clowne, foole, or simple fel10w in a play or
comedic'; and N'ash calls Kcmp it harlequin and remarks that his
fame has extended to Italy.
I
As 1'1iss Smith points out in her study of the' commedia dell' arte' ,
1
the relation between the Ita]ian and English stages is probably
I ('xp!icahlc mainly through direct contact hetween the actors. English
Italian companies frequently paid simultaneous visits to Con-
tinental cities, and as early as 1573 Italian actors began to visit
England itse!f.
2
In 1577 'one Dronsiano, an Italian' recei\'ed per-
lllission to produce plays in London-a fact of considerable signifi-
cance, for this Dronsiano was undoubtedly Drusiano 1iartinelli,
a famous performer of the role of Arlecchino, one of the varieties of
Zanni most akin to and most likely to have influenced the English
C]O\'I.!-.____ ____
The qualities of the Zanni may be summarized in 'Miss Smith's
words: 'A]ways of humble station, usually the servant and confidant
of a principal character', sometimes a rascal, sometimes a dunce,
oftenest a complex mixture of the two, almost always t.he chief plot-
weaver, his main function was to rouse laughter, to entertain at all
costs. One of the means he took to this end was the llse of sume
patois; ... another was his curiolls costume and Illask; the most
effective of all were his actions, his surprisingly dexterolls gymnastic
feats, his multifarious disgulscs, and his absurd songs and lazzi.'
It is cvident from this description that there nrc se\'Cral points of
contact between the Zanni and the clown, but to determine what the
latter owes to the fonner is not an easy matter. Of the' lazzi' them-
selves 1I0t much can be made. As Perucci's list shows, Illany of
1 '\' , Smith, C()mmedin dell' Artc, for thc general qucstioll of It.-dian
influencc on thc English stagc,
2 Re\'('l s :t(,(,Ollllts for 1.'i73 mcntion performalH'cs hy 'th(' Italian plaYNs ' at
'\' inrl sor and Hcallingo Sec FCllillerat, /)()(o1lmrtlls, p.
22 THE FOOL IN THE DRA:\L\
thelll arc simply the old tricks of the mountehanks from whom the
Zanni was largely deri\'ed, and the majority arc items of ancient
popular horseplay by no means peculiar to Italy and found in England
before there was any possibility of Italian influence. Such are the
lazzi ' of fear', ' of weeping and laughing', or ' of crying loudly'. It
I
is possible that some of the more intellectual tricks-lawyers' quibbles,
learned meditations such as Pedrolino's,l laments and loye-rhapsodies
parodying those of the Zanni's master, and the like-may haye
suggested some of the speeches of the English clowns; but nothing
I
can be definitely proved, and the resemblances which exist may be
merely the result of parallel development.
\'
The same may be said to some extent of impl'Oyisation, for this
again is characteristic of all popular buffoonery, and is found in
England at an early date. But possibly there ,vas here at least
strengthening influence from the' com media dell' arte', since in them
not only the incidental jesting but the whole of the dialogue was
im Jroyised.
It was as a servant and an intriguer that the Zanni probably
exerted his strongest influence on the English clown. Since the
Italian masks were beginning to be known in England in the early
days of the regular drama, when the clown's position in the play was
still undecided, it is likely that the example of the Zanni helped to
make him with increasing frequency a jesting sel'Yant. l\IOloeover,
since the intriguing function of the Zanni became more important as
the C com media dell' arte' developed, the influence which he exerted
tended more and more to turn the clown into an intriguer. It seems
reasonable to snppose that the Zanni was largely responsible for the
scheming, mocking type of servant-clown (represented by Nimble in
Thomas of TVoodstock, 1591) described in a later chapter. Clowns of
this class, as will be shown, tend to lose their fool qualities, and in
the later days of the Elizabethan drama we find an increasing
number of characters, of the type of Dromio and his fellows in
A/other Bombie, who are no longer clowns but intriguing servants.
Possibly these characters helped to undermine the popularity of the
regular clown-certainly it was they who replaced him in the work of
the later dramatists.
One more influence which seems to have played its part in the
deyelopment of the stage clown must be mentioned-that of the stupid
rnstic. This is suggested ill the first place by the fact that term -
, clown', which originally denoted a rnstic, became the most common
J flcala, Faith/Ill Pi/grim Lrll'er.
OF THE ST.AGE FOOL
name for the stage merry-maker.
l
Another indication is seen in the
fad that stage fools other than domestic or court fools f["('(luently, as
will be shown later, wore the ordinary dress of a countryman.
Xo influence of the rustic upon the stage buffoon can be traced
with certainty till the end of the orality period; until thell the
rllstic is a quite distinct figure. He appears first in the religious
plays) but there is little or no attempt to make comic capital of his
characteristics. The first example of a rustic whose stupidity is
emphasized is Ignorance, Idleness' boy, ill Redford's play of TVit and
Science, dating from the middle of the sixteenth century-an ill.
disposed, apparently half-witted peasant, who speaks an almost
llllintelligible dialect, and whom Idleness tries ill ,'ain to instruct. By
the end of the :\Iorality period the rustic had developed into a concrete
flgure. Usually, as ill the case of Rusticus and Hodge of Horestes,
these chal'llcters are simple, honcst peasants, the butts of the Vices,
who delight ill teasing and frightellillg theIll and setting them at
loggerheads by playing npoll theil' simplicity.
The first and only Viee to show rustic characteristics is the last
Yice so called-Idleness ill TVit and TVisdom, writtell about
1579. He is a thorough rustic, bearing, as Gayley has pointed ont,
a distinct resemblallce to DiccOll of Gammer Gurton's lVeedle. He is
far less astute than his predecessors, alld in his varied :t(h'entures is
as often the duped as the duper. Snatch, Catch, amI Search treat
/
him much as earlier Vices treated their rustic victims. -----'
I n the regular drama the influence of the rnstic was largely
rcspollsible for the de,'elopmcnt of two types of clowll-the mere
booby, such as J olm AdroYlles in Pro7llos and Cassandra, alld the
more pretelltious clown of the Bottom class, who is not without
a certain shrewdness, but so oyerrates his qualities as to make his
deficiencies the more ludicrous. 'rhe dcveloplllent of both these
classes will be traced later.
rustic also scems to have influenced the stage f2..01 ill general
by hlllts-fo"t-sqllle of -liis tavQuritc tricks. :\Iisullderstalld-
ings, real or pretended, figure prominently among these dc,rices. :May
not they ha,'e been suggested by the innocent blunders of the simple
I The earliest example of the use of' down' in the SPllSe in contemporary
litl'ratnre appears in Itowlan<ls' Let IIllmolll's Wood, !:'aL h', G3 (1GOO) :
'VlI:lt mealls tllplI?
Alld I'ope the elowlle, to so Boorish, whell
TIley ("ounll'rf .. ite tIle Clowllcs IlpOIl the
('ertaill example of' its lIse in this ill a play O('Cllrs ill The
"il'/ol'icl'l of lIelll'!} I" (before 15BB),
~ - ~ TIlE I,'OOL IN THE ELIZABETHAN DRAl\IA
(
countrymcn of the earlier plays? The perversion of words, accidental
or intentional, seems to have becn derived froll) the same source. The
char:lcter People innocently calls Respuhlica 'Rice Pudding-cake',
and later clowns find the intentional distortion of a llallle an excellent
way to annoy or amuse. Probably, too, the frequent use of proverbial
expressions by the clown was encouraged by the example of the rustic
type; but it must be remembered that early Vices who show no
other trace of rustic influence use expressions of this kind, and the
example of the 'sotties' and fool literature, already mentioned,
cannot be left out of account.
The rustic is the last source of influence to be mentioned in
dealing with the origins of the English stage fool. How the dramatists
developed and combined the hints which they obtained from these
various sources, it is the object of the ensuing chapters to show.
CHAPTER II
THE EVOLUTION OF THE FOOL AS A
CHARACTER
SIXCE the popularity of the stage fool was so grcat, a dramatist
who wished to producc a popular play was confrontcd with thc
Jleccssity of introducing him on c"ery possible occasion. (I would
ha,'e thc fool in c\'cry act',I was thc cry of thc peoplc; and how
best to satisfy that crr was the problem which thc playwrights had
to solvc. Some, particularly the early anonymous writers of regular
drama, seem to hm'e troubled themselves very littlc 011 this point.
The clown wandcrs through thcir plays at his own swcct will,
appearing almost whenever he desircs or whcnevcr thcre is a pause
in thc action to be fillcd, oftcn without the least pretcxt, and some-
times spoiling serious or e,'cn tragic sccncs with his untimcly jcsting.
Since so much of this incidental jesting' was improvised, only
occasional traces of it have sun'ived.
2
The printer of Tamburlaine
exprcssly statcs that he has omittcd 'somc fond and frh'olous
gcstures', of no value to thc play. But contcmporal'J-I'cfercnccs
clown's. part became. Bcsides
Shakespeare's famous attack, is an
an earlier date on the haphazard introduction ot fools. In The
Pilgrimage to Parnassu8 (c. 1598-9) occurs a sccne 3 which opens
with the dragging in of a clown by mcans of a ropc. The clown
asks what he is to do, to which query Dromo replics, "Vhy, what
an ass art thou! dost thou not knowe a play cannot bc without
a clowne? Clowncs havc bccn thrust illto plays by head and
shouldcrs c,'cr sincc Kcmpe could makc a scurvy face; and there-
forc rcason thou shouldst be drawne in with a cart ropc.' Hc thcn
makcs a few suggestions, satirizing thc public taste in buffooncry,
and departs, while t.he clown rcmarks, 'This is finc, y' faith! nowc,
whcn they havc llocbodie to lcavc on the stagc, thcy bringe mee up,
and, which is worsc, tcll mee not what I shouldc sayc!' After he
1 Golfe, The Cflreles8 .s'hepherdes8, Proeludium.
2 e. g. stage direction ill if you know not me you know lIolJody - ' Enter the
clown beating a solrlier, and exit:
3 Ed. l\1acray, pp. 22-7.
Q6 TIlE l;'OOL IN TIlE ELIZABETHAN
has gone through a few of the clown's usual tricks, Dromo re-enters
and dri,'es him off, since there are now' other men that will supplie
the roollle '. The evidence of these two pieces of criticism is sup-
ported by numerous other references.
In all probability the dramatists were less responsible for this
abuse than the producers of the plays, who were too willing to pander
to the public tastes, or the clowns thelllseh'es, who were too desirolls
of constant applause. But on the other hand, the dramatists seelll, in
many cases, to have submitted vcry readily to this state of affairs and
to have taken little trouble with their fools' parts. In Brome's
Antipodes, Letoy replies to a defence of extem porizing on the grounds
that it was formerly allowed on the stage:
Yes, in the dayes of Tarlton and of Kempe,
Before the stage was (>llrg'd from barbarism,
And brought to the perfection it now shines with.
Then fools and jesters spent their wits, because
The Poets were wise enough to save their owne
For profitabler llses.
It was less likely that a clown would indulge in untimely jesting in
a play in which his part was carefully thought out and connected to
some extent with the main action, than where he was an independent
character, to the action, and free to make most of his
part for himself. \ As higher dramatic ideals began to prevail, the
dramatists seem to have realized that the only way to prevent the
clown from spoiling their plays was to develop his part more fully
themselves, and to connect it as closely as possible with the main
action. They began also to see the dramatic possibilities of the
character-to realize that it might be made a real asset in their plays.
To take first the development of the merry-maker's role in regard
to importance in the intrigue. This question had found a satisfactory
solution in the case of the earliest variety of English stage buffoon-
the Vice of the Moralities and other transitional plays. Concerning
the origin and nature of this Vice mnch controversy has raged.
Some critics, particularly Cushman,
l
deny that this character was
originally a buffoon. They consider that he was in the first place
an ethical abstraction representing the 'summation' of the Seven
Deadly Sins, and acting as the enemy of the good and the tempter
of man, and that he only degenerated into a fun-maker in the later
Moralities. The name 'Vice' would seem to support this view, for
the obvious derivation is doubtless the correct one. But the fact
cannot be ignored that in the earliest instances of the occurrellce of
1 The Devil and nrc 111 EIIglish Literature hifore Shakespeare.
AS A DRAl\L\TIC CITA1L\CTEH CJ.7
the term thc characters so called arc autLsimplc,-aud thc
plri)'sin ",IHcll tller Play of Love (1533) and
Play of the lI:rether (1534-)-are not Cushman would
have us belic\'c that the name Vice is a later interpolation here, since
it only occurs once in each case, but the same might be said of
other instances where he docs not doubt its authenticity.
apart from this early extension of the term to inclnde merry-makers
ill an interlude, the fact that ill the earliest contemporary references
to Vices and stage fools the terms seem to be used almost synony-
mously suggests that the Vice a buffoon stage in his

The best explanation of the difficulty seems to be that offered by
Ramsay,l who suggests that (Vice' was the actors' name for the \
strong.esLrill.c....frOlll-thciL...St.andpoint-.illl _tiw side of evil. It became
desirable for dramatic purposes to concentrate the interest in one
charactcr, not necessarily the most evilly-disposcd, but the most often
on the stage. In the carliest :Moralities this character had the
function of messenger or factotum, but as time went on, to strengthen
_ the role, more and more of the intrigue was givcn into his hands.
To character_ the important functioll of
relief, since if the attention of the public was to be
held throughout a it was imperative that such relief should
be introduced as frequently as possible. It was uatural, too, that
this function should be entrusted to a charactcr on the side of evil,
since the evil and the comic had long been associated in the vulgar
mind, the devil being the chief comedian of thc Mysterics. Hence
camc the double fUllction of the Vicc-the conducting of the intriguc
and the providing of amusement.
"-Ramsay founds this hypothesis largcly on the naturc of Skelton's
Vice figures, Fancy and Folly, pointing ont thc significant rcscm-
blancc bctwcell ' thcm and Heywood's Viccs. , 'rhc 'question of the
indebtedness of these and other carly Vicc fignres to the court fool
has already been discussed, and its importance for the problem of
the relation of Vice and elown is obvious. Another personage who
secms to mark a stagc ill thc dc"elopment of the Vice is Dctractio ill
the oldest complctc extant, The Castle of Pel'severallce. ?
Dctractio, or Backbitcr, is it mcssengel' in the service of the " . orId,
and somc tracc of the function of the later Vice is sccn in thc fact
that hc is sellt by the 'Yorld to introducc l\lankind to Cm'ctousncss;
hut 0/1 thc othcr hand hc is undoubtcdlya comic character, equally
I Edition of Skeltoll'!; Mrt!J1I.'I/!Jrcllrc, Intro(llletiOIl,
2 FllrJJivall anrl Pollanl, .1lac}"f) Ploys, Pl'. 07-100 a1111 I
Q8 TIlE FOOL I ~ TIlE ELIZABETHAN DRAMA
ready to get good or evil into trouble if by so doing- he can obtain
amusement himself. l\Iirth in TIle Pride of L{fe is too douhtful
a character to furnish any trustw'o1'thy evidence, though it is not
difficult to imagine that he represents an earlier stage in the develop-
ment of the type to which Backbiter belongs.
The first clear example of what cventually became the most
popular type of Vice in the l\ioralities is Sensuality in l\ledwall's
J. Vature, written between 1486 and 1500. There are indications of
the lines on which the role was to develop in Mankind, but there the
attack of the Vices on Mankind fails, and h i ~ downfall is e\'entuaily
brought about by the demon Tutivillus. But in Nature Sensuality
is the chief agent in leading Man astray. He takes him to a tavern
and introduces him to other disreputable associates, and later, when
Man has temporarily repented, wins him back to evil ways, and is
only finally defeated by the arrh'al of Age.
In quite two-thirds of the remaining Moralities proper the Vice
role is developed along these Jines, and where this is the case the
problem of introducing the buffoon with frequency finds its best
solution, since the leader of the attack on man is of necessity con-
tinually upon the stage. A good example of the full development of
the double functions of the Vice is Infidelity in "Tager's Repentance
of Mary Magdalene (1566-7), who plays a very prominent part in
the action, in that he 110t only leads :Mary astray, but also labours
to harden the hearts of the leaders of the Jews against Christ, and
at the same time provides constant amusement for the audiencc.
Very similar to this type are the Vices of some of the chief political
l\ioralities, notably Respublica (1553), and the Satire of the Th1'ee
Estates (c. 1540). In connexion with these plays may be noticed
the multiplication of the Vice role by three or four-a fairly frequent
device in the middle period of the Moralities, but generally abandoned
later in favour of concentration of the comic element in one character,
the Vice.
No other variety of Vice attains it popularity in any degree com-
parable with that of the type described above, and where he plays '
other roles he is rarely so successful from a dramatic point of view.
Perhaps the most notable exceptions to this rule are those Vices
who appear as the centre of a series of incidents, inculcating the
qualities which they represent into various sets of people in turn.
A prominent member of this class is Nichol Newfangle (1568), who
continually joins 'like to like' in the play of that name. Very
inferior in dramatic effect are those Vices who are only introduced
in a sub-plot which seems to have little or no connexion with th('
AS A DIL\:\lATIC CIIAIL\CTEH Q9
mall) plot, as is the case ill ](ing Darius (1565). But by far tlte
lal'gest class of Vices is that represented by Infidelity, alld this
fact is 110t only illlportant as regards the Vice himself but also
significant in regard to his connexion with the later clown. For in
many cases this type of Vice, in order to accomplish downfall,
temporarily enters his service, and becomes his assistant in the
gratification of his desires, and also (as has already been mentioned
ill cOllnexion with the influencc of the domestic fool) to some extent
his jester. Since then the most popular type of Vice and the most
sllccessful dramatically has these servant qualities, and since Vices of
another type, sllch as Sin in All f01" Aloney (1577), appear as ushers
or factotums, it seems likely that the Vice played his part in making
the cOIlYentional clown of the regular drama a servant.
Still more suggestive of this connexion between Vice and clown
are thc Vices of a gl'OUp of plays which are not but
tragedies or romances. In each of the tl'agedies-Horestes (1567),
Cambyses (1569-70), and Appius and Virginia (1575)-the Vice is
apparently in service, and acts as a moving spirit throughout the
play, urging his master and others to follow the particular vice which
he embodies. Revenge ill particular is definitely a servant, and
comes in at the end, when Horestes has dismissed him, seeking
a new master, much as some later clowns do. Again, like many
clowns, these three Vices haye another dramatic function in that as
well as playiug all active part in the main plot they act as the centre
of minor comic incidents. There are traces of these sub-plots ill the
later the climax ill this respect being reached ill IVit and
lVisdom (1579), where Idleness, besides leading 'Vit astray, is the
ceIltre of a series of amusing adventures, dovetailed with some skill
into thc main action. The connexion between the Vicc and the
comic sen'ant or clown is seen most clearly in the last play of the
group, the romance Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes (1599); 'Vith
Subtle-Shift, the Vice of this play and the last character bearing the
name, Illay ue classed Conditions, a very similar character in Common
Conditions (1576), who, like Subtle-Shift, is the only personage in
the play who bears an a.bstract name. Apart from their names these
characters have lost all ethical significance; they are mere sclf-
secking servants, intriguing for or against their masters as seems
profitable to them for thc time bcing. Hence they form a con-
necting link between the abstract Vice, intriguing against the good,
and the concrete intriguing servant of the later drama.
"r e have seell, thcn, that in the case of the the proulem \
of frequent comic relief was soh-ed by concentrating the humour of
30 TIlE FOOL IN TIlE ELIZABETHAN DRAMA
.\ the play ill a persol\age who was at the same time the leatler of the
illtrigue against the good. But in the regular drama the buffoon had
no sHch raison d' etre, alHl the problem had to be soIYed afresh.
Hencc cnsned in the early days of the regular drama the chaotic
state of affairs d('scribcd at the beginning of this chapter. As has
been mentiolled, some of the dramatists seem to have been too well
content to lea,-e the introduction of the clown to a considerable
extent to the discretion, or lack of discretion, of the actors thcm-
I
selves, but as time went on the playwrights seem to have de yo ted
, more and more attention to conl1ecting their clowns with the action
I of the play, and to giving them a definite part therein. III this
I respect, as in so many others, it is difficult to trace a chronological
deyelopment, since the whole Elizabethan drama was compressed
into such a short space of time that plays representing very different
stages appeared almost simultaneously. But in spite of exceptions
and anomalies, a general development on the lines to be indicated
below may be traced.
In the first place, it may be said generally that as the drama
developed the dramatists showed an increasing tendency to give the
t the ..Pl<!yb)'-.making him a ser_\1mt-preferably the

o servant of one of the principal characters. How the tradition of the
comic servant grew up in the days of the religious plays has already
been shown, and it has been suggested that in all probability the
success of that type of Vice possessing some servant qlla!ities, and
later the influence of the Italian Zanni) besides the constant influence
of the domestic fool, strengthened that tradition and facilitated its
application to the clown in general. Of all the characters specifically ,
ca rf<l clowns (excluding Shakespeare's, who are practically all
retainers) quite half are definitely sen'ants of some description, and
in addition there are about as many more servants who are clearly
clowns, though the lIame does not exist in the written versions of the
plays. Such are Miles in Friar Bacon and Fl'iar BU17gay, and
Pipkin in How to choose a Good TVtfe from a Bad. It is significant
that as the drama the others '
becomes greater; it seems as if the dramatists came consciously or
unconsciously to the conclusion that the clown could be most satis-
,'- factorily connected with the action as a servant. The advantage of
the servant-clmvn is obvious-he may follow his master whet'ever he
goes, whereas as an unattached character (a bandit, for example, as
in Heywood's Four Prentices of London) the clown is, or should be,
limited to certain scenes, and is much less easily involved in the
intrigue. It may be said at once that the servant-fool is seldom morc
\.-
\
AS .A DH.A:\I.ATIC elL\ lL\CTEH 31
essential to the action than are the others. I n this resped Shak('s-
peare's clowns :\rl' exceptions. .l'\owhere else in the Elizabethan
drama do we find a fool with an importance in the action to be com-
pared for one moment with that of Fcste or the Fool in Lew.. As
- - --
a rule, becomes_ deeply involved in
loses of clown and a ITut I I
it is ol)\'ions that the sernlllt-clown has ipso facto a certain place ill
the intrigue. He is constantly on the stage, and to his part fall
naturally such duties as the cOlH'eying of letters and messages, the
deli,-ery of which is often of considerable importance. And if he does
not actually participate in the action independently, he at least as
a sen-ant knows all his master's bnsiness, and hence is invaluable as '
;- to the \ l .
inlpo-rtallt }unctiOi'l whiell jonnerly part of the Vice's role.
position fits him particularly well for linking a comic
sub-plot to the main llseful office which cannot so easily \1.,
be performed by an unattached clown.
The superiority of the servant-clowns to the others from a dramatic
point of yiew may be seen to some extent at the outset if the
earliest of the former class, Trotter, the miller's man in Fail' Em
(c. 1587), be compared with almost any of the second class for the
next Se\-ell yeat's (omitting Simplicity, who plays a vital part in The
Three Ladies of London and its sequel, since though he is a clown
the plays arc In Sir Thomas .Ll1ore (c. 1500), for
exam pIc, the clown has the most unsuitable role of rebel, and thus
has 110 place in a large portion of the play. He would obviously
ha,-c had more opportunities for merry-making if he had appeared as
:More's servant. Trotter, 011 thc other hand, as scrvant to thc
heroine of thc play and hcr father, has a far more suitable and
advantageous position. He is, moreover, despcrately in love with his
young mistrcss, and by appealing to his affectioll she prevails 011 him
to help her in hcr attempt to get rid of her undesil'ed sllitors by
pretending to bc deaf and dumh. Thus if he is not cxactlyessential
to the plot he has at least a suitable position to fill, and a duty to
perform.
As was only natural, the non-sel'\'ant clown shared to some cxtellt
in the general illlprm-cment ill the dramatic status of the clown which
accompanied the gradual establishment of higher artistic standards.
Before the last few years of the sixteenth centurv this class do not
show much dc\-elopn;ent dramatically, but of Locrine (1504)
marks a distinct a<h-ancc, not ollly 011 the clowll who appears ill om'
sccne of Dr. Fa usll.,ts amI who represents the carliest and crlldest
32 TIlE FOOL IN TIlE ELIZABETHAN DHAl\IA
st.age, hut also 011 the rather better de\'e1oped class represented by the
rebel clowns of Sir Thomas jl,lore and Jack Straw. :Much of the
superiority of Strllmbo is due to more careful and skilful characteriza-
tion, but here, as is usually the case, de,'elopment in characterizatioll
goes hand-in-hand with dramatic development, for besides acting as
the centre of a comic suh-plot, being pressed into the army of Albanact.,
he has his part in the series of battles of which the main plot
.\ j principally consists.
-W, In the last years of the sixteenth century and the first few years of
[ii
the n.:::t marked improvement in the treatment of the .. begall
to due, doubtless, to some extent to the of Greene
and The effect of this influence is seen most clearly in
the sen'ant-clowns, but traces of its operation are not wanting
characters of another type. III 1595, the very year after the
appearance of Locrine, we find one of the best (dramatically)
developed clowns of the non-servant class in the whole Elizabethan
drama-Tumop, the leader of the rnstics in l\funday's play, John
a Kent and John a Cumber. He has a suitable place in the drama, in
so much as he and his companions prepare an address of welcome for
some of the principal characters, and also he and his friends, in
helping to bring about the discomfiture of John a Cumber, play no
insignificant part in the main action. As will be shown later in
dealing with the subject of characterization, Tumop probably owes
a good deal to Bottom (though this point is not absolutely certain,
owing to the doubt which exists as to the date of A jl,fidsummer
Night's DJ'eam/) in which case the character is a clear proof of the
early working of Shakespeare's influence on the clowns of his
contemporaries.
rom about this time the proportion of non-servant to servant-
clowns becomes considerably smaller, and the few of the first type
who still exist are usually connected with some care with the main
action. Thus Will Cricket in lVily Beguiled (1606), besides acting
as the centre of a series of comic scenes with which some of the
principal characters are likewise connected, also has a part in the main
action, as conveyor oi A clown who is connected in
. a different but not inartistic way with the main action is Gnotho of
The Old Law (c. 1599), who is the leading figure in a comic sub-plot
1 The first transcript of John a Kent is dated Dec. 1595, whereas the evidence
points to the beginning of that year or the end of 1594 as the date of the com-
position of the Dream. But it is just possible that John a Kent is identical with
Tlte Wise-man of West Chester, performed Dec. 2, 1594.
AS A DIL\MATIC CIIAHACTEH. :33
which is a parody of the main plot and upon the same motif-
thc"lllaking of the new law and its consequences.
// But if there is a general de\'elopment in the dramatic treatment of
the clown, this de\'elopment is particularly marked in the case of that
.... _type of fool which became most popular-the servant-clown. Since
clowns of this type are so 111llllerous, allY det;;1led accollnt of them is
out of the question: all that can he done is to illdicate a few
characters representing progressi,-e stages. Trotter, the earliest
example of the type (apart from court and domestic fools proper) who
may be left out of the question for the time being, since their roles
"ary little, and show little chronological de\'elopment) has already
been described. His superiority to contemporary non-sernll1t clowlls
is manifest, but it is also obdous that his creator has by 110 means
fully grasped the possibilities of the clown as a dmmatic character.
In this respect, as in others, Greene's clowns represent the high-
water mark before Shakespeare. nliles in Friar Bacon and Friw'
Bungay 1589=90), and Slipper in .James IV (1598), both ha\'e their
parts in the in wasting his master's seven years'labour
by failing to wake him as soon as the brazen head speaks, and Slipper
in stealing from his master Ateukin the letters which Bartram needs.
But apart from these definite duties, both these clowns, particularly
Slipper, are cleverly and judiciously introduced into the action
throughout, that it is difficult to imagille the plays without them.
Slipper at least may be regarded as an integral part of tlte play in
"'hich be figures. lIe cannot, however, be regarded as representative
of the servant-clown in general towards the end of the sixteenth
century. During the ten years which elapsed between the appearallees
of Greene's two clowns, contemporary dramatists apart from Shake-
speare produced no clownish servant worthy e,-en to compare with
iles, though there are traces of a grad lIal general improvemell t.
Perhaps the most notable figures of this period are Nimble,
'rrissilliall's intriguing sen'ant in 1'IWUUlS of Troodstock (1591);
Pistoll of Soliman and Perseda (1592), who acts as cO!l\'eym of
information between the chief characters) alld also takes part ill
a comic underplot with a braggart knight of whom lie always gets
the better; and Gunophilus, Pandora's unfortunate attendallt ill
The lVollwn ill the J.lloolle (1597), who is really esselltial to the action
in that he is the victim of all the caprices of his mistress) and the
instrumellt used by her in the carrying out of her intrigues. -
But by the elld of .,.this period Shakespeare's fools were beginning
t9 appear. Bottom, Laullce, and Launcelot. had }ll"t'ceded Slipper,
-and and Feste followed two or three years later. Aud
('
j4t 'filE FOOL I ~ 'fHE EL'[ZAllE'fHAN DRAMA
from this time becomes noticeable that marked impro\'emellt ill
dramatic treatmellt lloticed in COllllcxion with non-servant clowns,
with this differcnce, that in the case of the servant-fools it is far more
XQnollllced. How marked was the ad",Ulce is proved by the fact
thattl describing the rule of an average clown of the beginning of
the seventeenth century more of the story of the play is involved
than in the case of the average clown of some six or eight years
before. Shadow, ill Old Fortunatus (1600), lllay be compared in this
way with Adam ill A Looki'l/I-Glassfor London and England (1594).
:Moreover, though clOWIIS who play a prominent part in the intrigue
itself are still exceptiollal, they appear with increasing frequency.
Such are Hodge in Thomas Lord Cromwell (1602), who rescues the
Earl of Bedford by impersonatillg him, and Stilt in Hoffmann
(probably acted the same year), who tries throughout the play to guide
his foolish master aright by good advice, and even raises a rebellion
in support of his cause .
. / From this point it is almost impossible to trace chronological
Idevelopment further. Henceforth clowns vary ill accordance with
the degree of skill possessed by their creators, rather than in
I
accordance with any general tendencies. As might be expected,
even at this period of the stage fool's fullest development there are
lapses. Frog, for example, in The Fair },1aid of Bristow (1604),
only appears two or three times in the written version of the play,
and has no weight whatever in the action; and in Heywood's
chrollicle play If you know 1/ot me you know nobody (1605-6), the
clown, though presumably one of Elizabeth's train, wanders through
the play almost at haphazard. But apparently the difficulty of '
successfully introducing a clown into a chronicle play was largely .,
responsible for the faults of If you know not me, and that of introduc-
ing such a typically British character into classicHI stories for the
weakness of such plays as The Golden Age, for Heywood's best
clowns are some of the most noteworthy of their kind, and represent
the fullest development of the clown along regular lines. They will
be described in more detail in connexion with the question of
characterization, but the role of one of them, Simkin in Fortune by
Land and Sea (perhaps written about 1607-9), may be sketched
here, I in order to give some idea of the average importance in the
1 Cf. with Simkin, Roger in The English Traveller, Clem in The Fair .Maid of
the West, and Fiddle in The Fair Maid of the E.rchange, among Heywood's
clowns-also many others, e. g. Shorthose in Fletcher's Wit without Money, or
Pipkin in How to choose a Good Wifejrom a Bad.
Ero .A CI L\HACTEH
action of the best clowlls oE Shakespeare's eontelllporaries and
SIH.:l'e5\5\ors.
Silllkill is the sen'ant of old Harding, father of Philip, the hero of
the play. 011 his first appeurallce he informs his master, who has
sent him to seek Philip, that the latter is abollt to make a match
"'ith SusaJl Forrest. At that moment the lo\'ers appear, and a dispute
with the father Pllsues. Simkin declares that he intends to 'stick to
the stl'OlIger side', but he joins ill Harding's pleading for
Philip. "Theil Philip alld Susan are made his fcllow-serntllts, he is
gClluillely distressed, alld promises to do extra work to spare them.
011 his Ilext importallt appearance, he accosts Philip's friends Foster
and Goodwin, from whom Philip wishes to borrow money, and by
shrewd hints that his youllg master has a secret store induces them to
promise assistance, but Philip spoils the scheme hy a\'owing his
pO\'erty. During this illterdew Simkin acts as adviser to his master
:lIld mock-addser to the friends. Afterwards a pursui\'ant meets !tim,
and makes him deli"er a proclamatioll, which he pen'erts throughout.
He next appears brillging ill a sailor with the news that old Harding's
wealth bas been lost at sea. Later, whell the Im'ers' fortunes ha,'e
illlprO\'ed, he acts as comic chorus durillg Philip's inter\'iew with his
ullnatural brothers and friends, and harps on the folly of theil'
churlish behaviour in the past. At the end, promisiJlg to presellt the
lo\'ers with a masquc, hc brings in the brothers and frieJl(ls in a state
of dcstitution, and makes hUlllorous commcnts upon their stol'ics of
their misfortunes, ulltil he is checked by Philip. From this broad
outlille it is clear that if his role is not exactly essential, yet he has
his part ill the action, and that 110 insignificant or \'aluelcss one.
So much, theIl, for the employmellt of the clown in the plot. But
therc are other points to be Jloticed with rcgard to thc developmcnt
of this persollagc as a dramatic character. In the first place, although
all stage fools provide somc sort of comic relief, tbe dramatists
naturally vary greatly in ability to choose the I'ight mOlllcnt for the
introduction of this relief. III cOllnexion with the l\Ioralities this
point Heed Jlot be discussed, sincc there comic relief comes 111 allllost
automatically throughout, owing to the fact that thc Vicc is leader of
the intrigue as well as merry-maker. III these plays, moreo\'el',
comedy is ollly needed to forlll a pleasillg break in the edifyillg
disquisitions which fortll so large a part of the :\Ioralities,-Ilot, as
a rule, to relieve a distressillg situation, siJlce tile moral plays allllost
always end wcll, alld the telllporary downfall of the Vice's victillls
does not of tell gi\'c rise to a situation tbat call, stl'ictly spcakillg, he
called tragic. From Everyman, t.he wllich IllOst IIcarly,
(' (,)
1
I
[.
\
36 TilE FOOL TIlE DHAl\lA
probably, approaches tl'agcdy, the cOlllic elemellt is rigidly excluded.
III sllch Vice plays as AppillS fIIill Fir,r;iuia, tragedy is certainly
present, hut there again the double fllllction of the Vice continually
brillgs in the necessary comic relief .
..J It is in the that the question of illtroducing this
) relief at the psychological moment beco\lles illlportallt. Here ollce
agaill Nowhere else in the dra;na (10 we
J
find such effects producedby the juxtaposition the
on -! ___ J.loultoll descrIbes-as we filJ(l in
'Antony and Cleopatra or ICing Lear. But in the work of Shakespeare's
contemporaries we at least find attempts to blelld tIle comic and the
tragic with some degree of harmony, alld these attempts are by no
meall!.o> "holly llnsuccessful. In tragedies proper we do not filld
mallY instances of the introduction of the clown, for the
Elizabethan tragedians make very little use of him, though they
frequently introduce comic tOllches by means of other characters,
such as the hangman in The Spanish Tragedy. NOlle of the dozen
tragedies (apart from Shakespeare's plays and Dr. Faustus) ill which
the fool appears are of the first rank. :Many, indeed, are rambling-
chronicle plays rather than true tragedies. Hence, as might be
expected, it is only rarely that we find ill them any considerable
artistic skill ill the introduction of comic relief, and 'we usually feel
grateful that the dramatist has had the grace to leave his tragic fifth
act unspoiled by the intrusive presence of the down. This, indeed,
is usually the case. Almost the only clowns to appear in the fillal
catastrophe cease their jesting as the end draws near. Piston ill
Soliman and Perseda bids farewell pathetically to his dead mistress
and shares her death; and Roger in The En.qlish Traveller when his
mistress falls stricken with remorse makes his last and his ouly
serious speech ill the play-lJfy sweet mistress! But usually the
cluwll disappears, jesting still, before the fifth act. His duty is to
selTe as relief to the minor tragedies which lead up to the final
disaster. For this purpose he is introduced in various ways. Some-
times a down scene is admitted into the middle of a gloomy play, as
is the case in Selimus (159J.), ,,,here Bullithrumble the shepherd, who
only appears twice, provides a little diversion from the appalling
of murders of which the play chiefly consists. Sometimes the fool is
introduced in the midst of a tragic scene, often with doubtful taste,
as in the execution scene in Sir Thomas il1ore.
1
Considerable
developmellt in this respect is seen in a latel' play, Sir Thomas rVyat
1 Ed. Dyce, Shakespl'are Society, p. 35.
E\TOLUTIO:\ AS A CIIAHACTEIt 37
(lo07), where the clown ,ritnesses Homcs's remorse alld suicide after
hetrayillg his Ilwstel', remarking, ' So, so, a ,'cry good elldillg": would
all false sernlllts might drink of the l-appl'Ohation lal'gely due
to his allxiety to appropriate the gold which was the price of the
betrayal. The contrast betwcen the detachment and want of feeling
in the clown's remarks and the distl'ess of mind shown by Homes is
IIOt wanting in effecti,'eness. Pel'llaps the most daring attempt in
this group of plays to relieve and at the same time enhance the gloom
of the tragedy, is found in Hoffmann, where Stilt introduces a touch
of comedy immediately after the tI'Hgic death of Prince Jerome.
2
The Prince, his master, dies asking his father to provide for Stilt, but
instead the Duke orders him to be tortured to death. The clowll
remarks, ' Provide, quoth 'a ?-an you call this prm'iding, pray let me
prodde for myself. Alas my poor father! he'll creep upon crutches
into his gr;l\'e, when he hears that his proper Stilt is cut off by the
'-and his last word as he is dragged off to execution is
a jest.
Similar to some to his part in these tragedies is the part
played by the clown in most of the other dramas in which he appears. ' ,
For th,ough the comedies and romances of which the clown plays 0
chiefly consist always elld happily, they often threaten for a time to
become tragedy, and it is the cloWJl's office to restore that equilibrium r ,/
ofJlfe which is the essence of comedy whenever that equilibrium is
.too much dist.urbed, It may be significant that in several plays, such
as The Old Law, the fool docs 110t appear until Act Ill, whell sel'ious
complications are developing. Shakespeare's cOlltemporaries knew c-
the trick of lowering the tOile of it play whell the tension is becoming
too great; and some of thelll show all ingelluity and artistic sense in
the use of it which, though not comparable , ... ith hi&, are by 110 means
to be despised. In the earlier plays these attempts at comic relicf are
undoubtedly crude, as in Damon and Pytliias, where the comic inter-
lude of the'duping of Grim the collier by the pages is introduced
whell the situation of the friends is becolllillg serious, and a tragedy
seems imminellt. But the later dramatists, instead of cOllcentt'atillg
all theil' relief in olle OJ' two interludes, tend more and more to
distribute it throughout the play, as is made possible by their grcater
skill ill illtcnveaving their downs' roles with the intrigue. ' Trying )
situatiolls are continually relieved by a scene of jesting, or a SOllg, if I 0
the dow II is musical] Such j udiciotls altcrnatioll of scriolls and comic
SC(' IIf'S is s(' rlJ in f{()11) 10 ('liOOSf' fl Good IVUe .Ii'om (I Uful (l
where the' clowllillg of Pipkin cOllstantly hrillgs t h(' plily to tIlt'
1 iii, :1. z iv,
38 'I'll E FOOL TilE DRAl\[A
sphcre of comcdy. At thc gr:wcst moment of all, when
Arthur is supposed to be murdercd) Pipkin relie\'es the situation by
his ludicrous manner of bringing the llews.
1
This device of con-
veying bad news by the clown, and thus lessening the strain at
painful moments) is found \'ery freqncntly. Possibly it was suggested
by 0 (}-of the most delicatc and dangerous offices of the court fool.
Also suggcsthc of the influence of the court or domestic fool is
another function to be noted in tracing the dramatic development of
the stage clown, already mentioned incidentally in the sketch of
Simkin's role gi,'en abm'e-that of comic chorus. As the dO!!lcstic
foo.! J:oindulge in free comment:; on any event which
or any which was ill his presencc) so the
.. \ stage fool has in not primarily clown scenes
but elfective_ part_ of role compared by
with tbl"lLQI the chorus in classic drama. This
function can be de\'eloped to much advantage by a skilful dramatist,
for apart from the amusement which can be derived from witty
comments on the situation, these comments can often be used to
strike the key-note of common sense in a scene of confused harmonies,
and to put the spectator at the right point of view.
Naturally the role of chorus is particularly characteristic of the
court and domestic fools of the drama, but it is by no means confined
to them. It appears in almost the earliest stage of the written drama,
are traces of it in the roles of the ill-disposed sen'ants of the
/. plays.2 It is a favourite trick of the Vice, who delights in
I uttering comic asides during the cOl1\'ersations of his yictims or his
j fellow-vices, usually re\'ealing his true nature or that of his associates
in these comments. Particularly noteworthy is the scene in The
Conflict of Conscience where Hypocrisy listens unseen to the com'ersa-
tion of his confederates Avarice and Tyranny, and makes appropriate
remarks throughout, as, fOl' example, when they are discussing the
ad\'isability of making friends with a third person:
TY1anny. I judge him needflll in our company to he,
And therefore, for my part, he is welcome to me.
Hypocrisy (aside). Friendship for gain.
3
In the role of the regular stage fool this function is still 1ll0l'e
prominent, particularly in the case of the servant-clown, who naturally
has exceptional opportunities of exercising it. Sometimes the clown's
comments are merely intended to be entertaining, as in the case of
Taber's remarks on his master's conversation with the Schoolmaster.4
1 iii. 3. 2 See above, p. 26.
3 Dodsley, vi, pp. 48-.51. 4 \Iris' Wall/all of IIogsdrm, ii. 2.
AS A DIL\:\IATIC CIIAR.ACTEH sa
'Yhen the laUer quotes, or tries to quote, Latin- ( Quomodo "aleR,
quomodo ,'ales '-Taber exclaims, (Go with you to the alehollse ?
I like the motion well.' But often these remarks are apt, as is
Simplicity's COlUlllent on the meeting of Fraud, Dissimulation, Simony
and Usury-
Now all the c,u'ds ill the stock are dealt about,
The four kmn'es ill a cluster come ruffling out.
l
Sometimes, too, they have considerable weight. The shrewd hints
which Ragan, Esau's servant, conveys to his master, and his bitter
comments when Esau sells his birthright, arc almost anticipatory of
those of Lear's fool. 'Vhen Esan is excusing himself by pleading
the uselessness of his hirthright :
( 'Vhat should I h:\\'e done wit h my hil,thright in this case? '
Ragan retorts aside:
, Kept it still, and you had not been a very 2 " -1'
And occasionally, though never to the same degree as in Shakespeare' s""]J
plap;, the comments of the clowns, by the good sense and good
feeling which reveal themseh'es from beneath their pretended folly,
throw into sharp relief the folly of men who should be, and profess to ' .
be, wiser. This point is hrought out by who remarks on \ "
the fool Passarello's satirical hits at the follies of his master and others:
o world most vile, when thy loose vanities,
Taught by this fool, do make the fool seem wise.
This idea of comparison between the clown and the chief characters
appears in a different aRpect in another of his dramatic functioJls-\
that of parody. Sometimes the burlesque is implied in his role.
I
The non-servant clowl1 often appears as a parody of a group of
characters-rebels, bandits and the like-and the figure of the Sl'l'\'ant
is frequently a ludicrolls imitation of that of his master, a notable
example being Trimtram in A Pair Quarrel, who giyes the keynote to
his character when he says, ' Look, ,vhat my master does, I use to do
the like '. Particularly are the master's foibles caricatured. Thus
the character of Kicholas St. Antlings ill The Puritan, who exclaims
j
ill horror at oaths, but asks his fellow-servants to 'make a lie' for
him, parodies that of the Puritanical widow. Sometimes the clown l.
is the centre of a sub-plot on the same lilles as the main plot- usually
a love-affair, as ill the case of Corcbus in The Old IVices' Tale. The
servant-clowlls ill particular of tell have Im' e-alTairs in illlitation of
their masters. The most elaborate exalllple of a slIh-plot parodying
J Th r('c '!f /,rmr/rm , J)oll sh'y, vi, p. 2M!.
2 .Iflcoh oml Esall, DOli sley, ii , I'p. lB-:W.
.... ..... ,
L
( -.
\
W TIlE FOOL IN TIlE ELIZ.ABETHAN DHAl\IA
t he main plot is fOllnd ill TIL e Old Lwv, mentiolled carlict' in this
chapter.
Fre(plclltly, the clowll intentionally parodies the speech of the
serious characters either ill matter or ill style. Strumbo imitates
.\lbanaet's threats to the Scythialls :
Alb. For with this sword, this instl'llment of death,
Ile separate thy bodie fl'0111 thy head,
And set that coward blood of thine abroach.
Str. Nay, with this stafie, great Strmnbo's instrument,
Ile crack thy cockscome, paltry Scithian.
1
So, too, parodies his betters:
Segasto. Tremelio fought when many men did yield.
Amadine. So would the shepherd, had he been in field.
Mouse. So would my master, had he not run away.2
And it is in this spirit that Touchstone, when Rosalind remarks
after a scene between Silvius and Phebe that in witnessing the
shepherd's woes she has found her own, says in his turn, 'And
I mine', and proceeds to tell the story of his love for Jane Smile.
3
Such, then, are the lines on which the stage fool de,-cloped as
a dramatic character. vYe have seen how the dramatists learned by
degrees to weave him more and more closely into the plots of their
plays (usually by making him the servant of one of the principal
characters), and how great are the dramatic possibilities of the
character, once his position in the-actioujs assured. Apart from his
chief duty, the providing of the tension is
becoming too severe, he may perform-various minor functions. He
may act as a link between . sub-plot and main-plot; by his soliloquies
he audience in<?rmd of the progress of events; by his
comments in the part of comic chorus, or by parodying the foibles of
t he chief characters, he may help to put the spectators at the right
point of view-and all this apart from the humorous potentialities of
these various functions. A fool in whose role all or most of these
possibilities have been judiciously developed is clearly no longer
a stumbling-block to the orderly progress of a play or an incongruolls
element in its compositiqn-rather is he a most valuable dramatic
asset.
1 Locriile, ii. 5. 2 Jlucedorlls, Dodsley, vii, p. 224.
3 As Like It , ii. 4 .
... ,
.. ,
(
"


!
...
).
I
w'
CHAPTER III
TIlE EVOLUTIOK OF THE FOOL IN CHARA.CTERIZA-
TION-LINES OF
Ix the precedillg chapter a piece of contcmporary satire Oll the
haphazard introduction of the fool was (p1Oted. Another cxtract
from the sallle play 1 will show what standard of humour he was
expected to attain. Dromo is the clown how to entertaill
his audience :-' 'Yhy, if thou canst but drawe thy mouth awrye,
laye thy legge over thy staffe, sawe a piece of cheese aSllndcl' with
thy dagger, lape up d .. inke on the earth, I warrant thee theile bug-he
mightilie.' And other references to the' fine scurvy faces' and the
like tricks with which the fools were wont to convulse thei,' audicnces
confirm the testimony which this quotation bears to the poplllar
taste in humour at the end of the sixteenth century. Rllt though
stage t"icks of a primiti\'e nature nppear to have been of primary
im-pDrtance to the it was not to be expected th,lt dramatists
of talent and artistic taste would be content with mere crude buffoonery. \'
(
As the drama develops, we see increasingly successful attempts to
individualize the fool, to replace coarse and stupid sallies hy tme ,
humour, and thu .to transform the character into olle of "eal artistic
, and literal'y A n to trace this evolution
L ma e in the two following chapters. First the different
lines on which the character de\elopcd will be indicated, and then, ill
order to fill ill the picture, a summary of the clowlI's 1I10st stl'iking
characteristics will be gi\en.
It was natural that the fool should develop along "Hi'jOllS in J \
vicw of the complexity of his origin. For though in practically all the
clowns proper we can trace the same elemcnts, thc proportion ill
which these clements are combined varies cOllsidcl'ably, and somc-
t.imes olle so greatly predominates as to produce a distinct type. t.
These minor types are chiefly three-the domestic ur COllrt fool, the (
. 1 .< 1 I I I" '-.J
rllstlc c own, ant t lC S lreW( , jcstlllg scrvallt.
As has alrea.dy been melltiuIJcd, domestic alld COllrt fools OCCIII"
with surprisillg rarity ill the regulal' drallla, IIJ SOIllC hundred 1'001
i Pi/gl'ill/uge If) l'al'lUl881(.\" CIL 1'. :!:!,
THE FOOL IN TIlE ELIZABETHAN DHAl\IA
(
plays (apart from Shakespeare's) examined for the purposes of this
study, there .ue barely a dozen certain examples, though there are
a other clowns who may possibly belong to this class.
-"he Viee characters who belong to some extent to this type have
already been described-Fancy and Folly, Hardy-Dardy, Mery Report,
and other less distinct figures. It was pointed ant that Fancy and
Folly seem to represent the two types of fool found ill mediaeval
and Fools of both these types appear in
, the regular drama, but the artificial greatly predominate. To this
class belongs the first in time, Gelasimus, Herod's fool, in Grimald's
Latin play Archi-propheta (1547)-a court fool pure and simple,
apparently little affected by the other elements which go to compose
the latcr clown. Gelasimus may best be described as ' a hitter fool '.
He gibes scornfully at the Phal'isees-' vYhat a lot my masters
mumble! Mum, mum, ha-ba, be-be. Should I not make a fine
Pharisee? But such work wears out the lips.' 1 He utters some
sharp home truths to Herodias,2 and offers cynical advice to John-
'If you will listen to me learn to serve the time. He cannot Ih-e
who cannot be knavish.' Gelasimns, by the cynicism of his remarks,
and the moral sense which they sometimes reveal, more nearly
approaches Lear's fool than does any other of his class. Passarello
in The Malcontent, sixty years later, also earns his master's comment,
, A bitter fool! ' by his satirical sketches of different people about the
court,3 though he shows greater detachment than does Gelasimus.
His remarks are too coarse and cynical to be really humorous, in
spite of the shrewdness of his blows and the smartness of his repartee,
and he is not an attractive figure, though there is at least one unusual
and human touch in the study-his sense of the degradat.ion of his
position-' '\Vell, I'll dog my lord, and the word is proper: for when
I fawn upon him, he feeds me; when I snap him by the fingers, he I
spits in my mouth. If a dog's death were not strangling, I had
rather be one than a serving-man.'
A lighter type of character is that represented by Ralph Simnell in
Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (1589-90). Though he does not
appear much, it is clear that he is a mere jester, ready to enter into
I all his master's frolics; and though he makes some audacious hits,
as where he tells the promised bride of the prince of the latter's
former love affair,
4
he is Edward's abettor, not his critic. His
humonr is of the fanciful order, as ,vhere he devises numerous schemes
I '" 2 '"
II. _. IV. _. 3 i. 7.
4 Gayley, Rel'J"C8cntatil"e Comedies, vol. i, p . .,lao.

for the winniIlg of or asks Lacy to buy him (a thousand
thousand million of fi ne hc1s') explaining that 'every time that N cd
sighs for the Keeper's daughter, lIe tie a bell ahout him: and !'o
within three or foure daies I will send word to his father Harry, that
his SOIllle and my maistcr Ned is heeome Loves morris
A coarser and homelier jester is "Till Sum mers in lVhen ?IOlt see me
you. know me (1604), and his humour docs not reach a high level ;
I hut the character deselTes favourable mention as being a careful and
faithful study of 'Vill, agreeing throughout with Armin's description
of him, particularly in regard to his disinterestedness, his kindness to
the poor, and his dislike for "Tolsey. rrhe popular Will appears
again as prologue and comic chorus to Summer's Last lVill and
Testament (1592), but there is no attempt at characterization.
Of the natural fool "'e find the earliest dmmatic study in Cacurgus
of J.lfisogonus (c. 1560)-an exceedingly interesting character, in that .j
in him we have two character sketches, one of the natural fool and
one of the professional jester and mischief-maker. For though in
reality he is a schemer, showing a connexion with the Vice, especial1y
the Vice sen'ants, he deludes his old master into believing him an
innocent-' a simple thinge ... who for his simplicitie a fooles cote
doth wear',t talking rustic dialect, babbling of his 'ganser') and
petted by his' "Olll1der' for the sake of his songs and tales, and the
scraps of information which he sometimes brings him, in return for
'some dingdonges to hang at my sleife '.2 Cacurgus does not often
appear as the natural, however, and with the exception of La.mia,
the solitary female fool in the English drama, we find no 1110re
innocents until the end of the century. Patch, "r olsey's fool,
3
is
a slight sketch of the stupid fool, making few jests, and quite over-
shadowed hy \Vill Summers, who makes him the victim of a practical
joke; but in a play 11 few years earlier, Patient Grissell.
4
,ve find
I what is probahly the most delightful stlldy of the domestic fool outside
the work of Shakespeare, in Balmlo, the retainer of Grissell and hel'
father. This character (which docs not appear in other versions of
the story) is undoubtedly excellently drawn, and the impression
which it lean's on the mind is exceedingly pleasant. Babulo's Ilame
gh'es the key to his character; he is a babhler, hut one of the most
, charmillg of babblers. He must be classed with the natural fools,
SInce he says that he was' horn an innocent', hut he oftclI exhihits
1 Jlis0!JolllU;, Cil. Brandl, ill Qilellen rlc.v u'eltlir'hcll lJrrullfls, 1"
2 Ihill., 1" H3.
S JVhclI you s('c mc !IOU know nw.
By (,hettic, Dekker al\d I1aug-htoll (l.')!)!).
,14 TIlE FOOL TIlE DItA7\IA
considerable shrewdllcss amI good sellSC, both ill his repartees a))(l in
his 1lI0ralizings on life. And of good-feeling he is fllll, though he
usually tries to hide it UlHler jests and pretended anxiety for his own
welfare. He follows uncomplainingly the fortunes of his master and
mistress, with encouraging them
with his cheerful prattle; and though at first he appears fonder of
chatter than of work, when troubles come he docs his best to be
useful. He appears perhaps in his most delightful aspect with
Grissell's childrell, giving up his own pillow to them, and dandling
them in his arms and soothing them with' Hush, hush, hush, hush!
and I dance mine own child, and I dance mine own child!' 1
Another no less admirable trait appears in his indignant protests
against the Marquis's treatment of Grissell,2 and the blow which he
gave him in the early days of his courtship for trying to kiss her
against her will. \Vhether Babulo is indebted to Touchstone or not
is ullcertain, but at least there is no shl\.'ish imitation, and he may
rank as a worthy companion, though not as an equal, of Shakespeare's
fools. <
Among the rustic clowns agaill, as has already been indicated, at
least two types can be distinguished-the mere booby and the more <
pretentious clown. On the whole it may be said that the earlier and
cruder rustics belong to the former class, while the later ones have
developed into something more than boors. The rustics of the
Moralities and other Vice plays, mentioned in a previolls chapter, are
\
chiefly stupid, and to their tradition belong the first examples of the
rustic class in the regular drama, most of whom make very brief
appearances and have no claims to individuality. The clown of this I
type who makes the longest stay on the stage is John Adroynes, in
the Second Part of Promos and Cassandl'a (1578). On his first
appearance he is duped by two 'promotel's' and Phallax, Promos's
mall, who frighten him illto giving IIp all his money by threatening to ,
accuse him of kissing his father's mai(l,3 Later, while seeking his
mare, he comes upon Andrugio in hiding, and a scene of cross-
purposes (not, however, very amusing) ensues, ,dlCn Andrugio tries I
to penetmte the clown's dellseness in order to obtain news from him.4
Fools of Adroynes' type appear again during the decay of the drama
in the Boobies and Simpletons of the' drolls '.
6
Characters of this class are seldom very di\'erting, for though mel'e \
1 Ed. Erlan!Jcr ncilrii!Jc, (180;3), p. 53-5.
2 Ihid., p. 74. 3 Part II, iii. 2.
f Part II, i\'. 2. 5 Kirkman, The nr IIJlOII Sport.

stupidity may be flInllY it is nercr trllly hUllIorous. Bllt with tile
downs of the second dass we find cOllsiderable dt'\'e\0PIllCllt ill
stlbtlety of characterization, and at least olle example of a really
humorous character. The germ from which this secolld type developed
s scen ill a dowlI who on th!' whole belongs to the first class- Grim
the collier, of Damon and P!ltltillS (15G4- 5). For though Grim is
really stupid enongh, he thinks himself astute; 1 and a mistakt'll idea
of his importance and wisdom is the IllOSt striking and most hUIllOl'ous
dl< a.{j,cristic of the later clown. definitely a member of this
class is Popper, the clownish burgher of The TVounds of' Ciz'il IVa,.
(c. 1587), who gil-es comlescending" advice to his admiring neighbour
Curtall,2 but the sketch of Poppey is brief and slight. The first
rustic witlt a distinct illdidduality is Bullithrumhle, the'gl'Hndiloquclit
shepherd of Seli7lws (1504).3 He first appears rUllning away from
his wife, of whom he is terribly aft'aid, and whell Corcut and his
page approach him alld beg for food he is again alarmed. But
directly he diseo\'ers that they are only' poor hungel'-stan'ed men',
he himself, ami waxes pompous alld condescending-' Oh,
these arc as a mall should sar beggar::! : Now will I be as stately to
them as if I were master Pigwiggi 11 OUl' constable: well, sirs, come
hefore me, tell lIle, if I should elltertain you, would you not steal? '
he cOllcedes, ' 'Yell, if you will keep my sheep truly :uHl
honestly, keeping your hands from lying and slandering, and your
tongues from picking and stealing, you shall be master Bullithrumhle's
servitors'. He prides himself greatly OJ) his fine language. 'rhus
when he refers to 'it society of pnddings' he remarks, 'Did you
mark that well-used metaphor? Another would have said it company
of puddings: if you dwell with me long, sirs, I shall make you as
eloquent as our parson himself.' His amusing gralldiloquence, like
that of Dogberry, is made still more ludicrous by the pCtTersiolls of
words and other absurdities with which it is interlarded; alld the
character as it whole, though not \'ery fully del-eloped, is decidedly
diverting.
But a more carefully chamcterized figure than Bullithmmble, and
tile most notable of his class, outside Shakespe:u'e's plays, is Tlll'llo
ill play of the following ye:tI, John It Kent ([lid JOllll
II Cumber (already mentioned with regard to his dramatic importance),
who Illay best he described as an inferiol' hilt by 110 1IH':lIIS cOlltemptible
Bottolll. The likeness appears most "i\'idly in the first scene;' where
I Farmer, Dramatic Writings of Edwflrds, XOl'tOIl allll ..... (/l'kdlll" pp_ !i:J- (i!i.
2 Dodsley, vol. vii, Pl', IS!) -!J2. 3 (:l'Osal't, 1hllfile pp. 70- .. 1.
4 Ed. Collil'r, Sltllkespeure Suciety, IS51, 1'. 15, &..:.
4G TIlE FOOL l ~ TIlE ELIZABETHAN DIL\l\fA
the tl'OOP of rustics are ehoosillg' a spokesman to deliver their address
of wel come to Pembroke allel :Mortoll. \Vhen, after some disputing
between rI'uruop and H ugh the Sexton, Tom Tahrer decides in favour
of the former, he being' my 100'des man, his hogheard, his familiaritie
sen"aunt', 1\lrnop receiYes thc honour with much dignity as his due-
, 'Yell, for your wisdomes ill cbusing me, I rest qlloniam dygnitatis
vestrulll primarion, as the Poet Pediculus sayth; and the llext
vestrie bound to deferre you to sevemll locall places.' He duly
marshals the procession and deliyers the oration, of which the first
quatrain is a fair sample:
Lyke to the Cedal' in the loftie sea,
Or milke white mast upon the humble mount,
So, hearing that your hOllors came this way,
Of our rare wittes we came to give account.
At the end of this address, which reminds one strongly of PY"arnus
and Tltisbe, Turnop coolly remarks that he has corrected the last two
lines, 'by the error of the Authour overslipped'. Throughout the play
Turnop preserves the same superior and condescemling demeanoUl'.
1'he humblest questioning of his judgement is met with some such
reply as this-' Goodman Spurling, though you be purblind, and I
thereby are favoured for the grosse errours committed in your vocation,
yet, I pmy ye, commit YOUl'selfe to your l1lusique: as for the song,
let it passe upon my prerogastride.' And his friends look up to him I
as much as Bottom's fellows admire him. Tom Tabrer quells
a lUUl'Il1U1' with, 'Nay, either let it be as l\-Ir. Turnop will have; or,
by my troth, faire and softly, I will go no further. Either let us ,
have credit or no credit.' Turnop's speech, like Bullithrumble's, is
an absurd mixture of gralldilo{!uent phrases and blunders. One
point may be mentioned as particulady reminiscent of Bottom-his
love of repeating a word with slight v<u'iations, as in the remark,
'Chance persuadeth you to remit, or submit, or admit yourselfe to
the crye of your brethren.' But, as in the case of Babulo, if, as
seems likely,! Turnop was influenced by Shakespeare, he is no mere
imitation of the greater dramatist's creation, and can afford to staud ,
,..--oniIiSOWn-merits.
\ Turnop represellts the most numerous class of rustic clowns, There ,
\
. is one other type of rustic-the blunt alld ignol'Unt but well-meanillg
; and sIu'ewd countryman, best represented by Hobs, the 'raIlIler of
Tamworth, in Edww"d IV.
2
But Hobs and his kiud, though still
amusing, stand almost entil'ely outside the sphcl'e of clOWIlS, slllce
I Oil the date see above, p. 45, note.
2 Part I, iii. 1,2, iv. 4, v. 5,
47
they laLk the fully, real 01' assumed, whieh is of the..' essellce of
clowllage.
This same deficiency in folly separates another class of characters
from the normal type of clown-shrewd jesting sen'ants who show
of stupidity, either real or pretended. Some of these
personages are merely jesters, illl pudent to their masters and to others,
and thus carrying on the tradition of the insolent sen'ants of the
religious plays. To this class Ragan, Esan's sharp-tongued
sen'ant ill the play of Jacob and Esau (1557-8), who, though he
indulges in some clowning, is by no means a fool. Ragan stands at
the beginning of the Elizabethan period. 'Vith him may he compared
a personage dating from the end of that period-Soto, ' a merry
fellow ', in Spanish Gipsy (1623). Though he is ont'e
referred to as a fool, Fernando's description, 'a fine kna\'e', fits him
better. He jests throughout the play, both openly and aside, ill
a style very different from Ragan's erude railing. He is quite aware
of his master's stupidity (though he tries to keep him out of trouble,
and help him to win Constanza), and makes rude asides on his
master's verses as he presents them-' Botcherly poetry, botcherly ! ' 1
It may be noted that he is given the part of the comic servant in the
play which the gipsies extemporize from Fernando's plot. In snch
characters as Soto's the fool element is weak, and the trallsition is
easy to such personages as Lollio in The Changeliug or,
earlier, Lyly's jesting pages, where that element is wanting altogether.
type of comic sen'ant we find the element of self-seeking,
of which there is often a suggestion in the clown, strongly developed,
and with it a tendency to intrigue. 'rhe protagonists of this type
are the Vice servants Subtle-Shift and Conditions, already descrihed.
One of the best examples ill the regular drama is Nimble, 'frissillian's
servant in Thomas of JVoodstock, whose one idea is his own gaill.
He encourages his master in his villainy in the hope that he will share
in the profits which it brillgs him; he entel'S thoroughly into the
spirit of the commission given t.o him to spy out and arrest disaffected
persons; and finally, when Trissillian has to flee for his life, Nimble,
under pretence of saving him, betrays him to save himself. In the
role of Nimble some clown qualities are still fOllnd, such as his mis-
quotations of law-Latin, and his grandiloquellt, fantastic speech, of
which the following is a sample: 'always hopillg of your wonted
favour that when I have past the London Bridge of atHiction I may
arrive with you at the 'Vestminster Hall of promotion.' But ill
characters such as some of Lyly's servants and those of many later
1 ii. 1.
48 TIlE FOOL IN TIlE ELIZAllETHAN DHAMA
plays, the self-seeking, illtriguillg element is so developed as to
swamp the fool element eIltirely, and the resultillg figures are therefore
no longer clowns. As has already been mentioned ill conncxioll with
the qnestion of Italian influence, it was snch characters as these that
replaced the clownish SCITant in the later drama.
;-SOmuch for the millor types of stage fool. 'Vhat then was the
chief type of clown, and ill what way was he differentiated from the
other varieties? rro take the second question first,-in the complOnest
type of clown all three minor varieties are usually so blended that no
olle of them predominates in any marked degree, though naturally
there is no sharp line of demarcation between the chief and the
minor classes, and there are a number of characters whom it is difficult
to classify. If the clown amI the domestic or court fool be compared,
it will be seen that, on the whole, the clown is usually of a coarser
and more ignorant type, lacking the polish which the professional
fool usually exhibits in some degree. He is stupider too, than the
artificial fool, and yet he cannot be classed with the naturals, since he
often shows a shrewdness quite unlike the occasional inspired flashes
of the innocent. Nloreover, there are a considerable number of
independent clowns, and even in the case of some who are nominally
retainers, there is only very imperfect development of the relations
between fool and master, so important a feature in the character of
the domestic fool. The coarser and more stupid qualities of the
down seem to be due to the influence of the rustic-but on the other
hand the true clown is by no means as ignorant 01' stupid as the
rnstic, and shows far more knowledge of the world and its ways. It
may be remarked, too, that his tastes, like Touchstone's, are usually
,.l distinctly urban. Finally, the clown is differentiated from the third
l minor type, not only by some of the qualities mentioned with regard
to the domestic fool, but also by the almost entire absence of the
intriguing tendency which characterizes that class of servants . .Jb.ilike
__ (w,ben-.a __ some llD.ulillal
. \ ll1:!.ty to perform, but with him that_.Q!Lty-takes..only-a-secuntlary-pla.ce.
\. \ ,These remarks may help to explain what the normal clown was not.
"'-To show what he actually was is the purpose of the following account
of his development and characteristics.
Like the domestic and rustic fools of the drama, the regular clown
is to some extent foreshadowed in the l\loralities, though the clown
function of the Vice often becomes swamped by his other function.
In the earlier Vice figures (apart from Skelton's court fools) it is
difficult to trace anY,attempt at characterization as humorous figures.
rfheir comic qualities are always of the same primitive kind-horse-
CIIAltACTEHIZATION ,t9
play (chi('fiy consistillg' of hlows), \'iolellt auus(', oaths) and
jests, often frankly indecent. Bllt before the elld of the
period, there is Ilotaule de\'elopment in "arious directiolls. I n the
first place, the Vice, more than any other charader in the
tends at an early date to bccome concrcte. Evcn in J.lIllnkilld lVt.'
find in the fonr Viccs concrcte characters, who do much to atone
for their low standard of humour by their racy and picturesque
mallller of speech, which, as Galcy points out, is ' a finc cah'ance ill
the reproduction of the vulgar'. By the end of thc period the
transformation from abstract to concrete is cOI1)plete ill all but the
llames. Subtle-Shift 1 is merely an intriguing servallt, and Idlelless
in TIle Jlarriage of TfTit and TVisdom, already mcntioned, is a clown
with a strollg rustic tincture.
Idleness shows too that the Vice' has de\'eloped in another way: he
has become more stupid. The majority of Vices are cle\'er intriguers,
playing on others' credulity or stupidity, but in time they begin to
exhibit signs of stupidity themsehes. The first trace of this change
is seen in those plays where OllC of the Yices is rathcr less astute
than the othcrs. Thus in ResjJllblica (1553), whell Anlrice renames
thc minor Vices and himsclf, in ordcr to decei,'c Respublica, Adulation
cannot grasp the llew names, and thcre is a SCClle of foolillg when
Avarice tries to fix them in his memory.2 Adulation also forgets his
part ill conversation with Respublica, amI has to try to coycr up hin
blunders 3- an early example of those slips of the tOllgue which
bccarnc favourite comic devices with the later Vices, and from thelll
wcre handed dowll to the clowns. Stupidity such as Adulation's is
rarc in the Vice, but nevertheless hints of it do occasiollally appear,
and in Idlelless, thc last of the Vices, wc find a character who, though
he somctimcs deludcs others, is as frcquclltly a dupe himself. Some
of his misa(h'cnturcs are amllsing, as is the scelle wlrell Sllatch alld
Catch bind and muffle him and leavc him' a-mull1ming ' . 4
Another step ill the dC\'elopmcnt of the Yicc as a humoruus
character was to makc him direct his fUll against himself or his dis-
I'eputable confcderates. Jokes of this nature arc much superior ill
artistic effect to those levclled against ulamclcss persons, secure ill the
sellse of superiority and certaill of ultimate tri 11 111 ph. Thlls in Kill!J
Darius (1565), Ini(luity's jests at the expense of Equity awl Charity
compare ullfavourably with his gihes at his associates. 11 e calls thl'
lattcl' , drull liell knavcs', and whell tlrey illq lIire what Ire said, replics :
1 Sir CI!J(JIIIfJII lLml Sir CllllII.'ldes.
2 Eli, :\Iaglllls, H. g, T. S., 1" l-l. 3 I1,il!" 1'. I
4 Farmer, Fil'e A I/()/I,l/I//OI/.\' l'la.'l x, Pl'. :t.
D
50 THP. FOOL I ~ THE ELIZABETHAN DHAl\IA
I sayed yc were two hOliest men, by Illy faye.
Bnt surely, I did not so thynke,
No, that I dyd not, I swcarc by this drynkc.
These remarks reach no high standard of wit, but they mark an
ad"ance both artistically and satirically. As Gayley remarks,
'Comedy has learned a lcsson of social importance when she turns
her weapons, at last, against those who are desen-edly objects of
derision or contempt '. Sometimes we find the Vice acting as comic
and satiric chorus to the conversation of his associates, as in the case
of Hypocrisy mentioned in the last chapter. The later Vices, ,,,ho,
as a rule, have no confederates, frequently direct their uncomplimentary
pleasantries against the devil. Thus Nichol N ewfangle remarks 011
seeing him:
Sancte benedicite, whom have we here?
rrom Tum bIer, or else some dancing bear?
objects to doing reverence to him; pelTerts the polite address which
Lucifer dictates to him; and purposely misunderstands his directions
before he will deign to follow them.
1
Nichol, too, since he is one of
the few Vices who are definitely stated to ride off with the devil at the '
end, probably provided the audience with one of those scenes of
clownery which are frequently described in contemporary references
such as the following-' It was a pretty part in the old Church-Plays,
when the nimble Vice would skip up nimbly like a Jackanapes into
the devil's neck, and ride the devil a course, and belabour him with
his ,yooden dagger, till he made him roar, whereat the people would
laugh to see the de,il so vice-haunted.' 2
Nichol N ewfangle is indeed one of the most distinctly individual
comic characters among the Vices. Though, acting under the <levil's ;
instructions, he is the chief agent in bringing various sets of personages '
to grief, the ethical significance of his character is slight, and never i
swamps the comic element. Nichol's chief business is to amuse, and
that he is quite aware of that fact is evident from the moment when ;
he first enters with a greeting to the audience almost suggestive of :
the familiar 'Here we are again!' of the modern pantomime clown. I
Throughout the play he jests with the spectators and rallies them ;
with the confidence of a popular comedian. For his cool rascality he 1
-\ has been not unjustly compared with Autolycus, and once at least he .
shows a distinct resemblance to that personage-when he enters with '
'a bag, a staff, a bottle, and two halters, going about the place,
1 Like will to Like, Dod!'ley, iii, pp. 3U!)-lG.
2 Harsnett, Declaratioll (if' hgregiou8 Popish Impostures (1603).
EVOLUTION 51
showing it unto the audience', and singing, 'Trim merchandise, trim,
trim '.
The Yice was indeed becoming morc and more definitely a pro-
fessional comcdian. The com-ersations with the audience which are
so marked a characteristic of Nicbol occnr very frequently in the
roles of the later Vices, and comic devices of ntrious kinds appear in
increasing numbers. Besides the blunders mentioned above, pretended
misunderstandings and intentional are freqnent, and
purely comic scenes with little or no relation to the moral of the play
are more often introduced than formerly. In the Vice tragedies the
Vice sometimes has a scene of buffoonery with rustics on whom he
plays tricks, though at least once he is punished- and that by
a woman_
1
A comic touch of another kind occurs in the same play,
Cambyses (1569- 70), where Ambidexter enters' with an old cap case
on his head, an old pail abollt his hips for harness, a scum mer and
a pot-lid by his side, and a rake on his shoulder' and declares that
he is on his way to meet a remarkable series of foes:
Stand away, stand away for the passion of God;
Harnessed I am, prepared to the field:
I would ha\-e been contented at home to have bod,
But I am sent forth my spear and Rhield.
I am appointed to fight agaillst a snail,
And "'ilkin 'Y ren the ancient shall bear;
I doubt not bllt against him to prevail,
To be a man my deeds shall declare.
2
Inclination in The Trial! of Treasure (1567) also provides a good
deal of clowning, particularly whell, beillg bridled by the virtues, he
plays the horse.
3
These comic devices sOllnd crude, but douhtless
they were amusing enough on the stage. Idleness (perhaps the Viee
who is most definitely a clown, his ethical significance taking
a decidedly subordinate place), creates a more subtly hUlllorous
situation ill the scene where he dupes Search. The latter has becn
sent to arrest him, and sets him to make a proclamation demandillg
information concefllillg himself, all of which he of course pen-erts.
4
Little has beell said ill this accoullt of the comic value of the actnal
speeches of the Vice, for the reason that they seldom reach it ,'cry
high level in this respect. Of true wit Of hUlllour we filld ,'cry
, in the Moralities. Hut enollgh has been said to show that by t he j
end of his career the Vicc had developed into a professiollal cOllledi an
J I>ousley, i\', 1'1" 2 Jbid" p. 17(i.
3 Jbid., iii, I'P' 27B-!', 2!Ji.
4 Farmer, Pit'e Anonymolls Plays, pp. :W2- 4.
D 2
52 THE FOOL IN TIlE ELIZABETHAN DHAl\IA
/ of no mean ahility, and the down of later years found in his tricks
~ comic heritage of 110 small worth.
l ~ o r some years-roughly speaking, from about 1580 to 1590-Vice
and down overlapped, and though it is absurd to regard the latter as
being directly deri,'ed from the former, it was inevitable that there
__ s_h_o_uld be considerable interaction. To this period belongs a transitional
figure 0 great interest-Simplicity of Three Ladies of London (1584)
and its sequel (1590). Though nominally an abstraction, he is ill reality
a purely concrete figure; and he is llO Vice but a clown, the former's
intriguing function being given to a group of characters with no pre-
tensions to humour, and Simplicity's office being amusement only. His
character is drawn with a care and an ingenuity which are remarkable
considering his early date, and which are much superior to anything in
any other clown play before Greene's. But it lllllSt be remembered that
the author, 'Vilson
J
was himself a noted actor of clowns' parts, and
f hence had experience ill the devising of comic tricks. Like all true
\
clowns, Simplicity is a ludicrous mixture of shrewdness and stupidity .
.
,: He soon detects Fraud and his associates, describes them aptly and
. viddly, and makes smart comments on their remarks and actions. '
His description of FraudJs 'arms' which he saw' hang out of a stable-
door' deselTes quotation:
Marry, there was nerer a scutcheon, but there was two trees
rampant,
And then over them lay a sour tree passant,
'Yith a man like you in a green field pendant,
Having a hempen halter about his neck, with a knot under
left ear
J
because you are a younger brother
Then, sir, there stands on each side, holding up the cres',
A worthy ostler's hand in a dish of grease.
Besides all this, on the helmet stands the hangman's hand,
Ready to turn the ladder, whereon your picture did stand:
Then under the helmet hung cables like chains, and for what
they are I cannot devise,
Except it might be to make you hang fast, that the crows might
pick out your eyes.
"
~
But on the other hand, Fraud in disguise easily dupes him into
I wasting his money on worthless merchandise.
l
l\loreover, like other '
I clowns, he thinks himself far shrewder and wiser than he is. He \
patronizes the lord's pages, and cannot see that they are chaffing hi m'
when they pretend to admire him. Thus when 'Yill explains that
they are laughing 'Because your wit was so great in expounding ,
your meaning', Simplicity remarks complacently, 'Ye may see it is I
1 Dodsley, vi, pp. 438-40.
IN 53
a good thing to have wit'. Like most of his Sll('cessorR he devotes
it great deal of thonght to the !';ubject of food and drink, of which he
continually babbles, and he is absurdly afraid of his wife awl anxiolls
her. His attempt to punish Fraud must ha\'e bee II
a of clowning. He is ;tllowed to run nt him hliJl(l.
folded with a lighted torch, hilt being tU1'lled roulld first he loses his
bearings, ami burns a post instead, the ashes of which are shown him
as being Fraud's, when he inquires ill great cxcitement, ' Han' I heated
his lips? Havc I warll1'd his nose, and scorched his face?' 1 As
a matter of fact, Simplicity is a far better de"eloped character than
allY of the earliest clowns distinctly so called, and the play itself,
though allegorical, has too much vitality to form an inappropriate
setting.
But Simplicity's contemporaries are 1I0t worthy companion!'; for
him. ,\Vith the beginning of the regular drama the developmellt of
the mcrry-maker as a humorous character suffers a relapse, similar to,
and no doubt partly involved ill, that relapse noticed in his
mellt as a dramatic figure. The more closely a clown is \
with the action of a play, the more extensivc are his opportunities for IV
humour, particularly the subtler kinds of humour; so to some extent
the de\'clopment of the fool as a humorous character follows his
dramatic deyelopmellt. It is not Rllrprising, therefore, that Greene's
clowns are the first to show any considerable merit in characterization.
'rhe earlier sketches are usually "ery crude. That of 'rl'Otter 2 is
perhaps one of the best of them, though the role is a small one. The
workmanship of the play is poor, but the scene of Trotter's ridiculous
and presumptuous wooing of Em is quite amusing in its way, as
when he breaks into verse:
Ah mark the device-
For thee, Illy full sick 1 waR, in hazard of my life,
Thy promise was to make me whole, and for to be my wife.
Let me enjoy my lo\'e, my dear,
And thou possess thy 'rrotter' here.
3
But of such a character as Derrick in The Famous Victories of
l1em'y V (written before 1588), Collier's remark is jnst- ' That
Tarlton was able to make anything out of such ullpromising I1laterials
affords strong evidence of the origillal resources of that extraordillary
performer. '
in Friar Bacon and Friar Bllll!Jay, however, who appeared
shortly after Derrick, is a really humorous clOWII. He is a hopeless
1 p. 50]. Fair Em.
3 Simpson, '!! Shukt'Spcart', \'01. ii, Pl" 422- 3.
- )
54 THE FOa L IN THE DRAl\IA
dunce in spite of all his master's efforts to instruct him, but the
scraps of Latin alld other leaming which he has picked up make his
speeches the morc amusing, as when he remarks in bringing in books,
, Ecce quam bonum ct quam jucundum habitarc libros ill unum', or
when, as often, he breaks into macaronic vcrse. Though a stupid
hlunderer, l\lilcs has a good deal of wit. 'Yhcn Burdell is depreciat-
ing Bacon's powers, who has a wholesomc fear of his master,
remarks of Burden, ' sir, he doth but fulfil ... the fable of
the Fox and the Grapes: that which is above us pertains nothing to
us.' He shows his quickness of repartee when he replies to Bacon's
challenge to prove 'ego' a substanti,'e, "Yhy, sir, let him prove
!
lhil1lSclfe and a will: 'I' can be heard, felt, and understood.' His
amusing monologue while he keeps watch over' Gondman Head ',
1
is
. anticipatory of those of Shakespeare's downs, while 011 the other
l hand his contented departure to hell with the devil at the end links
\ him with the Vices of the past.
. The decade which elapsed between the appearance of l\liles and that
of his brother-clown Slipper was a period of development ill various
directions. ""T e find no personage showing an all-round advance in
characterization (none, indeed, equal to and clowns of
Derrick's type still appear,2 but the improvement which many clowns
show ill different respects points to an increasing care in characteriza-
tion. Piston in Soliman and Perseda (159:2) provides no striking
instance of wit, but his debate with himself when he is entrusted
with the carcanet,3 thOligh scarcely humorous, shows the gl'Ound-
work on which was afterwards built the immortal argument between
the fiend and Launcelot Gobbo's conscience. Suggestive of later
downs, too, is his teasing of the braggart knight Basilisco.4, His
shrewd hints to his master form a link between him and the sharp-
witted servants of Ragan's type, but the method which he employs is
not Ragan'S but that of the domestic fool, for he introduces his
suggestion of false dice .'vith the tentative remark, 'I, but heare you,
Maister, was not he a foole that went to shoote, and left his arrows
bel.!iEde him? ' 5 If
I Advance in other di'l:ections is seen in Strumbo of Locrine (1594),
( a character of considerable vitality, showing the presence of various
I elements which had important developments later. In the first place,
he anticipates some characteristics of Falstaff, for although he claims
1 Gayley, Representath'e Comedie.'S, vol. i, pp. 485-6.
2 e. g. Tom l\1iller in Life and Death of Jack Straw (1593).
S Soliman and Perseda, ii. 1. 4 Ibid., i. 4.
5 Ibid., ii. 1.
fJ;3
to great courage, whell the battle hegills he l'xclailIls,
, 0, horrible, terrihle!' and hastens to sa"e himself hy sh:unming
death.
1
Also, his style of speech shows one mode which was to
become popular with the language, ill
which Strull1uo delights, particularly ,,'(willg, albeit his
heartJ!;) quite unable to understand it.
2
One of his fine speeches is
of Euphui;';;-' 1, maisters, ,you may laugh, but I must
",eepe: you may joy, but I must sorrow, sheading salt tears frolll the
watrie fOllntains of my moste daintie faire eies, along my comely and
smooth checks, in as great plentie as the water runneth from the
uucking-tubbes, or red wine out of the hogs hcads.' But while in
grandiloquence of speech Stl'umho may be held to anticipate such
characters as the bom bastic DOll Armado, his blunders, OIl the other
hand, link him with the Bottom
\Vithin a year Bottom hilllself appeared, to be followed shortly by
several more of Shakespeare's early clO\\'IlS, so that frolll this time we
may expect to find tmces of Shakespeare's influence. One of the
first of these signs is probably the change which Lyly's comic sernmts
undergo. In most of his plays they are rather jesters than dowlls,
but Gunophilus, Pandora's servant,:1 and the> unfortunate "ictilll of all
the changes in her disposition, is of a more clownish type, As Bond
has noted, the proportion of true humour to mere superficial wit is
greater in the case of GUllophilus than in that of his predecessors.
Particularly in his' rueful apprcciatioll of his OWI1 mishaps' he seems
to show the influcncc of the Shakespearian clown.
There is no definitc trace of Shakespeare's influence in Slipper, but
he is a distinctly different type from .:\Iiles, for though foolish enough
to let his money be stolen, he is hy no mealls as stupid as and
his remarks are decidcdly wittier aIld more amusing. On the whole,
he is a subtler and more fanciful charader. The difference betweeIl
the two lllay be compared with the hetween their ends, for
while rides off on the devil's back to be a tapster ill hell,
Slipper is carried away hy Oberon and his' antiques '. Roundahout
and fantastic speech is popular with him---:also riddling allswers, as
when, asked where his master is, he replics, ' Neither aho\'e ground
, nor ullder ground, drawing out red into white, swallowillg down('
without chawing that was never made without trcading " hy which,
as he e\'cntually explains, he means that his master is 'ill his seller,
drinking a cup of neate alld hriske claret in a howle of siln'I'.'
A delightful example of his allusi,'c method of spcakillg is the way ill
I Lor,Tine, ii. G. 2 'hil!" i. :-:,
3 The Womlln in the Milone (1.'i!)7),
56 THE FOOL IN TIlE ELIZABETl-iAN DRAMA
which hc gets food and drink from the countess by hints- ' Oh what
a happie gentlewoman hee you trulie! the world reports this of you,
:MistI'cs!'e, that a man can no sooner come to your house but the
Butler comcs with a blaeke Jack and sayes, '\V cleomc, friend,
hearl's a cup of thc best for YOll." 1 He is 'swift and sententious'
and ready with his answers, as when he proves that, being a horse-
keeper, hc is a gentleman, since' they that do good sen-icc in the
Commollweale are gcntlemen; but such as rub horses do good sel'\'ice
in the Commonwealc; Ergo, tarbox, J\laster Courtier, a Horse-
keeper is a Gentleman '. As these remarks suggest, he is important
and self-satisfied, especially when ordering h ~ s new clothes.
2
Of
moral sense, like most clowns, he is quite destitute. '\iVill I, sir? "
he replies eagerly, when offered a bribe to steal his master's letters;
, Why, were it to rob my father, hang my mother, or any such like
trifles, I am at your commaundement, sir. lrhat will you give me,
'r-?...1- --
r But one does not <[llarrel with a clown for lack of moral sense,
unless the dramatist fails to make this want amusing, as is the case in
,
I The Old Law, which appeared a year or two after Jmnes IV. A comic
i
dramatist of greater genius than J\fiddleton could have drawn much
entertaining matter from Gnotho's attempt to dispose of his old wife
in order to marry a new one, but on the whole this clown is not
sufficiently humorous to be anything but a distinctly llnpleasant
character, He is coarse and shameless, and much of his jesting is
either too foolish or too grim to be funny. An example of the latter
variety is his explanation of the situation of his two wives to the duke
'As the destiny of the day falls out, my lord, one goes to ,,'edding,
another goes to hanging; and your grace, in the due consideration,
shall find 'em much alike; the one hath the ring upon her finger, the
other a halter about her neck. "I take thee, Beatrice," says the
bridegroom; " I t a k ~ thee, Agatha," says the hangman; and both say
together, to have a ~ d to hold, till death do part us.' He is perhaps
most amusing where he moralizes, as at the end, where he poses as
a much injured man-' Your grace had been more kind to your
young subjects-heaven bless and mend your laws, that they do not
gull your poor countrymen in this fashion : but I am not the first, by
forty, that has been undone by the law. 'Tis but a folly to stand
upon terms,'
Gnotho has been described partly as a warning that Slipper must
not be taken as representative of the clown at the end of the sixteenth
century. But from about this time we notice a decided general
1 James IV, ii. 1. ~ Ibid., iv. 3.
EVOLUTION 57
impro\'ement ill characterizatioll, accompanyillg" alld pmhahl)' partly
consequent Oil that ill1pro\'emcnt in c1l'amatic treatment in thc
last chapter, and likc that doubtless partly duc to thc ilIfluC'llce of
Shakespeare. In all probability his dowils IlOt only othcr
dramatists but also did to cultivate the public taste in
clo\\'nage. In the first decade of the seventeenth cpntury, though
a few crudely-sketched characters still appear,1 the e\'olution of
clowns as a class in characterization, as ill other respects, reaches its
highest pitch; and from this point it is impossiblc to trace chrolIo-
logical developlllent further. All that can be done is to point out
some \'arieties of the mature dowll. The nOlI-servant clowns, being
may be taken first.
A character somewhat reminiscent of Gnotho, but decidedly more
amusing, is Scull1hroth, the cOllvent cook in Dekker's play, If tltis be
not a Good Play, tlte Dail is in it (1612). Like Gllotho) he is
something of a rogue, hut. ulIlike that of Gnotho and sHch characters
as tIl{' cowardly, greedy clown of The FOl(}' Prelltices q/ London
(c. 1600), SClll11broth's roguery is on the whole rather di\'erting than
offensi\'e. Once or t"'icc 11(' appears in a merely ullall1iable light, as
when, after receidng half the gold found by the Sub-Prior on the
condition that he gives the remainder to the poor, he remarks asidl',
C Foole: Ile gi\'e the blill(le a dog to lead 'em. the lame shall to the
whipping-post, the sick shall dye in a cage) and the hungry leap at
a crust; I {eede magues) the pox shall'. But as a rule his foihles
are amusing, as is his Im'e of good cheer, which makes him .111 ardent
ally of the demon Shacklcsoul when the latter sets to work to corrupt
the c0\1vel1t.
2
His greed emboldens him to COli verse ('oolly and
impudently with the Golden Hl'ad whell it appears, after the mallller
of Miles) as whell he retorts to the remark 'That gold is lIone of
thine ') 'But all the craft in that great head of yours callnot get it out
of my fingers.' amusing of all is the scene where) cl'Ouching ill
the tree which he has dim hed in search of more gaill) he listells ill
alarm to the devils' conferencp and makes half scared, half satirical
remarks thereon, such as (whell they emhrace) 'Sllre these are 110
Christian Divels, they so 100'e one another.' rl'hc situatioll grows
ludicrous \"hell to his horror he discO\'ers that his own fate is the
subject of their cOII\ersatioll.:
J
A more attractive type of character is that represented hy Bamahe
BUllch 'the Botc1H'I" in The TVeakest ,floeth to the 117(1// (HiOO).
1 e. g. ClowlJ ill if :1JIJIl kl/ow /I/Jf JIIf' ,7/UII klloll' Xllf,lIdy.
2 Dekker's Works, ell. BlIllCIl, \'01. iii, 1'. 2B:3.
S I hill., PI'.
58 THE FOOL TIlE
Like most clowlls, hc seems to have a fairly sharp eye on thc main
chance, for he asks Lodowick to send hack as many diseases as
possible fl"Om Frallce so that he lllay make a good thing of grare-
diggillg, but he is ne\'cr grasping or greedy. "Yhy, what do ye
think of me ?' he asks when offered a reward, ' a horseleech to suck
ye ?' He shares the exile of Lodowick and his family with unselfish
deY(>tion, and once shows remarkable delicacy-when he takes thc
FlemiIlg aside while Lodowick says farewell to his wife.
l
Barnabe
is always contented and good-tempered. He first appcars singing at
his work, his songs being scraps of ballads apparently suggested to
his mind by passing e\'ents.2 There is it ludicrous scene of mis-
ullderstanding between him and the Fleming,
3
and his wistful pane-
gyric 011 English ale is also amllsing-' This France I confesse is
a goodly Countrey, but it breeds no Ale hearbes, good water thats
drinke for a horse, and de vine blanket, and de vine Coverlet, dat is
rine Claret for great outrich cobs. ,yo ell fare England, where the
poore may have a pot of Ale for a penney, fresh Ale, finne Ale,
nap pie Ale, nippitate Ale, irregular, secular Ale, couragious, con-
tagions Ale, alcnmistical1 Ale '.
Still more jovial than Barnabe, and more of a clown, is 'Vi1l
Cricket, the appropriately-named merry-maker of TVily Beguiled
(1606), who is described as 'the merriest wooer in all womanshire '.
He constantly acts as jester, and makes some smart answers and
comments when in company with the principal characters, whose
natures and relations he appears to understand fairly well. But as
a lover he is, though successful, utterly ludicrous, as when he analyses
his emotions in absurd terms or describes his lady's charms in
language worthy of Pyramus :
Then say I, sweet honey, honey, sugar-candy Peg,
'Vhuse face more fair than Brock my father's cow;
Whose eyes do shine
Like bacon-rine;
\Vhose lips are blue,
Of azure hue;
crooked nose down to her chin doth bow.
4
'Yhen we turn to the servant-clowns find such a bewildering
number that it is difficult to make a selection. But in the first place
one may be chosen to show what stage had been reached in the
development of this type at the beginning of the seventeenth century,
and thus about the middle of Shakespeare's career. For this purpose
1 Malone Society Reprints, Sr. "ii.
4 Dousley, ix, p. 244.
2 Ibid., Sc. ii. 3 Sc. iv.
59
Pipkin, the SCITant of Young Arthlll' and his wife ill I/ow 10 choose
II good I rite .Iiolll II Bad (1602), may be selected. Ile is onc of the
garrulous, good-for-nothing clowns who are more lllischienJlls thall
helpful, but Ilcycrtheless h:\\'e many attractirc and ('\'ell lo"abl('
qualities. It takes a considerable time to induce Pipkin to cease his
chatter and start Oil all errand; alld ",hell he is at home thl' lIlaid
complains that 110 one can' kcep his fingers from the roast', amI also
that he is ' such a slo\'en :
That lIothing will sit handsome ahout him;
He had a pound of soap to scour his face,
And yet his brow looks like the chimney stock.'
As a scholar, too, he is hopeless, judging from the amusillg scclle at
Amilladab's school (where, notwithstanding his late arri\'al
and his lamentable ignorance of Latin, he mall ages to a\'oid punish-
mcnt for onee),1 and also from his own account of his scholastic
career-' Let lIle see, what agc am I? some four-and-twenty; and
how have I profited? I was five years learning to criss cross from
great A, and the years longer coming to F, ... And so forth: so that
I am become the greatest scholar ill the school, fur I am bigger than
two or three of them.
2
, His employment of his scraps of leal'lling:l
reminds us of another unsatisfactory scholar, But though he
is incapable of learning, he has wit enough to grasp the state of
affairs betweell his master alld mistress. he sho\\'s gO(Jd
feeling as well as good sense, and seellls really fond of his master
and mistress. IIis lamentations whell ArthUl' is supposed
to he dead are apparently sincere though extra\'agant,4 ami his
attachment to Arthur Illay he inferred from the new wife's order:
Go, turn hilll out of doors;
None that loves Arthur shall ha\'e house-room here.
Fleay's assignation of this play to Heywood is probably incorrect,
hut it cannot be denied that Pipkin, though his role is smaller thall
that of Heywood's best clowns, sho,,"s distillct affinities to them.
Some rcmarks on Heywood's downs will fittingly conclude this
study of the evolution of the fool in characterization; for these downs
cover practically thc wholc of the remainder of the fool's career, gin'
a good idea of the variety in artistic merit shown by the fool e\'en at
this period, and indude prohahly the best-developed fools of the
whole drama apart from Shakespeare's. In the extant ,,'orks of this
most prolific writer at least fifteell downs appeal', ranging over
a period of some forty years-roughly, from about 1594 to 16:3+.
Iii. 1. 2 iii. 1. 3 V. 1.
iii. :1.
60 THE FOOL IN THE DRAMA
As bc expectcd, they arc of very unequal merit in character-
izatioll as well as in dramatic importallce. One or two are of cxt!'eme
crudcness, notably the clown of 'If you kllow not me'. Those of
the plays 011 classical subjccts,1 an', as has already heen melltiolled,
spoilt by the extremc uwmitahility of their scttillgs, if not by clumsy
or careless workmanship. Thus Pompey is not only an exceedingly
coarsc and unpleasant charactcr, hut is tota.lly out of place ill such
a story as that of Lucrece. Other clowns again, such as the onc in
The Royal Ifill!} and lite Loyal Subject, have too little humour or wit
to be anything but dull and tediolls.
But Heywood is no more faulty in these respp.cts than many of his
contemporaries, amollg whose clO\vns parallels to the imperfect
characters just mentioned are easily found. And on the other hand
four of his clowns stand ont conspicuously not only alllong his own
merry-makers but also among those of the whole period, and Illay be
taken as representative in characterization as in other respects of the
highest development of the clown along ordinary lines.
2
These four,
Roger, Fiddle, Clem, and Simkin show distinctly individual character-
istics. Roger and Fiddle may he classed together, since each is
conspicllons for his wit and his elegant language. Of the two Roger
is the more fantastic in speech. He delights in long fanciful accounts
of scenes and events. Thus he describes a feast to his mistress in
such terms as to make her believe that he has been witnessing all
awful massacre, and sustains the illusion for a considerable time.
3
His wit is partic\llarly smart and ready, and is continually com-
mended:
Dalavill. I doe not think but this fellow in time may fo), his wit
and understanding make Almanackes ? .
Clown. Not so, sir, you being much more judiciolls than I, Ill'
give you the preeminence in that, because I see by proofe you have
s11ch iudgment in times and seasons.
Dal. And why in times and seasons?
CI. Because you have so seasonably made choise to come so iust
at dinner-time.
Fiddle's wit is also m\leh admired. One of the best examples is the
way ill which he wheedles money out of Berry:
Fid. Have you allY skill in Arithmeticke ?
Be';'. VVhy <lost thou aske ?
1 Golden Age (date unknown), Age (15!),5 ?), Rape of L1lc1'ece (c. 1604) .
. 'Vith them may be compared Hobin in "rilkins's Niseries of Eliforced
Marriage (lG07), Shorthose in lVU 1)'ithollt MOlley (1614 ?), and others.
;) The Hng/ish Trm'clle1' (c. 1(27), Heywood's Works, \'01. iv, pp. 25-6.
EVOLUTIO:\ IN Gl
Fid. Sir, I would YOIl to lIlultiply; could you Hot make
this OJle shilling two or three? I wonld Ilot he kn()wnc to heg, but
if you can doe this trick of multiplication I shall speckc the
better .... So, sir, this is l'lultiplicatioll, 1I0W, sir, if yon kllow the
Rule of addition you a 1'(\ :tn excellellt can you not
adde? I
His languagc is \'ery grandiloqucnt and eloqucnt, and his opinion of
himself is decidedly high. Aftel' his disagreemcnt with BowdleI' he
makes peace magnanimously allli condesccmlingly, though the fault
was entirely his own-' 'Vhy, then, allgcr ayoid the roome, melallcholy
march away, choler to the lICxt chamber, and here's my hand. I am
yours to commalld from this time forth, your ycry morta]] friend and
loring enelllY, master Fiddle,' And Bowdler, who, like e\'eryolle else,
is fona of him, at once yields: 'Fiddlc, gi\'c IIlC thy hand, a plague
011 thee, thou knowest I 10\'c thec'.
Fiddle has little opportunity for the display of deeper and gravel'
qualities, but traces of these appear in hoth Rogcr and Simkin.
Roger'S apparent grief at his mistress's sad cnd has already been
mentioned 2; and Simkin gh'es e\'en clearer proof of his kindness of
heart. Though at first his chief idea appears to be the prospective
wedding-feast, as SOOIl as his young maste)' gcts into troublc he is
filled with pity which is e\'idently sincere, though extrayagantly
expressed, and at once promises his help.3 He shows righteous
indigllation, too, at Old Harding's treatmcllt of Philip, and the faith-
lesslless of the latter's friends. The way in which he works upon the
friends' greed to illllllce them to help his master is derer, and it is not
his fault that his scheme fails,4 At times too Simkin shows COIl-
siderable wit, as when he replies to Philip's remark that:
Nonc but stich a father
Could so translate his childrell,
, Oh, Philip! I see your father is no scholar, but a meer dllnce.
I protest I lIe\'er read it morc vile translatioll.' I Ie delights in
puzzling his hearers by 1'01IIldahout lallguage, often quite ullintelli-
gible.
5
He is grandiloquent, too, his speech, sometimes substitutillg
a simplcr word' for the vulgar .', in the style of TOllchstone.
Clem, the Fair 'drawer', is agaiu of a different type-
coarser, Illore \irill', and perhaps more typically English, alld there-
fore in keeping with the play, which brcathes the very spirit of
Elizabethall England. He lIses less am hitious langnage than the
) The Fair .Mnid (if the 8 .nhrlll!JC' (HiOi), Ilcyw()o!l'" WIJl'ks, ii, p.
2 Sec above, p. 51. 3 FortI/lie h.11 1,lIl11lalld :::;ea, ii. 1.
4 ii. 4. G iii. I.
(jQ THE FOOL IN THE ELIZABE'l'HAN DHAl\lA
othcr threc clmnls, and does not so often display the filler varieties
of wit, hut sOllle of the jests in which he contillually indulges, in
season or out of seaSOll, arc very good, as is his account of the
different kimh; of wille,l or his remark when the sailors wish to havc
their account scored up-' They took nH' for a simple gull, indeed,
that would have had me to have taken chalk for cheese.' ~ / r o r e o v e r ,
his adYCntllres whik follmdng his mistress's fortunes Oll land and sea
give him wider opportunities for his wit thall fall to the lot of thc
other clowns. rrhllS we have the benefit of his opinion of the 'Moors:
'I have obscn'ed the wisdom of these :Moors: for some two days
since, being iuvited to one of the chief bas haws to dinner, after meat,
seated by a huge fire, and feeling his shins to bum, I requested him
to pull back his chair, but he very undcrstalldingly sellt for three or
four masons, and removed the chimney.' His ad\'entures also produce
some amusing accounts of his misfortunes.
2
One at least of these is
due to his love of gain, a fairly prominent feature of his character.
E"en when his mistress is captured by bandits his chief concern
seems to be for his wages.
3
But on the whole he selTes her faithfully
and cheerfully enough, in adversity as well as in prosperity. His
jovial, kindly clowning, sustained throughollt the two 10llg parts of
\ the play, may be taken as typical of the' honest English clown'
l at his IJPst.
1 Fair .J/aid ,go the West (before WI';), Shakespeare Society, 18.50, p. 4.5.
2 e. g. p. 59. 3 p. 141.
CHAPTER IV
THE SA:\IE CONTIKUED- SU:\I:\lARY OF
CHAIL\C1'ERISTICS.
THE outline of the dl'wlopment of the stage fool gi,'en in the two
preceding chapte)'s is necessarily very incomplete, and call give no
clear pictnre of the clown ill general. As an attempt to supply these
deficiencies, a sUllllllary will here be given of the principal character-
istics of the fool both ill the printed and in the acted play. Some of
these qualities are cOlllmon enough in themseln's and by no means
essentially comic, though they are converted into comic by thc
downs. In the first place, the stage fool
of creature comforts, hating a)Ht rrJlysical discomfort of
'lEd fuss. when any such trial falls to
his lot. Particular!}' does he to and thirst)
anxiety ahout food and drink is one of his earliest characteristics. It
is indirectly of tIle Vices and
directly in that of the later ones; and it figures prominelltly ill the
role of Simplicity, thc first pure clown, ,,,ho on making Hospitality's
acquaintance promptly invites himself to dinner, but scoms hi3 plaill
fare, and after his murder refuses to mourn for him, because:
He was all old churl, with Jlever a good tooth ill his head.
He had lIothing Imt beef, brcad and chet'se for me to eat.
Now I would ha,-e had some pies, 01' bag-puddillgs with great
lumps of fat.
l
And this characteristic persists throughout the clOWII'S histmy. \Y ('
find Simkill gloating o\'er the expected weddillg-fcast, of which he
gives a fantastic description: ' This being thc wedding-day of my
master's eldest SOil, I expect rmc cheer; as, first, the great
cake to go in, cake-bread fashioll, drawll out with l'\1I'1"ants: the
jealous furmety mllst put 011 his yellow hose again, alld hot pies COllie
mincing after: the boiled muttoll IIIUSt swim ill a rire .. of stewed
broth, where the chanllel is made of prunes illstead of and
prime raisins and currallts ill thc stead of checker-stones alld gr;n'e!
1 Three /.(lflies qf LOlldoll, J)o(hdc)" vi) p. :318.
/
64 THE FOOL IN THE ELIZABETHAN DRAMA
to omit geese and gulls, ducks and dotterels, widgeons and wood-
cocks, of which there will be plenty'. Sometimes food of some kind
seems to be Ilsed as a comic propelty. III J{ing Darius Iniquity
says to Constancy:
Nay, thcn I will give you no bread and butter.
Herc, take some-
and the Simpleton!; of the DroUs also appear munching huge slices of
bread-and-butter. In connexion with the fool's love of comfort may
be mentioned another point already noticed-his preference of urban
to rustic life. This is notably the case with Shorthose,1 who laments
bitterly on hearing of his mistress's intention to leave town, and
rejoices greatly when she changes her mind.
Fine clothes also have considerable attraction for the clown-
a characteristic probably &ri-;ed partly from tIle nahlral fools) who
seem to have delighted in Qrnaments al)d bdght cQlonrs. Thus Slipper,
on receiving his reward from Bartram, promptly lays it out on finery,2
which he never obtai"ns, as he loses his money, so we do not see him
flaunting as \ve see Clem 3 and Shadow.
4
And since one needs money
I
I for fine clothes and food and drink, the clown lm'es money too, and
uses all his wits to obtain it. Fiddle's Feste-like mode of begging
been quoted. Other fools use more questionable methods.
The clown in Sir Thomas TVyat appropriates the price of Homes's
betrayal of his master, and Piston rifles Ferdinand's dead body.5
Food and drink the clown often steals outright, as l\Iouse steals the
pot of ale. G And for gain or ' preferment', he is often content to be
a time-server, as is the case with Lentulo, who readily deserts his old
master for Penulo in the hope of a place at court.7 This love of gain
sometimes leads him into trouble. An early example of this occurs ill
Appius and Virginia, where Haphazard's anxiety to claim his reward
brings about his undoing; and in the same way Clem's anxiety for
'honour' gets him into trouble at the court of Fez.
This brings us to another point-t.be is freJrll ..
to play practical jokes, as when Revenge sets rustics at
lo..ggerh-;;Uis, s- mHl Taber gets money from his master on false
1 Fletcher, IVU u'ithollt .... llOIlt'.'I , iii. 1.
James IV, iv. 3. 3 Fair ....lIaid of the lVe,st, Part I, Act v.
4 Dekker, Old FOl'iUllutll8 (Wor/(.\, eel. Bullen, yol. i, p. 13D).
5 Solimuu. llnd Persl'r/a, ii. 1.
e .JIncedorll.'f, Dodsley, yii , p. 234.
7 Rare Triumphs qf Love awl Fortllue, Dodsley, vi, p. 182.
8 Pickering, Horestes, ed. Collier in lllllstratinws of Old Ellglish Literature,
yolo ii, pp. 5, 6.
SUM?\L\HY OF CIL\IL\CTEHISTICS G.)
; 1 lJllt Oil the other halld, he is Jre4ucntly tilt'
victilll himsl'lf, either wits, as isUrimill DamOJL alld Pl/thius,
r of his and folly, the. J,;asc with who
mistakes thc echoes of his OWll questions for answcrs, and acts IIpOIl
them acconlingly.2
)Iorcon:-r, fool oftClL a. cow<lnl. lIe is rcady ellough to r
' v'
threatell-lhe_ Vices arc particularly conspicllolls ill this respect:J
-but he usually ll!akes a POOL' show if allyolle cOllfronts him
resolutely; e\'cn if it be only a \roman. Strumbo's Falstafl1all
beh,l\'iour in battle has alrcady berll describcd. So ill The Blind
Beggar of Bednall Green, though Swash, ",hell cntrnsted with his
master's mOllcy, boasts mightily of his desire to mect a thief and
prorc his nllollr, as soon as the desired marauder appears he surrenders
with ludicrolls abjectness-' I pl'ay you, do hind IlH' hard, do, good
)Ir. Theef, hardcr yet, Sir.' 'YhCll married, the clown is usually the
humhle slil\'c of a shrewish wifc, as is the case with Simplicity and
Bullitllrulllble.
Allothcl' elllotion which oftcll cxhibits the fool in a ridiculous light \
is that of Ion'. Someti.lllcs his passioll is hopel ess, as in the case of _
'{'!'Otter alld it is less alllbitiolls, it is
emincntly successful, as is that uf Cricket. But always it
ill a flood _cxtranlgant exclalllatiolls. SOllle
l'xamples of these already beell g-i\'cn, but a quotation frolll
Strumbo -1 lllay be added-' Oh wit, Oh pate, 0 Illcmorie, 0 halld,
o illk,,, 0 pap"r!' Thc lm'e-affairs of two dOWJls arc particularlr
lloteworthy, ill that they resl'llIble Touchstolle' s wooing of
Frog-'s cOlldescellding address to DOllee, CJl(lillg--' as that
\YOl'thie Philosophel' Hector scs, the words
Of the wise do offelld the foolish, so
DOllce, ill few words :\lld tediolls talke
Tell me when is the day'-
may have beell illspire,l by the tOile of Touchstonc's courtship, since
The Fair i.llaid of B,'is/oll' appeared some years later than As } 'UIl
Like it. The l} Ilestioll of illdebtedness is 1ll0l'e dOllhtful ill n'ganl tll
.. Yobody llnd Somebody, for this play seems to ha\'e heen acted abollt
1592 but revised about IG06. BIlt that there was illdehtedlll'ss Oil
one sidc seems pl'Obablc, for the way ill which t he clown carries lItY
the girl from the country fellow to wholll she was betrothcd is decidedly
J IIcywoo,I, lJ'ise lJ'omClII oj' J!o!Jsdo/l, ii. :!,
Dekker, If tMs 1)1: 1I0t (l (Jour! jJII1!I, the /J('('if is ill it,
3 c. g. Folly ill The Wurld liml ('hild. 4 Lucrille, i, ::.
E
(W TIlE FOOL TIlE DRA::\IA
]'('lllini5ccnt of the Illanner in which TonchstOlH' calTies off Audrey
from '" ill iam.
l
To come to those characteristics which belong lllore essentially to
the clown. Of his and his more acrobatic tricks we know
little, except frolll contemporary references, for IJaturally there are
of these tricks in the printed ,'ersions of t.he plays. 'Ve
can 5ec, howeyer, that .!,bel'e was grcat deal of
and the earlier regular
who usually -.S<.'attCLblows liberally around them. That
this fighting was regarded as a regular source of diversion is clear
from such stage-directions as the following (referring to Hapha.lard's
fight with :Marian)-' then one on the top of another make pastime'.
ccasionally 'We lUlve O!!ler 'Ve
can picture Inclination, bridled, prancing round the stage, neighing
throwing up his heels,2 or Simplicity, blindfolded, charging at
a post with his torch.
3
These traces become rarer in the later plays,
though they still occur, as in IfYOll know not me, you know .1Yobody,
where the clown pulls away Beningfield's chair, remarking, ' God's
pity, I think YOll are down '. But that there was a great deal of
buffoonery which is not represented in the plays is clear frolll con-
temporary accounts, two of which have already been quoted-one
concerning the Vice and the other concerning the clown. 1.'he
, SCUlTY faces' mentio!led in the latter seem to have been particularly
popular. Simon in The lJfayor of Queenbo]'oZlgh objects that the
players' clown is ' too 'fair, i'faith, to make the people laugh .. he
will never look half scurvily enough'. A fuller account of the fool's
tricks occurs in the Praeludiulll to Goffe's Careless Shepherdess:
Landlord . . Fave laughed
Un till I cry'd again to see what Faces
Rogue will make: 0 it does me good
'fa see him hold out's chin, hang down his hands,
Aud twirle his Bauble. There is nere a part
About him but breaks jests. I heard a fellow
Once on this stage cry Doodle, Doodle, Dooe,
Beyond compare.
4
Similarly, clown's_ dancing Eut few i!lthe plays,
but references show that dances accompanied by the
Eipe and tabor were sometimes given between the acts, and also
1 Simpson, School of Shakespeare, vol. i, p. 281.
2 Triall of' Treasure, Dodsley, iii, p.
3 Tlo"/!e Lords find Three Llldie.<i, Dodsley, vi, p. 501.
4 Cf. JImtill's .Mullth'8 Nilld for acconnt of the stage fool's tricks.
SU.:\D[AH Y OF CI L\lL\C'l'EHISTICS oi
formed -an -important of the concluding jig,l Kelllp's fam(Jus
Illorris-danct' from Londo\} to N OI'wich provt's him to han' oeell all
expert performer. In thc extant plays, Slipper is thc only clown who
is represented as dancing with the definitc purpose of gi\'ing
entertainment (though one or two others takc part ill danccs ill the
course of the play). In thc introductory sccne hc and his brother
the dwarf' dance a gig devised for the " and when his father
again: calls upon him he enters' with a compallion, boy or -d
dancing a hOl'llpipc'.
But '}'itILri'gacl.to the songs which were so element ./'"
in the clown's role, thcre is no crldence, fOl' bcsidcs""" J
forming part of the cntcrtainments,
they were frequently interspersed in and hence
the record at least has sllr\jycd. rrhis is notably the case with Vices,
\'cry few of wholll do not at least propose a song, e\'ell if it is not
gi\en. < such an atmosphere of music
to_a playas Feste to TwelfUt lYipht, of thcm are
lll!!!kedly lllusical. seems
of Illusic, and is undoubtcdly a good singe....!', iQr.-WhcIL he_joins forces
with the beggars he earns twice much by his songs as thcy do, r-
One spccimen of his songs may be gi\' en :
Silllplicity sings it, and 'spcricllce doth prove,
No biding ill Londo)) for COllscicnce and Lore,
The country hath no peer,
"There Consciencc cOllies not once a year,
And Love so welcome to every toWJl,
As wind that blows thc houses down.
Sing down adowll, down, down, down.
Simplicity sings it, and 'speriencc doth pro\'(',
No dwelling in London, Jll) bidillg in LOlHlon, for Conscicnce
aJld Lo\'e.
And though the only complete sOllg which wc hear frol11 Pompey is
unspeakahly coarse, he too seems to be a lover of lllusic, fOl' he\ t
appeals to the' merry lord) Valerius to give one of his songs for his )--
special bcnefit.
2
the cloWJls who sillg whole there \
I ,y.ho-,Jik __ fool, breakinto ,fI'agmcnts I
.of hallads, suggcsted by sOJne remark OJ' passlllg evell.!.z.. ( <is fooles were
to The LOllfJeI' thaI/., tlie more
FooL t!u-!..'lI:......!!:J.t informs us. T!lOUgh the trick is nowhcrc so effecti\'ely
j H.sed as in Lear, it is Bal'llahe BUllch's snaps of
suggested hy illcidcnts which he witnesses, have already been
1 IJIll/li If''lItzl'rii Itinerl/ri'l/II (.'erlllfLllia', Allylirl', Itlllie,',
2 HfLjle 11' ',w'rcer, ii. !i, 3 W"lIkest guetlt lu tlte Wull, ii.
E
oS THE FOOL THE DHAi\1A
lllClltioIlCd; alld 1\1 lleh 1 too breaks illto song in the midst of his
speech to the king-' lIch is my father, and he is olle of your
tellllllts, ill Killg's at 'Yakefiehl, all Oil a grcell :
o there dwelleth a jolly pinder,
At 'Yakcfield, all Oil a green!
I
But ilLthe na91ruf
ludes than integral varts_lLf JhUIay. 'Vhat then, did
the clown prodde for dl!!illg the progress of the action?
It mustbe remembered that_ more than any other performer
,." J aud!ence continu,!lJ.y in view. Other the
'" f. the of clgwn was to them
and keep them entertained. Often, especially in the case of the later
Vices;,ve find direct appeals to particular members of the audience,
Nichol N ewfangle 2 being particula.rly remarkable in this respect. His
appeals are many aIHI bold-' How say you, little ?' or:
How say you, \vomun? You that stand in the angle,
'Yere you ne\'er acquainted with Nichol N ewfangle ?
Simplicity too, refers to various spectators, including a fellow
gapes to bite me, or else to eat that which I sing'; and the absence
of such appeals from the parts of later clowns probably only implies
that the more experienced actors could be trusted to supply them for
themselves.
Among the clown's mirth-provoking devices, of all
descriptions figures largely. Sometimes this is Sil!lp)Y __ Un11leaning
l:ubbish, possibly an
addresses to
I prey yow this question to claryfye:
Driffe-draff, mysse-masche,
Sume was corll, and snme was chaffe;
dame seyde my llame was Raffe;
Or-schett yower lokke, and take an halpenye.
3
Sometimes this takes string _of ..ContradiGtioIlS, -
SHch as 1fucedor!lugiven to M!lccdorus him-
se1)-' A was a little, low,_ broad, tall, narrow, big, well-favoured
fellow '-much in the style of the fool plays. A less
crude variety is the extravagant
it cluuacteristic of the;wtural fool. Sufficient from tile.
down's love-speeches hm:e- rureaoy he is fully
1 VOtcriflllt of Robert, Earl of Hllntingdon.
2 Like will to Like.
3 .. lIllltkind, eu. Furni\'all anu Pollaru, JJacro Plays, p. :3.
OF GD
as in sorrow as in Ion'. Yices and clowns cOlltillllally
Wl:.J.l or threaten to do so, and the clowns in particular often incllllge
in e:xtrayagant laments. These are absurd eyen whell sillcere, as is
Pipkm'R'l,lluent for his mistress: 0 mistress! a I-IlIgh! 0 II ugh!
o mistress! Hugh, I must needs beat thee; I am lllad! I alll
lunatic! I mnst fall lipan thee: my mistress is dead! (BealS flugh) '.
And of the mock lament Simkin's is a fair sample: (0 Illy master!
my master! what shall I do for my poor master? the kind churl is
departed! neyer did poor hard-hearted wretch pass out of the world
so like a lamb! alas! for my poor, mmring, extortioning master!
many an old widow hast thou turned into the street, and lllany all
orphan made beg their bread! Oh, my sweet, cruel, kind, pitiless,
loving, hard-hearted master! he's dead; he's dead; he's gone; he's
fled; and now full low must lie his head! Oh, my sweet, vile, kind"'--'J
. r---
flinty, mild, uncharitable master!' lather clowns tell absurd
anecdotes, or gi\'e comic accounts of misadventures, as does I
of his encounter with the bear.
Nonsense of another fouIHt in the_1ll2ck prophecies often
the of Lear's fool. These are
paralleled to some extent in the strings of impossible things_ which the
fools of the have_ seen. Haphazard
prO\'ides an early example of the prop}wcy :
1Vhen gain is 110 grandsire,
And gauds llought set hy;
Nor puddings nor pie-meat
Poor knaves will come nigh,
Then hap amI Haphazard
Shall have a new coat,
Anel so it may happen
To cut cm'etousness' throat.
Yea, tlH'n shall Judge Appius
Virginia obtain,
.\nd geese shall crack mussels
Perhaps ill the raill;
Larks shall he I(,Y(,I"C'ts,
And ski p to aJld fro;
And <;hurls shall he eods-heads,
Perhaps ami also.' 2
Some satire is often implied ill these prophecies, as ill Lear. 'rhlls
F rog vows fidelity to DOllce until the-tTme :
1Yhen tinkers leave to drinke good ale,
And sOllldicrs of t}wil' weapolls faile,
1 Cf. Tromhart' s lament in I,orrillr.
2 Ap/d1l8 fill" ' "ir!lilli(f .. Jlodsll'Y, i,, p. 1:-; 0.
70 TIlE FOOL TIlE ELIZABETIL\N DHA:\L\
pedlcrs go without there pack,
AmI water is more deare than sack,
'Yhrn shoemakers drink that is small,
And lawiers have no tongues at all.
l
.A rather similar type of nonsense speech is a mock 'bill' or pro-
clamation, an amusing example being Slipper's' bill '-' If any gentle-
man, spirituall or temporall, will entertaine out of his service a young
stripling of the age of thirty yeal'es, that can sleep lrith the soundest, I
eate with the hungriest, work with the sickest, lye with the lowdest,
face with the proudest, &c., that can wait in a gentleman's chamber
when his maister is a myle of, keepe his stable when tis emptie, and '
his purse when tis full, and hath many qualities worse than all these,
let him write his name and goe his way, and attendance shall be
giyen '. An example of the proclamation is found as early as the
fifteenth century in Colle's ambiguous description of his master's

DlP sllbject
clown's delight in perversions and p-retended . ......
The perversion of a dictated address or a procl<!-mation which he is
ordered throughout his
career. The later Vices proyide_scre.raLexalllples,-the 1110St_ quotable
Nen'fangle's perversion of the address dictated by
Lucifer: 3
Luc{fer. All hail, 0 noble prince of hell!
N. N. All my dame's cmvs' tails fell down 111 the well.
L. I will exalt thee above the clouds.
N. N. I will salt thee, and hang thee in the shrouds.
L. Thou art the enhancer of mv renown.
N. }l. Thou art Hance, the hangm;n of Calais town.
And at the end of the clown's career this device still appears, as
when Simkin is set by the pursuivant to make a proclamation I
offering a reward to anyone' that can bring in these pirates' ships or
heads', which he renders as 'that can bring in these pie-crusts or I
sheep's heads'.
are a part of the common
clown. 'Yith the stupider_ of clown these blunders are uninten-
tional. Thus nI nch, when told by his cry',
immediately begins to lamf'nt alld roar, 'Help, help, help! I am
undone, I am undone!' uch more common, however, are inten-
tional blunders. To pretend tomisunderstand a simple remark or order,
1 Fair },fnid of BristOlI'. 2 Ploy of the SncramclIt. aboye, p. 26.
3 Cf. Sin in Al!for .J1fJnc.1J and TdleuC'ss in Wit and Wisr/fJlII.
OF CHAHACTEHISTICS
71
or to play at cross-purposes with intel'loclltor, is the dowll's great
delight. Cricket, whell ord(lred to brillg sack, illljllin.' s, '",Yould YOll
havc a sack, sir?' and when Gripcs rcplies tlllgrily, ' Away, fool;
a cup of sack to drillk " explaills, '0, I had tho1lght you \\'01l1d iIa"e
had it sack to h:n'c put this law-cracking cog-foist ill, instcad of a pair
of stocks '.1 In Robin's sparring with Ilforu and his cOlllpalliolls, thc
dedce of quibhlillg and pretended misunderstandillg is 1l101'C suhtly
of a cruder type arc foulld in sccnes
between cloWJls alld fOl'E'igners, such as Bamabe ilullch's cOII\'ersation
with Yacob thc Flellling.
3
Anothcr of bl!lIHlcr c.qmlllittcd by thc clown is V
a srfi) of the tongue. Here thcrc are both rcal and prctended
the first class predominatcs. Slips of the
tongue appcar first in thc rulcs of the stupidE'l' Viccs sllch as AduIa-
tion,4 who forget their parts, and e,'cn c1e"crer latcr Viccs ha,'c
occasional lapses. In the roles of thc regular clown neither typc
appears of tell. An example of the intelltional slip is Simkin's
reference to his mastcr as a 'most tyr;ulllical old f01"llicator-0l<l
master, I would say'. Somcwhat akin to tilt' pretended slip is the
ambiguolls remark that suggests lIlI illsult hut can bc illteq>reted
harmlessly. Clcm is all ('xpert ill this art.
Clem" You lie, sir.
R071ghman. How! lie!
Clem. Yes, sir, at thc Rayell ill the High Strect, I WlIS at your
lodging this 1ll0rIlillg for a pottle pot.
lt is impossiblc to dassify J..Q thc differcnt
!)])es of fools, the majori!y- of thcm are COlllmon to all classes,
but i.. Qne set belollgs 011 thc whole) though hy no means
rather ill-the_ subtler and more highly deyc10ped characters.
a high 9..l2inioll qf their OWII importance and
<jll!.l"lt..ctC1jtic is probably partly from tile
court fool) whose .i!nportance was generally acklHndedged; and tli(lrc
i:. thQ speeches of thosc Vices who
of their power. Thus Stnlllluo descrihes himself ill
his love-letter as 'a gentleman of good fame allll ll:J.llle, lllaiesticitll,
in parcll comely, ill gate portlie', alld so 011; :tll.d Clem in the days (If
his prosperity at Fez goes so far as to adopt the royal' wc' :
J lVily 1/('9"i/('d, DOI} sley, ix, 1'. :!:l!l.
2 \\rilkiIlS, ..IliNcri('s of EI(/ilJ'f"Ct/ Jfllrrill!}c, J\tt I.
!I Th(' Wellkl'st !Jodit tn tlw Wo /l, :-;.'. i\' ,
1 HCilfI"blic(l , cd. ;\Iaglllls, I':. T. s., p. l!l .
I
THE FOOL IN TIlE ELIZABETHAN nRA:\lA
be my Bashawes? usher lIS in statC',
An(} when we sit to banquct see you waite.
1\lorC'O\'C'1", the fool oft.en, on his O\\R as
contrasted \riththe folly of others-a vcry joke. Some-
__ --,. timcs is e\'idC'ntly a delusion, as when Simplicity advises
Fraud to 'take a wisc fellow's connsei '. But other remarks are
olH'iOllsk Haunce '0 wl;;t a pitifull case
is this! "That might I h,we donc with this wit if my friends had
bestowed learning upon me? ,\Yell, when all's done, a natul'all gift
is worth all'; and Robin 1 brings ont the contrast between himself
and Ilford and his friends by retorting to tl:e comment 'This is
a philosophical fool', 'Then I, that am a fool by art, am better than
you, that are fools by nature'. I! is almost unnecessary to add that
this ide.a is llsed constantly by Shakespeare's_fo_ols, who ilevelQP its
to the utmost.
Robin also provides an example of another fm'ourite trick-that of
arguing and chopping logic, in the manner of Touchstone. 'Vhen
Ilford grows impatient with his replies, this dialogue ensues:
I{fO'J'd. "That am I the better for thy answer?
CI. ,\Yhat am I the better for thy question?
I(t: 'Vhy, nothing.
CI. 'Yhy, then, of nothing comes nothing.
Sir Sidney Lee has pointed out tlutt Larivey's influence is probably
largely responsible for the introduction of whimsical quibbling and
chop-logic into the speech of the English clown, since it was from him
that Lyly, probably the first to naturalize the fashion in England,
seems to have derived it. Some of the clowns' dispntations hlwe
more than a suspicion of parody of the school men, and this quality
is still more marked in their frequent mock-learned dissertations on
varions subjects. These, as has already been mentioned, undoubtedly
owe much to the 'sermons joyeux', in which the Fool-Societies
parodied both the offices of the Church and the rhetoric of the
schools. It is the latter which is the more frequently tra\'estied
in the discourses of the fools. l.'he most formal of these orations is
the' argument in the defence of drunkennes' pronounced by Bosse
in Every 1Voman in her Humour (too long to quote) in which he
proves that drunkenness is a virtue and that it 'ingcnde;s with two
of the 111orra11 virtues, and six of the lyberall sciences'. But there
are also a host of shorter speeches of the same nature, such as
Pompey's account of ale:
: nf Ell}'orrerl Jlarriagc, Act 1.
SU:\DIAI{Y OF CIL\IL\CTEIUS'1'ICS
Pomp, Is it not strange, my lord, that so lIlallY I\lCII lon' ale that
know lIot what ale is?
roll. 'Yin'. what is alc ?
POIIII" 'YI;y, ale is a killd of juice made of the tU'eeiolls grain
callrd malt; and what is malt? 's A L T: aIHI what is
L T? :\1 mllch, A al(', L little, T thrift: that is, milch all' ,
litt Ie thrift.
1
Sometimes these discoursrs take the form of ingenious comparisons,
as when Slipper proves the resemblance between a ,,"oman alld
\
--"':::::::SCntelltiousness of anotlwr kind appears in the Illoral speeches
in which the fools not infrequently indulge. Cricket moralizes on
money,2 and Baunce 011 the untrustworthiness of lllankind,3 and
--Firestone on drunkards: 'How apt and ready is a drunkard now to
reel to the de"il ! '4 Here again one is reminded of that most senten-
tious of fools, TOllchstone.
/
In Illany of the speeches included undel' the aboye heads, another
clement appears-that which) as was shown ill an earlier
chapter, was nlso probahly bequeathed to the stage clown by the
Fool-Societies. III the Yice, as was natural, considering the III Ol'a I
purpose of the plays in which he appears, satire is particularly
prominent-indeed) the Vice is perhaps most to be esteemed as
a satlrlst. I T1 their accounts of their travels, sllch characters as
Folly ill The TVorid and the Child imply the pl'enllence of their
particular vice in all classes of society, and Courage in Tide larrieth
no JIlln gi,'cs us a list of the occupants of his' Barge of Sin', aftcr
thc manner of thc Ship of Fools. And again and agaill the Church
recel,'es a shrewd hit in the sometimcs in the ,'ery moral
of the play, ill an incidental remark, such Infidelity's
slap at the friars:
Lyke obstinate Friers I tcmper my looke,
\Vhich had Ol1e eie on a wCl1eh, alld allot her 011 a boke,li
Occasionally thc Vice's satire is political, as in King Darius. Bcsid('s
these deeper kinds of satirc, there is a lighter and more purposeless
variety, usually directcd, according to imlllemorial clIstom, agaillst
women. Rc\'cTlge, whell dismissed from IJorest('s-'s service, allTlOllIlCeS
intention of bctakillg himself to women, since they arc usually
1 Hape of I,ucrccc, ii. 1.
Wily /lc!Jlliler/, DorIslcy, ix, p,
3 Wi,w/flnt of /Jr, jJor/.'/IJo/l, ell. Bullen, Old HII!Jlish \"Ill. iii , p, lUI,
4 l\1irlrllcLoII, The Witch, i.
5 \ \' ag-cr, HI'prllf(lIIf'c n( Jlrll'y J/"flr/alcl/(' , crI, ( ';lrpCnlcl' .. p, :3 1.
TIlE FOOL TIlE ELIZABETI-IAN DHA?\L\
kind to him, beillg' 'for thc most part ... borne malitious '. It
is this lighter kind that is most popular with the regular clowns,
except in plays likc 1. Yobody alld Somebody which arc in themsclycs
satirical. The allcient gibes at women continually recur. Thus
Ralph Simnell consents to ha\'c Elinor of Castile for his mistress if
, shee will neyer scold with Ned or fight with mc. - Sirah Harry,
I ha\'c put her do.wne with a thing impossible.
Henry. "'hat's that, Raphe?
Ralph. 'Yhy, Harry, didst thou e\'er sec that a woman could
both hold her tongue and her hands? ]
The most definite and elaborate_ social satire srJoken by a clown in
any play apart from Shakespeare's is Pompey's court, camp, city,
\.. and country which is much too long to quote.
2
But though
r;- the plays satire of the more bitter kind is usually
absent, it undoubtedly formed a part of the clown's role. The jigs,
judging from the little that we know of them, seem to have been
largely topical and satirical. There is evidence to show that Kemp
participated in the attack on and that he and
his fellow-clowns did much to embitter the Puritans and the cidc
authorities against the stage. Tarlton's jig, A Horse-load Fools,
includes an unflattering portrait of a Puritan Goose-son (GOSSOll) :
Squeaking, gibbering, of everie degree;
A most notorious pied balde foole.
For sure a hippocrite;
Of a "erie numerous familie.
Attacks of this kind were d'oubtless partly responsible for the issuing
in 1612 of an order suppressing all ' Jigges, Rymes and Daunces' at
the end of plays.
Nothing has been said in these 110tes of the ordinary repartee which
plays so prominent a part in the clown's role, since that point was
sufficiently illustrated in the last chapter. The fool carried on this
play of wits not only with the other characters, but often also, as we
learn from contemporary references, with the spectators themselves.
Sometimes these contests are carried 011 in rime, as when 'Yill
Summers matches his wit ctgainst 'Yolsey's :
TVols. The bells hang high,
And loud they cry.
'Vhat do they speak?
I Friar Baron alld Friar Bllngay (Represelltatire Comedies, i, p. 480).
2 Rape of Lucrel'f', ii. 1.
3 E. N. S. Thompson, The hc[u'cel! [he Puri[fllls alld the S:[({ge.
SU:\DIAHY OF 75
1 rill. If YOU should die,
's 1I0lle would cry,
Though yOUl" lIeck should break.
l
It t02L that the fool sometimes retorted ill rime to the
of the spectators, and it is c1ear that the extemporizing of \.
Oil subjects ghell by the audience was one form of the jig.
The subject of rime introduces another the. 1(-' S
lo,,"n. This naturally with different of c10WIl.l.
but certain general characteristics may he poilltecl out. The medium 'i
is always prose or rime, whate\"cr that of the principal part of the
play On the whole Vices tend to speak ill rime and the
clmnls No rule can be prm'ed to have existed for
the differclltiation of by the Vice from that of the
other characters in those. plays G.<)l)sist entirely of rough rime,
thoug-h there arc occasional traces of sllch differentiation. Puttellham
referred to the use of rime 'both in the' end and middle of a \'erse'
as being' commonly more comlllodiously uttered by these buffoolls or
vices in playes than by any other person', but this ntriety of metre
not occur often enough to be eOllsidered really characteristic of
the Vice. Nash points O{lt a more constallt quality of the Vice's
style whell he characterizes it as being' as right up and downe as
Illay be',
2
for 'up and dowll' it uIl(loubtedly is, as a general rule.
It is true that the same may be said of other Morality charactel's of
it very different type, but the Vice (especially, perhaps, the later Vict')
appears to have a special predilcctioll for H'rse of this killd. Hap-
hazard exhibits this tendency in a marked degree. IIis prophecy,
quoted above, is an unusually regular example; but the same pl'illciple
goveflls all the ,'erse of his part:
Then charge you the father his daughter to bring;
Theil do you detain her, till proved be that thing:
"Thich well you may win her, she presellt ill hOllse.
It is but haphazard, a man 01' a mouse.
The serious characters in Appius and Virginia almost im'ariably usc
the popular' fourtecllcr' line.
In the earlier there are fewer traces of differentiation ill
metrc. As a rule Vices and VirtlIes alike llse short, rough rime.
perhaps the most characteristic tendellcy of these Vices is to break
into stallZ<lS, as does IIypocrisy:
1 ){owh.y, lI'hell .'I'm N('C 11/(' .1/011 kl101I' 1//(' .
:! StrllllrJr XCII'S of illtcr('('jllill!1 ('('rlllill I.t'/It'r s (1 :,)!)2)
-, ),
7(; TIlE FOOL I:\, TIlE ELIZABETHAN
I ethough t hy your face,
Ere you came in place,
I t should he you:
Therefore I did abide
Here i 11 this tide
FOI your coming, it is tru(,.1
Short rime appcarR still in Moralities of a lat('r <latC' as a fanmritc
metre \yith the Vice. On the whole, though by no means invariahly,
he tends to l1se short metre when talking to the audience or to his
confederates, amI longer, more imposing verse in conversation with
his dctims.
In style as in other respects Simplicity represents a transitional
stage. In The Three Ladies of London he speaks but in
the sequel, written six years later, his {ordillary medium is ErQse,
though breaks "These-- occasional snatches
of of the 'croWn. He uses it flequently in
his nonsense and laments. Speci-
mens of the former ha"e already been quoted,
2
amI of the latter
Trombart's lament o,'er Strumbo may be taken as typical:
And is my master dead?
o sticks and stones, brickbats and bones, and is my master dead?
o you cockatrices and YOll bablatrices that ill the woods dwell:
Yoi} briers and brambles, you cookes shoppes and shambles, come
howle and yell.
'Yith howling and screeking, with wailing and weeping, come you
to lament,

colliers of Croydon, and rusticks of Royden, and fishers of Kent.

I
EEophecies too arLalwa):. .. in -litILe..-usually in short couplets, as is
, Frog's address to Douce, already quoted, or that of Lear's fool! And
in addition to these common uses of rime, and the riming contests
alld extemporized verses mentioned in the last section, fragments of
verse are scattered promiscuously throughout the clowns' parts.
Thus Strulllbo after describing the burning of his house in his usual
prose breaks into a kind of stallza:
'-__ Alld that which grieves me most,
Jly loying wife
(0 crnel strife!)
The wicked flames did roast.
And therefore, Captain Crust,
"\Ye will continually cry
Except you seek a remedy,
OUl houses to re-edify,
'Yhich ]10\" are bUl"Ilt to dust.
l Cf. Trotter and Cricket.
SUi\E\L-\.HY OF CIIAHACTEHISTICS
77
lH.:h, 011 thc other hand, onec begills to speak ill verse hut n'\'('rts
to prose, remarking' I'll speak in proSt', 1 miss this verse vill'ly '.
Some of tile HTses found in the plays arc curiolls llIixturt's of
English a])(l Latill. The earliest specimens of these llIacarollic l'illH's
in the drama occur in the .i\Ioralitics. Infidclity rccites or challts :
'Yith heigh down down, and <lo\\'ne a dowll a,
Saluator nHIIHli Domine, K vri clerson,
ltc, .i\lissa est, "Tith pipc lip Aileluya:
Sed libera nos a malo, and so let liS he at one.
1
Thcre are not lllUllY specilllens ill the later drama, but Miles the
scholar speaks throughout a whole scene ill such vcrse as the following:
And I with scientia and grcat diligentia,
'Yill conjure and charme, to kcepe you from hanne;
That utrulll horulll maris, your ,'cry great navis,
Like Bartlet's ship, from Oxford cJo skip
'Yith colleges awl schooles, full load en with fooles.
Quid dicis ad hoc, worshipfull Domine Dawcocke?
and the scene at .:\Iaster Amilladab's school is a similar medley.!!
declcnsions also scem popular. SClllllbroth's rillled 'declen-
sion of a gallant' is un(}uotable, but Simplicity's prose declension
lllay be givcn :
( 0, singulariter nominati,'o, wise Lord Plcasure: genitin), bind
him to that post: datiro, gi"e me my torch: accusati,'o, for I say
he's a cosener: vocativo; 0, gire mc roolll to l'lm at him: abla-
tivo, take ,1IId blind me. PIlll'aliter per onllles caSllS, \
Laugh all you to see me, in my choler adust, '7/
To bum and to broil that false Fraud to dust '. v(/
For Latill tingcs thc clowll's prose evell more thall his "crse. Then'
is it Vicc 01' fool_of eyell the alld type who
docs IlOt introduce at least one Latill quotatioll illto his specches-
tlsua.Dr m is(luotatiOlLin thc casc of thc clown. Scraps of eh urch-
Latin alld law-Latill predolllinatc-'Xolllinlls patms', 'hahis corpus',
and the like.
Allother fairly constant characteristic of the clown's spccch is l1is
lIse of c=9?!cssiolls-solllctimcs proverbs ill the ease
of more lcarned clowns or Vices, but lllorc oftcn popular sayings,
gleaned frolll the COllllllon speech of the people. Amollg the "ices,
Hc-;cnge is particlilarly lIoticeable for his use or such saws as ,; Good
slepinge ill a hole skYlllle'. So, too, CIt'Ill the clowll supports
1 RepenlUlu'c of .Vllry J/llgdll/I'lIC. Cf, mac':!rollk letter i1l J/III/kind (J/Ilcru
Plays, 1" 25).
2 1I0u' to choose Il Good lVifefl'o/ll Il l1ad, ii. I.
78 TI-IE FOOL IN TIlE ELIZABETHAN DHAl\IA
'If suggestion with thc old provcrh, ' \Yhat thcy want ill meat let them
V Us..c out ill drink',
But in of thesc common characteristics thcre are t\\'o distinct
f rl1de but often vigorous vernacular and
It must be remembered, however, that
be eIassifled according to speech) fOt, many of
\
suiting thcir . lang_uage to their
companions, In the first type pron'rbs arc particularly commOIl,
. and thel'c is often an abundance of racy idiom. An early fore-
shadowing of this style is that of the minor Vices of fll ankind,
already noticed, Perversion of words or of wholc sentences is
frequent ill the language of such clowns as l\10use, who refers to
a hcrmit as 'an emmet ',-though this occurs too as an absurd COIl-
trast to the grandiloquence or would-be grandiloquence of more
imposing clowns, such as Slipper or Turnop, Rustic dialect appcars
at times, and in the case of Tavie in Club Law and Jockey in
Edward IV much of the humour of the characters depends upon
their very marked 'Yelsh and Scotch accents. In the earlier plays
language of this rougher type is often dull and conunonplace enough,
but when llsed by dramatists of g,'eater skill and experience it becomes
very effective, and well-adapted to the essentially nati,'e and popular
character of the clown.
:Much more ambitions is the other type of speech-:a pompous,
__ wqrds and
This char'acteristic has already been noticed in regard to Fiddle, and
many of his brother clowns show the same propensity to use the
most elaborate expressions which they can devise. Thus Taber
when about to fetch drink remarks, ' I will first acquaint your lips
with the virtue of the cellar'. Connected with this delight in elabomte
phrases is the clown's predilection for a roundabout, riddling manner
of speech. Guatto describes his mistress's playing on the lute as
'making wood speake and guts sing '/ and Simkin announces his
intention of cleaning out the hen-house in SUC!l enigmatical language
that his interlocutor is quite unable to understand him.
2
Sometimes
in the elegant speeches of the clown there is distinct imitation of
Euphuism, already noticed with reference to Strumbo. Learned
allusions (accurate or otherwise) are someti mes introduced, snch as
to Diana and Actaeoll-' Ah, Strumbo, what hast thou
seell, not Dina with the Asse Tom? '-and technical terms are also
1 A Knack to ]{1/0W an Honest .Jian, 11. 88-94 (Malone Society),
:.! Purtune fly Land and Sea, ii. 1.
Y OF ClIAIL\CTEHISTICS 7U
employed, usually absurdly, as ill Scumbroth's astl'OlIolllical jal'g-fllI,l
Occasionally the c10WJl quotcs frolll othel' as does ClclIl frolll
Jeronimo:
'Yhcl1 this ct'l'nal substance of Ill" sOlll
Did li,'c imprisolled in this wanto,; Ileslt,
I ",as a cO\lltier in the court of Fez,
Another characteristic of the elegant style is !hG loyc._ot repetition. \.,
word is with ,'ariations, as in the qnotatioll
from Tul'llop ill-tile last chapter. a of prac-=_
tiea]]y sY.!l9!!YJUoIlS the manner of 'l'0\lChstolle,2 as
1Il Fl'og's summoning of the guests:
'1'0 make a step, to walke, or as it wcre to
Comc, 01' approach, to dillller.
Frog exelllplifies another ,'ariety of repetition also relllllllsccnt of
'l'ouchstolle-repetition of the llame of tlIe person addressed-ill bis
speech to Doncc beginning:
'Yhy Douce. this day of wedlock, Douce,
'l'his day of going together, Douce.
/
,The clowll loxes.. tiliLto_harp or-jest OIl hisJ)wn llame if it is a suitable
subject for as it very frequelltly is. Fiddle ",hen called hy his
master retorts-( Here's a Hdlillg indeed, I thinke your tongue he
made of nothing but fhldle strings, I hope thc fiddle must hare some l
rest as well as the fiddle-sticke: well, Crowde; what say YOIl to
Fiddle now?' It may be noticed that here as often the clown speaks
of himself in the thinl person. This repetition of his Ilame the fool
probably (leri\'cd largely from such Vices as Haphazard, who harp
contillually on their namcs and theil' l1lpallings,
From the Vice, too, the clowll probably illiJerited another character- --J
istic of his style, the }requent use of alliteration. The Vice employs
this trick continually, particularly ill his accounts of his tr:l\'els, which
are usually 10llg lists of alliteratillg ll:UllCB. Such is Itepol't's
beginning:
At LOllvain, at LOlldon and ill Lombardy,
At Baldock, at Btlrfold, aBel ill ilarbary.
Of the regular clowns the most notcworthy ill this r('speet is th('
clown in Love's J.llisiless.
3
Ill' sums up the mcrits of the poets ill
alliterative phrases, alld gives an accollnt of Cupid's qualities which is
stl'OlIgly reminiscent of Berowllc's outblll'st Oil the same subject-l-
1 Dekker, iii, I'l" 311-12.
:s Heywood, Works, v.
2 Cf, As rlill Uk,' It, \', 1.
4 1.11/ ' /;,\' 1.1I6uII r' .... Lust, iii, 1.
SO TIlE FOOL TIlE ELIZABETHAN
' I gire you his stile ill Folio: lIee is King of cares, cogitatioIls, allll
coxcolllbcs; Vice-roy of vowes awl vanities; Prince of passiolls,
prate-apaccs, and pickled lovers; Dnke of disasters, dissemblers, and
drown'd eyes; IVlarqucsse of melancholIy, and mad-folkes; Grand
Signior of griefes and grones; Lord of lamentations, Heroc of hie-
hoes, Admil'all of aymees and of mutton-lac'd '.
As an illustration of the remaining characteristics of the fool's style
which call be noticed here, one quotation from Heywood will ser\'e-
Roger's soliloquy at the inn while young Geraldine is reading the
letter which he has brought.
1
He begins-' This is Market-day, and
heere acquaintance commonly meet; and whom ha,e I encounter'd ?
gossip Pint-pot, and brim full; nay, I mean to drinke with you
before I part, and how doth all your worshipfull kindred? YOUl'
sister Quart, your pater-Pottle (who was ever a Gentleman's fellow)
and your old grandsier Gallon; they cannot chuse but be all in
health, since so many healthes have been drunk out of them: I could
wish them all heere, and in no worse state than I see you are in at
this present'. Then Roger <h:inks to his ' gossi P " and makes her
pledge him in retul'll, and concludes with' one health to you and all
your society in the Cellar, to Peter Pipe, Harry Hogshead, Bartholo-
mew Bntt, and little maister Randall Rundlet, to Timothy Taster,
and all your other great and small friends'.
j
J In the first place, this speech is a good example of the
whic4_ are p_opular with _the fool. Sometimes, as here,
Qf to amuse ; sometimes, as was indicated
) illa former chapter, of value, i
rl
to __
I
inform the spectators of of. !he (notably in the
case of the Vice, who habitually reveals his true character in his
soliloquies) to put the audience at the right point of view. Often
they are dull enough; but often too, especially when the clown gives
them dramatic form by addressing some object or imaginary persoll,
as _do Roger and Miles, they reach the level of true comedy.
Shakespeare's humorous monologues are unrivalled, but the materials
1 of which they were composed may be found in those of his predecessors
\ and contemporaries, and by no means invariably in crude or unworked
\ furm. - I
a but common clown-trick-J.he
".\ of dumb or if they
were human, The same characteristic appears to some extent in Sim-
kin' s description of the feast, quoted at the beginning of this chapter,
1 The Trat'eller, Heywood' s i,', p. 58.
OF CIIAHACTEHISTICS HI
and we tiJl(l it :lgaiIl iII account of filldillg' the straIlgc' Il(mH's,l
or Ho(}lre's 1>ll1H>(r\'ric Oil tht, "ood-natlJre of the dust __
:-- o. ' --:---'
It is hardly Ill'cessary to point out the resl'lIlhlalll'C l)('tW('I'1l i{og"( 'r's
iIlquiries after Pint-pot's' family and Bott()IIl's ill quiries "f( 'I'
Pcase-blossolll's hut. olle 1Il00'(' poillt Illay bc lIotic('cl ill this
dOWJl's 100'c of givillg nick-nallll's, pn,fer;d)ly I
allitemtin', aftC'1' the st):fCOF'Petl'lPipc' ,lJid t lraii<lalTRuiimrr-in-+-
this passage, This trick seems to han' originated in the Vice's habit
of bllrling del'isi,'e amI often abusive epithets at his OPP()lICll ts-
'Pl'tel' Blowbo\\'le', Narl'()\\'lIosC', 'Nicol-Noddy', alld 111t,'
like, Sometinll's he l'xtends these fa\'ollrR to the' audielH.'C', as wben
Nicbol N ewfangle nddresses a spcetatOl' as ' 'Vat 'VaghaltPI".
'rhis description of the characteristics of the fool would not
be complete without of but at any '/
conclusions Oil Eoint 110 easy task. The nature of tht'
Vice's dress is particularly doubtful. III many plays there is 110
melltioll of it, and references ill other works arC' ll)ostly too late to he
of any sen-icc in rcgnrd to thc earlier Vices, It is clear that the
Vice cannot have constantly worn fool's dress, In order to dccein'
his victims he Illust h:n'e been disguised ill part of the play at least,
either as n virtue or ns an ordinary gallant of the day. This disg'llis-
illg is often expressly But what did be wear when
appearing in his own character? Galey states that he did 1I0t
appc:ll' in reglllntion fool's dress ulltil the last third of the
ccntury; lllltil thnt period Ill' ",as attired as 'SOllIe typical fool of
e,-ery-day life, some social crank '. But here mllst be mentioned oncl'
marc Skelton's Vices, Fancy nIH1 Folly, of the nature of whose
there call be no doubt-also Mery Report, whose' light array' offends
Jupiter, Report, it is truc, is not a 'Mornlity Vicc, and
Cacurgus and Hardy-Dardy, who also undoubtedly appeared as fools,
are not Vices in the ol'dinnry sense of the term. But it is clear that
they arc all related to the Vice of the Moralities, and their appl'arallCl'
in fool's dress (in the case of Report, at all early datl') is
suggesth'e. The ollly other Vict' who certainly \\'()J'(' 1l1otky
i:-; Illjury ill Albion J(nigltt (15G5-G), J IIstice cOlllplains or his
, Iygllt apparail " and he retorts:
'Vhy should ye hylll declllc of lIature fray It,
Though w)'sc as ye walde were a Foxtayl e
Or a cotl' aftcr thl' COlllell IIsagc'?
I GI.'OI'!Ji'-fl-("I'U1}1.' (Am:il'1/l J/ri{islt Dmmfl, i, 1', 447),
2 Porter, 1'u'o Anyry lVomell oj' AMI/yll/II (/(I'III'I':;l'IIll1lil'l' i, 1" tal!I),
!I l', g, NI'pel/lmlcl' '1' J[III'Y .1[IIY"II/I.'III',
F
8Q THE FOOL I\," THE DRAMA
Injury appt'ars to scorn disg-uise; and thp eonfnsion in latCl' references
lwtwef'Jl Yiet's alld fools supports the vip\\, that the later Yil'e8 appeared
as a rlllt :u; fools. In The DedI is an A.'Is, Satan speaks of the time
When eH'ry great man had his Vice stand hy hilll
In his long coat, shaking his woodell dagger.
That the VicE' wore the long dress charaeterh,tic of the natural fools
is suggested hy otllPr passages, notably allusion ill The Staple
of ..,Vews to 'the old ,,-ay ... whell Iniquity camp in like Hokos
Pokos, in a jugler's jerkin with false skirts, like the knave of cluhs '.
Possihly, therefore, Collier is right in his conjecture that:m entry ill
a list of 'Garments for Players', dating from 1516-' a long garment
of peces and tyed with reband of hlew satten, cutt '-refers to a sort
of motley dress for the Vice, in which case Fanl'y and Folly were not
the only Vices of their time to wear some kind of fool's costume.
No more information can be gleaned in regard to the Vice's dress
as a whole, hut there are a considerable number of allusiolls, especially
in the case of later Vices, to articles of dress which we know from
ancient sketches of professional fools (such as those collected hy ,
Gazeau 1 or the woodcuts in Barclay's Ship of F'ools) to have often, if
no always, formed part of their costume. Harsnett 2 refers to ( long
Asses' ears " as being characteristic of the Vice, so he mt.!t frequently
fool's _Hi. dagger was one of his most important
ploperties. The earliest certain reference to it occllrs in Impatient
Poverty (1560), but possibly one is implied in llJankind, nearly
a century earlier. In Mankind, too, purses, frequently mentioned by
later Vices and fools, figure prominently. Except in the case of
Fancy and Cacm'gus there is no definite mention of a bauble, but
Nichol Newfangle brings in a of which, in view of the
reference in The Staple q/, Jllews quoted above, may perhaps he
assumed to mean the figure of a fool. Perhaps too the 'flap for
a flie' for which Sin begs a piece of the dedI's tail 3 may be onf'
variety of the flapper poplllar with the fool. The foxtail occasionally
worn by Vices and downs has already been noticed in connexioll with
the buffoolJ of the folk-plays. The spectacles ,,"om hy Inelination 4
likewise find parallels in the folk-drama-also in :tnciellt. prillts of
fools. These scraps of eddence go to pro\'e that the l'ostnme of the
Viee was at least partially inflllenced hy that of the professional fool.
1 Les ROlljf'ons. 2 Declaration lif l'.Yregiolls Til/post II res.
3 All for .Money, ed. Halliwell, Litel'lltm'I' (!f tht' Sixteellth lIlifl Seren{eelltli
rPlituries 1III1stratt'll, p. 127.
Triall of Treasllre, Dodsley, iii , p. 2G9.
Then' is ullcertainty again in rt'gard to the dress ol lIll' Vitl'lOUS
typcs of fool foulld ill the rcgular drama, ll1J.hc of ('videllc',
i!.... Ci!J!llot_ be safely aSSllllled hecause a charade)' is Illldoubtedly
lIIotley, 01' it is
clear that this ,,"as not always ""OJ'll by the historical fools. 'Yill
SllIlllllers's po)'trait slJows him in ol'dillary comt dress; alld though
l'lItries ill cOlltemporary accollllt books mentioll fools' coats alld hoods
for him ami other jest('rs, thcse arc for llIascl'.les or other ren'18, alld
th" OCCUl'fCnCe of these entries mthe)' supports the view that thcse
fools wcre Bot ordinarily dressed ill motley. It appears, howc"er,
t.hat it "'as IlIOst usual for the court or domestic fool of the drama to
weal' ordinary fool's dress. Chambers points (Jut in regard to
Shakespeare's practicc in this respect that possibly this idea was
derin'd 'less from cOlltelllporary custolll) for indeed we hear of 110
fool at Elizabeth's conrt, than frolll the abulldant fool literat lire' ,
cOlltillental alld English '. this may bc, Shakespeare's
coullterparts in dress :lII1011g their
contemporaries BahultLlwd thc.-1i!:age 'Vill SlImlllers undollhtcclly
wore motle):, alld therc are that othcrs did the
'Ve find too ill Hellslow's Diary an entry dating f/'Olll 1602
referring to 'a sewtt of motley fol' the scotchman for thc play called
til(' malcolm kyllgc of scotes'.
The pcrsollagcs whose dress is most difficult to detcrmille are the
douhtful characters, particularly the earlier examplcs of the serv<tllt-
clown, Thus Saullders in The Taming of a Shrew, deflllitely called
the fool, wears' a blew coat', alld illsists 011 the fact that he is wcar-
iug his master's (livery coat', while Oil the other balld, PiStOIl, ill
retlll'll for srl'\'ices re)](iered
J
is promised 'a guarded coat',
appears to IIIcan a fool's coat.
l
All tbat call be said is that thcre is
III) I'ule for characters of this kind, But fortunately there is 110 lack
of eddence as to the dress which hecallle popular, with the most
C0ll1lll011 type of clOWlI, COlltelllporal,), rci'erellces tllld illustratiom;
leave little doubt 011 the subject, particlllarly ill regard to that most
popular clown Tarltoll, who may ha\'e illtroduced thc fasllioll. '" e
see him drcsscd ill rustic style-a suit ur russet, with ellorlllOUS
hreeches, a 'buttoned (tlie lIsual headgear of cOlllltryllH'1I at
that tillle), clulIlsy shoes, alld a large pOlich at his si<i('.:! It is dear
) ( 'f, BeaUlllont alHI Flctcltcl', Thl' .;Yohi(' (:"lItkll/(lII, \', J :
.\econliI1;! to l1lcrib !t.l \\'ear
.\ ;!uanlc.l coat, all.1 a ;!reat \\OOr!Cll da;!/! .....
z frolltisl'iccc to XI'U'S IIllt "tl
J
l/r,lllItl)r,'I, ( 'IH,ttle':.
A."ind-lIar!':> Drealll, (,'/lCk-'Il'Ul/eb' III/IL ('III'k/J!t!:J t:rJ'(lIIts, awl
of'the Jlind.
v
\
84 T1IE FOOL TilE DHAl\IA
i
that this dress was characteristic of the most popular type of stage
fool at that period-that is, at the end of thc sixteenth century and
the beginning of the next. The picture of Miles strongly rcsem hIes
that of Tarlton (possibly, of coursc, Tarlton played that role); and
references to various parts of thc dress are frequent, both ill the plays
and elsewhere. 'I swear hy this hutton-cap', says 'Vill Crickct, and
Henslowc's Diary contains a refcrence to 'a payer of gYC'llts hose'
for Kemp. These enormm"s hose or 'slops' are pal'ticularly
emphasized by contemporaries. Rowland remarks that 'Clownes
knew the clowne by his great clownish slop' 1; and a German
description of the' English clown' dating from 1597 runs as follows:
:Many a clownish trick he knows,
'Veal's shoes that don't much pinch his toes.
His breeches could hold two or more,
And have a monstrous flap before.
His jacket makes him look a fool
all the blows he takes so coo1.
2
!
Even fools of this type show traces of the influence of the ordinary
. fool's dress, similar to those mentioned ill connexion with the Vice.
The dagger appears still, though less frequently, and the pouch, 01'
great purse, is very prominent. Cricket, too, mentions his 'fair

Two chief types, then, of fool's dress ha,'c been dcscribed, but no
hard-and-fast rule for their use can be laid down-indeed, in the
majority of cases, as with Heywood's clowns, there is not the slightest
clnc to the nature of the drcss worn. In all probability, however, the
costume of the ordinary type of clown at the period of his greatest
popularity followed to some extent at least the fashion particularly
associated with Tarlton, while thc domestic fool propcr tended to
keep the traditional cap and bells.
1 Lettillg of HI/mollr ... Blood in the Hrnd rail/c, Epig-ram 31.
2 Quoted by Colm, Shakc:spearc in Germany, p. Ix.

,y E han: 1I0W tl'llced thc e\'Ollitioll of the Ellglish fool fWIll
his hegillllillgs to his fullest development. "r c ha\'c witllcsscd his
gradual transformation from a crudely sketchcd persollage,jlltrodU.c!.: d
almost at haphazard into a play to entertain thc the
rlldcst and coarscst of buflooll_erIL!-02 truc
dr'l'llatic \'allle, di!;illguishcd by endowed
!IUIO meall degrec wit and But the pel'iod
that witnesscd thc highest development of the stagc fool ill gelll'ral
also sa\\" the begillnillgs of his decay. This decay was not so mm:h
a deterioration in quality as a dccrease in qualltity, After the 11rst
decade of the sc\'ellteeJlth thc clown appears more alld 1l1O1'l'
rarely, and ill the courRC of the next twcnty years he hCl'ollles
practically cxtinct, The cause of this graduallJut completc disappear-
allcc is not casy to determinc. The most usnal
already been hinte(l at-tJlc-uccay_of the- court and dOIl}cstic fools.
But It secms unlikely that tltis was thc only cause, though it mar
ha\'e been in some degree I'espunsible, for the dumcstic fool lingered
011 until the eighteenth l'cntury, and evell thc court fool did not fillally
disappear !lIltii thc fall of Charles I, whell the stage fool had IOllg
becn doomed. Another suggcstioll which Sl'elllS still feasible is that
a<i\'allced by Drake I-that the rc-eminence of Shakespeare's fools
led to the extindioll 0 the sillce was to kel.1)
up thc standard which they l'l'eatsd.
It seellls most probable that the decay of the stage fool was largely
the rcsult of a gradual dCl'rease ill the demand for him,
Oil a change which came o\'el' the drama in gelleral ill the e;u'Iy da)JS-
of the that tillle the llatiollal ill the dl';ulla which
had heen so characteristic of Elizabeth's reitrll had \\'('(lkelll'd, alul
-t-h-c-stage was bCCOlIllllg COlll't faroHr.
Early III James '8 reign all the LOlldoll l'olllpallies call1e' to h(' directly
under royal patl'Ollage, ami the productioll of their plays was slIhjcl'tl'd
to the control of the :\laStl'l' of the Revels; cOllseqlll'lItly the youllger
dramatists l'amc lllore alld lllore Ilmlcrll iCi lllllll'JIl'C or the l'omt- ol'
a l'ourt, 1110reover, that was becomillg ill('J'easillgly slI)lerticial alld
1 Shakcl;pcare Ilwi lIi8 Ti lll a ,
s6 TilE FOOL II': TIlE
frivolons. \Vith the cllsnillg corrllptioll of the drama in general there
is 110 IIl'ed to deal hele-the important poillt for thc clowlI is the fad
that from 1 his time the drama begall to lose its Jlational character, and
to hc("'ome a more artificial and cOlIrtly literary form. III sHch
a dr:lI11a there was no place for the clown, who was, as we have seen,
all native and slllted to a socicty
too sophisticated or too highly developcd. For the fool hill _-
self has a good deal of of creature, ill his
"'" N aturc.. that most strikillg characteristic. of the primiti-ve
heilig, is notict'able in him-in his criticislliSOfot11crs apa
of his passions, notal)ly his
. / greed, alld ill hi, 00 f)'('quent coarsellesi: Thus hc was well suitcd
\,( () the Elizahethan age, on the whole, highly sophisti--=-
'-eail'd; but -\\'<0:; out of'=place ill the more artificial state of society
/ which ill with the Stuarts and was speedily r('flected in the
;' orama. Thc court gallants who then became the chief patr()I]s of
the stage demallded, not the sallies of the clown, but a constant flow
of smalt dialogue, enlivcned by flashes of sparkling but oftell
sllperfieial wit. Cartwright extols the superiority of this new style
to the old in an address to Fletcher:
Shakespeare to thee was dull, whose bcst wit lies
l' the ladies' (luestions and the fools' rcplies,
Old-fashioned wit, which walk'd from town to town
III trunk-hose, which our fathers call'd the clowll.
A gcneration which could speak thus of Shakespeare's fools could
have little use for those of his successors.
Fletcher and his collaborator Beaulllont were alllong the first to
caier for the new taste in drama. In their joint works but one fool
appears, and that a pOOl' one. And from their time onward the stage
dowll was doomed. As has already been pointed out, he was
replaced by the' estin(T Ilot unlike the Italian type.
N atUl"a y this change was gradual, for tl; - such as
Heywood, still dung to old-fashioncd ways; but by the.time of the
closillg of the play-houses the once dOWll was banished from
the regular drama for eyer. It is true that during the period of tlte
prohibition of plays, the drolls' by means of which lovers of thl'
drama managed to satisfy their desires in spite of the act, perpetuated
some of the Imffooneries of the ancient fools; but these wcre Ollly
a stop-gap. After the Rcstoration, when a yet Illore artificial society
prevailed than in pre-Commonwealth days, we filld but oue isolated
attempt to re\'ive the down-Lobster ill Thorny-Abbey. A significant
scene occurs in Shadwell's play, The lroman Captain (1680). At

thr of the play. ",hrl1 yOllllg- Scattl'rg-ood is tIll' old
sr)'\':tllts of his father, a deHllPstic fool app('ars, alld ple'ads to II('
al"J,,"('(1 to stay; hut in spite of his protests Ill' is S(,lIt pal'killt.:' wit h
the rest, because' 'tis ont of fashioll fo), g-I'eat 1IH'1l to kl'('P fools ...
'tis exploded e"en npon th(':;.s:,:t:::t.og.:,.e_'.:, ' __ -------
H('ncr we may say that tIl(' English stage fool rose and fell with
the Elizaheth:lll drama, as b('fitted snch a true child of his age. lIe'
had sened his turn, and had becollH' snpersl'ded by it lie\\, order of
things. It is difficult for the modeI'll read('r t.o lllldl'l'st.alld tl)(' stt'('lIgth
l
of the fascination which Ill' exerted ill his day. J:Iis
re.\:olt us, jIJ)(l his rUtle-jokcs-oftcu_fajl to :till usc. Bnt coarsl' as thc
elOWIIS frequently arr, they compare fa\'()ul'ably as regards morality
with thc characters which snceceded tlH'1l1 011 the stage; ami Oil the
other hand, as we have seell, they at'(' hy no mealls destitllte or
rlldnrillg- merit. Some of their sallics and shr(\\'(l hits retaill their
freshlH'sS :m(1 force to-day, alld alllollg these 1I11'lTy-makers of
..--
bygone ag-(' there are not a few whose aequaintallce we make with
pleasure, alld whom we rememher with affection. "Tithout Babllio
and Tu)')}op and the clowns of Greelll' and Heywood the drama would ,
be the poorer. And if this ,,"ere not the ease, if we sought ill "aill ill
the works of Shakespeare's fo), a fool of allY COII-
siderable intrillsic merit, we should still Ill' ohliged to reg-ard thl'
Elizabethan down with some llleaSlIl'l' of gl'atitlHIl' and respect, sillcc'
it is to the tradition l'lllhodi('d ill him that Wl' OWl' the fools of
Shakespeare. _ s-
e l N U ' ~ SECT. \)01 0 ( I ~
r 3
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Pr{ .c'us by, Oli ve ~ :a:ry
r:SS ..>tudies in the developrlent
-7 _1 of the fool in the
--,lizabethan drama