Part 14
There came by chance to a good company, A lady, a wanton, and eke a merry. And though ev’ry word of her own show’d her light, Yet no man’s words _that_ to her might recite. She had all the words, which she babbled so fast, That they being weary, one said, at last, “Madam, you make my heart light as a ‘kix,’ To see you thus full of your _meretrix_.” This trick thus well trick’d out in good Latin phrase, Brought to this tricker neither muse nor mase. She nought perceiving was no whit offended, Nor her light behaviour no whit amended; But still her tongue was clapping like a patten. “Well,” said the said man, in language of Latin, “I never told woman any fault before, Nor never, in Latin, will tell them fault more.”
It would be hard to say whether Queen Mary laughed or not, when “John, the King’s Jester,” either read to her the following epigram, or recounted the story, by way of joke; but it is worth quoting here, though not so much as a specimen of the royal favourite’s wit, as another proof that in the old pronunciation of the word _ache_, the latter had the _ch_ soft.
OF THE LETTER H.
H is worst among letters in all the cross row, For if thou find him either in thine elbow, In thine arm or leg, in any degree, In thy head or teeth, in thy toe or knee;-- Into what place soever H may pyke him, Wherever thou find _ache_ thou shalt not like him.
Heywood has a few epigrams touching fools. The following will show that what Selden said of evil-speaking, in reference to James’s court fool, Stone, in courtly prose, had been uttered before him by Mary’s court wit in shambling verse.
A FOOL’S TONGUE.
Upon a fool’s provocation, A wise will not talk, But ev’ry light instigation, Will make a fool’s tongue walk.
And again, on a fool whose foolish wit was called wisdom, Heywood said and sang:--
Wisdom and folly in thee (as men scan) Is, as it were, a thing by itself; fool, Among fools, thou art taken a wise man; And among wise men thou art known a fool.
In the same strain is this quatrain:--
OF EARS AND WITS.
Thin ears and thin wits be dainty; Thick ears and thick wits be plenty. Thick ears and thick wits be scant; Thin ears and thin wits none want.
The following belongs to the satirist:--
OF THE WIFE’S AND HER HUSBAND’S WAIST.
“Where am I least, husband?” Quoth he, “In the waist; Which cometh of this, thou art vengeable strait-laced.”-- “Where am _I_ biggest, wife?” “In the waist too,” quoth she, “For all is waste in you, as far as I can see.”
Finally, here is a fling at farthingales, for which any modern epigrammatist might do what Pope effected for Donne, smooth the versification, and, in addition, turn the point against crinoline.
“Alas! poor verdingales must lie in the street; To house them no door in the City’s made meet. Since at our doors they in cannot win, Send them to Oxford, at Broadgate to get in.”
Soon after the death of Queen Mary, in 1558, her orthodox jester, who hated and ridiculed Protestantism as vigorously as any French court fool launched his little quips against the faith of the Huguenots, withdrew from England, and took refuge in the fair Flemish city of Mechlin. It was a likely place of refuge for a lively and “orthodox” voluntary exile. Mechlin, like Troyes in Champagne, was worthy of supplying any Court with fools, for it was the wise men of that city who once tried to put out the moon! It was a jovial place also. Near the gate of St. Catherine, on the Antwerp side, stood the church and monastery of St. Alexis. This monastery contained fifteen hundred nuns, and full as many lady boarders. The good sisters enjoyed the very merriest of privileges. They were not only permitted to receive all sorts of visitors within the monastery, but to return the visit when and wheresoever they pleased. They might, if they chose, live unrestrained in the city; and might either marry or leave it alone, just as their humour prompted. The old and anonymous author of ‘Les Païs Bas’ (Bruxelles, 1692, p. 123), assures his readers that the old-established custom had never been followed by ill effect; and that the pious and pretty sisters had even employed themselves in respectable and praiseworthy matters, to the edification of the population which had before them so excellent an example.
One would have liked to have had a dozen of epigrams from merry John Heywood, on these lively ladies, who, to quote a proverb of his own, were “As nice as nuns’ hens;” but he may have been saddened by the aspect of the city itself, which had not yet recovered from the calamity which had fallen upon it in 1546. In the month of August of that year (near midnight of the 17th), a flash of lightning pierced the powder magazine, and the explosion levelled a fourth of the city, and blew hundreds of its inhabitants into the air. The ruins long encumbered the place; and it was among the remaining wrecks caused by this catastrophe, and the cheerful nuns of St. Alexis, ever busy and mirthful, that orthodox John Heywood passed the closing years of his life. The Papal favour, which had selected Mechlin as the scene of the jubilee of 1452, had gained for the city the title of “Mechlin the Happy.” Heywood could not go to Rome, as King Edmund’s joculator did, and as one at least of his own sons did subsequently; but, for religion’s sake, he pitched his tabernacle in a city that had been blessed by a Pope, blasted by lightning, and was kept merry by the most vivacious nuns that had ever been heard of, except at Farmoutier. Antony Wood (in his ‘Athenæ Oxon.’ vol. i. p. 150) sneers at the idea of a member of the ordinarily unprincipled profession of poets, going into voluntary banishment for the sake of religion. Perhaps, as far as regards Heywood’s case, Antony was not very much mistaken, if it be true that, when Heywood’s last hour arrived, in 1589, he spent it in laughter, jokes, gibes, and fearful jesting with that King Death who was summoning him to his court. Further towards that court we will not follow him; but will rather take leave of him with a glance at the portraiture of the living jester at the courts of Henry VIII. and Queen Mary.
The portrait of Heywood, prefixed to his poem of ‘The Spider and the Fly’ (edition 1556), has nothing in it of the appearance of the court fool. It represents, at full length, a very respectable, middle-aged, and not particularly good-humoured gentleman, with smooth shaven cheeks and chin. He is attired in a close-fitting coat, reaching to the middle of the thigh, surmounted by a long loose-sleeved cloak; the ends of what appears to be trunk-hose appear just below the kirtle portion of the coat; and up to the hose reach long, tight stockings, gartered both above and below knee. A flat cap with a protecting fall to keep the back of the head warm, is fixed tight upon that head, which seems as closely shaven as the cheeks and chin; at all events, there is no appearance of hair from beneath it. A dagger, suspended from a girdle, hangs across the thighs in front, and in this girdle John the Jester has passed the thumb of either hand; and he stands resting chiefly on the right leg, the left being slightly bent, and the owner of them having altogether something of the look of a man who would be “jolly” if he could, but who is disgusted at his ill success.
As there is no doubt of Heywood having been named by Mary’s father, “King’s Jester,” we may fairly conclude, assuming this portrait to be a true effigy, that the jester was now a higher personage than the fool. This was not the case in the time of Scogan, who, though a member of the University (as Heywood also was), hired himself out, according to Andrew Borde, as a household fool. We shall also find, in the reign of Elizabeth, that a difference was made between _jester_ and _fool_; that is, between a clever individual retained or invited to make good jests, without being always obliged to wear motley, and the ordinary fool who had his wages, his privilege of speech, his whipping occasionally, his cumbersome jokes, his freedom of the pantry, and his bed with the spaniels. Tarleton, for instance, was court jester to Elizabeth; but he was not always a wearer of cap and bells. He was not of such good condition by birth as either Scogan or Heywood; he was, what may often be found now in the same person, a tavern-keeper and a low comedian. But he was also “Gentleman of the Chamber” to the Queen; and by that title, he stood near Elizabeth’s chair and wagged his tongue boldly, though not always without rebuke.
It will have been noticed that it was not every King of England who cared to be moved to laughter by the exhibitions of comic minstrels or joculators. Some princes have indeed accounted laughter thus raised, as beneath the dignity of men of their rank. Thus Philip, son of the Christian Emperor Philip the Arabian, rebuked his own sire openly, for laughing at the jokes and sports of hired jesters who were doing their best to amuse the sovereign and an august body of spectators. The younger Philip read the elder Philip a severe lecture on his unseemly conduct, which seems to me to have been a greater offence against propriety, than his father’s merriment. The son’s contemporaries gave him the name of Philip Agelastos; and he has come down to us as Philip the Laughless. Old Puttenham, who wrote when court fools were flourishing, praises this impertinent and overstarched young prince. For, says he (in his ‘Arte of English Poesie’, p. 244, edit. 1589), “though at all absurdities we may decently laugh, and when they be no absurdities, not decently; yet in laughing is there an undecency in other respects, sometime, than of the matter itself.” The old man had in his memory, probably, some incidents of uncomely laughter at unseemly court jests of the days of the Tudors.
The dynasty of jesters was not yet overthrown; but I may observe that there were three things which helped to overthrow that dynasty, and to render the vocation a matter of history. When intense gravity of deportment ceased to be considered as warrant for aristocratic breeding, fashionable people, if I may so speak, did not require mirth to be provided for them; they manufactured a better article for themselves. Again, when reading and writing began to be common and yet dearly-prized luxuries, the readers found a richer enjoyment in old authors than in young jesters; and they who held the pen, discovered that occasionally they could be as witty as if they had been bred to the calling. Lastly, came freedom of thought and freedom of expression,--the latter sometimes exercised only with considerable daring; but against these, which symbolize an extending of civilization, the poor fool, his cap, bells, official stick, his quips, and his quirps, his whole freight of fun, made utter and irretrievable shipwreck. I find authority for some portion at least of what is advanced above, in a passage from Puttenham, the author, among other things, of the ‘Parthenaide.’ In that work he compliments Queen Elizabeth on her maidenly qualities. the subjoined paragraphs he commends her behaviour at court, while he treats of a court deportment generally. And he pays Elizabeth this compliment at the expense of the Emperor Ferdinand, whom he roundly scolds for “running up and down stairs with so swift and nimble a pace as almost had not become a very mean man who had not gone on some hasty business.” In mean men and fools, hurry is not very censurable. “But,” says Puttenham, “in a prince, it is decent to go slow, and to march with leisure and with a certain grandity rather than gravity, as our sovereign lady and mistress, the very image of majesty and magnificence, is accustomed to go generally; unless it be when she walketh apace for her pleasure, or to catch her a heat in the cold mornings. Nevertheless, it is not so decent in a meaner person, as I have discerned in some counterfeit ladies in the country, which use it much to their own derision. This comeliness was wanting in Queen Mary, otherwise a very good and honourable princess.” It was a “comeliness” which, when enforced, weighed heavily; and when it vanished, the heart enjoyed its own impulses, and was no longer attracted by the fool and his “marottes.”
It is certain, that with all Elizabeth’s refinement and taste, she had coarser men about her, as jesters, than her sister Mary. The uses to which some of them were put, is sufficiently remarkable. If Catholic Mary had her orthodox jester, the Reformed court of Elizabeth was not without its ultra-Protestant fool.
As we shall find a French jester employed to laugh down the Reformed religion and its professors in France, so in England, Pace, “the bitter fool,” is said to have been engaged in a particular way to support it, in England, by destroying certain outward and visible signs supposed to savour too strongly of Popery. According to this story, Pace was employed by Sir Francis Knollys, to break down a crucifix and remove the lighted tapers which Queen Elizabeth persisted in having in her private chapel, in spite even of the friendly and urgent remonstrance of Archbishop Parker, offered repeatedly, but without success. I do not know that there is any reliable authority for this story. Certainly, a jester might dare to do what a Lord Primate would only respectfully insinuate; and, perhaps, Parker remembers the improvement effected in the Queen’s chapel by the court fool, Pace, when, in his letter to Sir William Cecil (October, 1560), after recommending certain personages for church preferment, he says: “Now, if either of them, or any of us all, should be feared to hurt the state of our churches, by exercising any extraordinary _patesing_, for packing and purchasing, this fear might sure be prevented. We have old precedents in law, practised in times past for such parties suspected, to be bound at their entry, to _have the churches in no worse case, by their defaults, than they found them_; and then what would you have more of us?” Now Pace, if he destroyed the cross and tapers in the Queen’s chapel, may be said to have left the edifice in a worse condition than it was in when he entered it. It is quite certain that Sir Francis Knollys was violently eager for the destruction of these ornaments. Just a year previous to Parker alluding to “patesing” in churches, Knollys writes to that prelate: “Wishing you prosperity in all godliness, namely in your good enterprise against the enormities yet in the Queen’s closet retained (although without the Queen’s express commandment these toys were laid aside, till now a-late), I shall, with my hearty commendations, commit you and us all to the mighty protection of the living God.” A gentleman who could so boldly write of the “enormities in the Queen’s closet,” may well have ventured to employ a licensed jester to remove them. The editors of the Parker correspondence, John Bruce, Esq., and the Rev. T. Perowne, suggest that the word “patesing” refers to the _Pates_, Bishop of Worcester, in Mary’s time. This indeed is probable enough; but if it be true that, in 1559, Knollys employed Pace to disfigure the Queen’s closet, the term _may_ have reference to the act committed by her Majesty’s fool.
Pass we on now from Pace, and the question connected with him, to one of those fools who were rather hangers-on about court, than actually, exclusively and officially, engaged in the Royal service. Such a one seems to have been that Charles Chester, who resembled those official French jesters who found more delight in annoying the courtiers by his sarcasms, than amusing them, or his Sovereign, by his wit. Chester was especially severe in addressing coarse strictures on Raleigh and Lord Knollys, in their own hearing. Sir Walter resolved to be revenged; and to accomplish it, they invited Chester to supper. The buffoon accepted the invitation without any suspicion, and the two noble gentlemen made him exceedingly drunk at a repast at which he had eaten like Gargantua. Taking him in this condition, with the help of several servants, they fastened him up in a corner of a court-yard, and then some masons, engaged for the occasion, built a brick wall close round his person, and right up to his chin. They kept him there many hours, under a threat of building him in altogether. The jester was sobered by his terror, and begged piteously to be liberated. When ready to die with fear, indigestion, and other fatal influences, the frolicsome gentlemen exacted from him a solemn oath, that he would never again cut a joke or make a sarcasm at their expense; and the fool kept his word, if not out of a sense of honour, certainly out of a sense of terror.
Chester survived to be known to Ben Jonson, who has immortalized him as Carlo Buffone, in ‘Every Man Out of His Humour.’ In the character of the persons prefixed to that piece, this buffoon is described as scurrilous and profane; rich in absurd similes and audacious lies; a “good feast-hound or banquet-beagle;” a thorough parasite and glutton, and a stupendous swiller of sack. “His religion is railing, and his discourse ribaldry;” and it is added of this perverse fellow, that he loaded those with the heaviest reproaches whom he had the greatest reason to respect. Such a character accords well with the noisy, evil-tempered fellow depicted by Aubrey (Lives, ii. p. 14), who tells us that the fool so offended a knight at a tavern by his impertinence, that the angry gentleman beat him, and stopped his mouth by sealing his beard and moustachios together with wax!
It is, however, to be noted, that Carlo in the play is superior to Carlo as described in the persons of the drama. If Jonson’s picture be a veritable portrait, how exquisitely could this buffoon prattle of the advantage of being in debt--advantage so dear to fools of all classes in this present time! How admirably could he hit off an old over-scented lover, “who has his skin tanned in civet, to make his complexion strong, and the sweetness of his youth lasting in the smell of his sweet lady.” How dashingly he hits off a city gentleman; how frolicsomely he exposes the city wives! He alludes to “standing by the fire in the presence,” as if the ways of Court were familiar to him; and to taking tobacco with nobles, “over the stage in the lords’ room,” as if he had right of entry there. Some of his similes are drawn from his profession, for he describes a man’s shield of arms as being “of as many colours as ever you saw any fool’s coat in your life.” What a _vade mecum_ for asses is his instruction to dolts to show how they may pass for sensible fellows in society! How happily, yet briefly, does he paint a student learning to smoke! With what true fool’s satire does he exclaim, “_Friend!_ is there any such foolish thing in the world?” and what fool’s philosophy is there in the assertion that “Swaggering is a good argument of resolution!” We probably have something of the look of Chester afforded us in the remark of Macilente, “Pork! I think thou dost varnish thy face with the fat on’t, it looks so like a glue-pot.” And what a sharp touch of the jester’s fence is the reply, “True, my raw-boned rogue, and if thou wouldst farce thy lean ribs with it, too, they would not, like ragged laths, rub out so many doublets as they do.” When Puntarvolo seals up his mouth, as Aubrey’s knight did that of the real Chester, we feel that it could not be for the same reason; and when the vain-glorious cavalier tells us that “Carlo comes not at Court,” we are apt to think, that if Chester was of the times and not also of the household of Queen Elizabeth, she lacked a jester fit to rank with Clod.
This fool, who was an official court fool, must have been a fellow of as much humour as Yoric himself, if we may judge from one sample of his wit, which is no bad sample of his license also, and which is good warrant for his acuteness and discrimination, to boot.
At the court of Elizabeth there was many a cleric of the Vicar of Bray school, and among them Dean Perne, who had oscillated from one faith to another three or four times in about a dozen years, and who never felt in a state of finality anywhere. Perne, with Archbishop Whitgift, was in attendance on the Queen one wet day, when her Majesty was desirous of going out for a walk. The desire was an unwise one, for Elizabeth was in ill health; but the divines were not bold enough to dissuade her. But Clod, the Queen’s fool, was also present, and _he_ had the courage which the others lacked. “Madam,” said he, “Heaven dissuades you, for it is cold and wet; and earth dissuades you, for it is damp and dirty. Heaven dissuades you, too, by this heavenly man, Archbishop Whitgift; and earth dissuades you, by me, your fool, Clod, lump of clay as I am. But if neither can prevail you, here is the Dean Perne, who is neither of heaven nor of earth, but hangs between the two, and he too dissuades you.”
The above was witty license at the expense of a courtier; but Clod could exercise wit and audacity at the expense of the Queen. Elizabeth once reproached him with not altogether fulfilling the duties of his office. “How so?” asked Clod; “in what have I failed?” “In this,” answered the Queen, “you are ready enough to point your sharp satire at the faults of other people, but you never say a word of mine.” “Ah!” exclaimed the jester, “that is because I am saved the trouble by so many deputies. Why should I remind your Majesty of your faults, seeing that these are in everybody’s mouth, and you may hear of them hourly?” After all, this was not near so bold as the answers which (years after) Whiston used to fling at Queen Caroline, consort of George II. Whiston, if not kept at Court like the jester of earlier times, was so frequent a sojourner there, that George II. got weary of this heterodox divine, who did not hesitate to tell him, when the King was inveighing against freedom of inquiry in religious matters, that if Luther had been of that opinion, his Majesty would never have been King of England! But where I find Queen Caroline and Whiston nearly resembling Queen Elizabeth and Clod, is on that well-known occasion at Hampton Court, when Caroline said to the eccentric divine, that, bold speaker as he was, he was, perhaps, not bold enough to tell her of her faults. Whiston proved that her Majesty was mistaken, by denouncing her very unseemly behaviour at divine service. Caroline laid part of the blame on the King, acknowledged her fault, promised amendment, and asked what was her next offence. “Nay, Madam,” said Whiston, “it will be time enough to go to the second fault when you have fairly amended the first!” The eccentric character of Whiston procured for him from Caroline just that impunity which Clod and Chester and others found at the hands of Elizabeth.