Part 15

Having had occasion to mention these two Queens in the same paragraph, I will take the opportunity of adding, that if the time had passed by when official fools had place at court, it was not because Caroline was more refined than Elizabeth. The contrary was the fact, if we may believe the following passage, in the ‘Reliquiæ Hearnianæ:’--“The present Duchess of Brunswick, commonly called Queen Caroline, is a very proud woman, and pretends to great subtlety and cunning. She drinks so hard, that her spirits are continually inflamed, and she is often drunk. The last summer, she went away from Orkney House, near Maidenhead (at which she had dined), so drunk, that she was sick in the coach all her journey, as she went along; _a thing much noted_.” In spite of the words in italics, the story must be taken with some allowance, for old Hearne was a furious Jacobite, and was likely to “embroider” a story to make it tell against a Hanoverian princess. One fact, however, is undisputed, namely, that no jester and king of the very coarsest times ever sat together and exchanged more licentious stories than Caroline and Sir Robert Walpole. The published life of the latter will support this assertion, though I need not make, in such a case, an especial reference. A study of the two reigns will, at least, serve to show that Elizabeth and her court fools were quite as refined as Caroline and her fine gentlemen.

The refinement of Elizabeth seems to have been justly appreciated by those who had to cater for her amusements. For instance, in the “Extracts from the Accounts of the Revels at Court,” edited for the Shakespeare Society, by Mr. P. Cunningham, there is an entry, in October 1573, to the following effect, made by the Master of the Revels:--“Item: sundry times for calling together of sundry players, and for perusing, fitting, and reforming their matters otherwise not convenient to be showen before her Majesty.” And again, in 1574, an entry of 40_s._ occurs, as the sum paid to a court official “for his pains in perusing and reforming of plays sundry times, as need required for her Majesty.”

We have seen Will Sommers sleeping among the spaniels, and there are not wanting instances to show how sharp was the toil and poor the rest of many of those who laboured to amuse the leisure hours of Elizabeth. The following are examples. An entertainment is about to be given in the metropolitan palace, and the properties have to be brought from Richmond or Hampton Court; the passage by water seems to have been slow and uncertain, as is shown in an entry:--“To the porters that watched all night at the Blackfriars Bridge, for the coming of the stuff from court, 2_s._” This “bridge” was doubtless a landing stage. To this same Blackfriars “bridge” are brought a number of children, who had been down to Hampton Court to perform in a masque before her Majesty. The little Cupids had looked warm and plump and rosy enough in the presence of the Queen; but they were all sent back (nine of them) in an open boat, in the winter of 1573, and in consequence, there is an entry which has little of the spirit of “Revels” in it, to this effect:--“To Thomas Totnall, for fire, and victuals for the children, when they landed, some of them being cold and sick and hungry, 6_s._ 6_d._”

Not to digress further from the taste of the Queen, as exhibited by her in connection with her court pleasures, I may further state that we have good evidence that Elizabeth was neither unrefined herself nor admired lack of refinement in those who were about her, whether friends, attendants, or jesters, in the frequently-printed account given by Bohun, in his ‘Character of Queen Elizabeth.’ “At supper she would divert herself with her friends and attendants; and if they made her no answer, she would put them upon mirth and pleasant discourse, with great civility. She would then also admit Tarleton, a famous comedian and a pleasant talker, and other such-like men, to divert her with the stories of the town and the common jests or accidents, but so that they kept within the bounds of modesty and chastity. In the winter-time, after supper, she would sometimes hear a song or a lesson or two played upon the lute; but she would be much offended if there was any rudeness to any person, any reproach, or licentious reflection used. Tarleton, who was then the best comedian in England, had made a pleasant play, and when it was acting before the Queen, he pointed at Sir Walter Raleigh, and said, ‘See, the Knave commands the Queen!’--for which he was corrected by a frown from the Queen; yet he had the confidence to add that he (Raleigh) was of too much and too intolerable a power. And going on with the same liberty, he reflected on the over-great power and riches of the Earl of Leicester; which was so universally applauded by all that were present, that she thought fit, for the present, to bear these reflections with a seeming unconcernedness. But yet she was so offended that she forbade Tarleton and all her jesters from coming near her table, being inwardly displeased with this impudent and unreasonable liberty.”

The maids of honour and the ladies in waiting seem to have been more inclined to follow the example set by their royal mistress than the male courtiers. There was one of these fine gentlemen who _would_ address himself to Mistress Mary Ratcliffe, one of Elizabeth’s maidens of honour, in such a tone that she relished neither his conversation nor discourse. At length, she told him “that his wit was like a custard, nothing good in it but the sop, and when that was eaten you may throw away the rest.”

The maids of honour were not at all disinclined to be frolicsome; but this was with no ill purpose. Observe, however, how this humour was indecently corrected by that same Knollys who was offended with the cross in the Queen’s chapel, and employed Pace, the court fool, to pull it down. Knollys “had his lodgings at court, where some of the ladies and maids of honour used to frisk and hey about, in the next room, to his extreme disquiet o’ nights, though he had often warned them of it; at last, he gets one to bolt their own back door, when they were all in, one night, at their revels, strips off [to] his shirt, and so, with a pair of spectacles on his nose, and Aretino in his hand, comes marching in at a postern door of his own chamber, reading very gravely, full upon the faces of them. Now let the reader judge what a sad spectacle and pitiful fright these poor creatures endured, for he faced them, and often traversed the room, in this posture, above an hour.”

I cite the above illustration of a court jest from the L’Estrange manuscripts, edited by Mr. Thoms. My esteemed and modest friend has supplied a word in brackets, for which, I fear, there is no warrant. I have no doubt that the MS. as it stands is correct, and Knollys was not the last courtier who thought it an excellent court jest to appear in the condition described. One of the greatest wits at the court of Vienna, the Prince de Ligne, is thus described by the Countess de Bohm in ‘Les Prisons de 1793:’--“Je l’ai trouvé le matin _entièrement nu_, recevant des visites, parlant à des fournisseurs. Il me présenta même à sa belle-fille logée près de lui.” If the court wit of Vienna could do this, and a lady not be startled thereby, in the last century, what may not a courtier have dared a century earlier? However this may be, we have seen that Elizabeth would not tolerate forwardness even in Richard Tarleton, who was, perhaps, the most celebrated of the court jesters to that Queen, and one of the most perfect low comedians that ever trod the stage. To the Leicester above-named he is said to have owed his introduction to Elizabeth. Tarleton was a Shropshire boy, and was keeping his father’s swine, near Condover, when an officer of the Earl’s household, on his way to the Earl’s estates in Denbigh, entered into conversation with the young swineherd, and was so struck by his “happy unhappy answers,” that he took the merry lout, nothing loath, with him,” and Tarleton seems to have passed thence to a higher court.

But, not immediately. It is, indeed, somewhat difficult to trace the early part of the career of this jester before he took office under the Queen. It is not, however, altogether impossible, since Mr. Halliwell edited a purified edition of Tarleton’s jests, prefaced it by a biographical sketch, and added elucidatory notes and confirmatory extracts from contemporary and other authors. From all these sources we make out that Tarleton served some sort of apprenticeship in London, and must have had a very fair education for one of his class, seeing that he is described as being “superficially seen in learning,” and having so much as “a bare insight into the Latin tongue.” Not so bad for a young swineherd,--whose wit stood him in good stead for what he lacked in book-learning. To what calling he was bound apprentice is not known: he is said to have been for some time a water carrier; and it was, perhaps, disgust at the drudgery, added to inclination for other liquids, that made of him a tavern-keeper. His grosser sense led him to tippling; but he had intellect enough to qualify him for writing ballads and composing historical pantomimes. Like many modern actors, he united the parts of player and vintner; starred on many stages, sometimes played more than one part in the same piece, and he shifted from inn to inn, as landlord, as he did from stage to stage, as an actor. He was Boniface respectively of three taverns, at least; at Colchester, and in London, in Gracechurch-street and Paternoster-row.

He had probably been for some years a player, slowly rising, by dint of his wit, his squint, and his flat nose, to pre-eminence, when in 1583 he was appointed one of the Queen’s players, and one of the grooms of her chamber. Stowe remarks, that till the year just mentioned, Elizabeth had no company of actors of her own, but that at the date named, and at the request of Sir Francis Walsingham, twelve of the best players were chosen from among the companies in the service of divers great lords; and that these were “sworn the Queen’s servants, and were allowed wages and liveries as grooms of the chamber.” Stowe notices “two rare men” among this selected troop, “viz. Thomas Wilson, for a quick, delicate, refined, extemporal wit; and Richard Tarleton,--for a wondrous, plentiful, pleasant, extemporal wit, he was the wonder of his time.”

As court jester, Tarleton became as famous and as influential as any official who ever wore clown’s suit. Fuller calls him a master of his faculty, who, “when Queen Elizabeth was serious, I dare not say sullen, and out of good humour, he could _undumpish_ her at his pleasure.” As in other courts, suitors to the Sovereign not unfrequently first presented themselves to the jester. “He was their usher to prepare their advantageous access to her.” He doubtless lined his pockets with pistoles thereby; and for his royal pay he also gave good measure of wholesome severities. “He told the Queen,” says Fuller, “more of her faults than most of her chaplains; and cured her melancholy better than all of her physicians.”

If the Queen admired Dick, the latter had a great measure of reverence for his mistress. He could compare her, he said, to nothing more fitly than a sculler; for, he added, “neither the Queen nor the sculler hath a fellow.” He nevertheless, and as a matter of course, could take great liberties with her. The very first of the ‘court witty jests,’ tells us of his attempting to draw the Queen out of a fit of discontent by “a quaint jest,” in which he pretended to be a thirsty drunkard, and called aloud for beer. The liquor was duly supplied to him, and that so liberally, that Elizabeth gave orders that he should have no more, lest he should turn beast, and shame himself. “Fear you not,” said Tarleton, “for your beer is small enough.” So, perhaps, was the jester’s wit, but the Queen thought well of it, for “her Majesty laughed heartily, and commanded that he should have enough.”

Elizabeth probably enjoyed fully as much the jests which her chartered buffoon made at the expense of her courtiers. Some of these were sorry enough; and he would be no less savage on the personal defects and deformities of ladies as well as lords, than the most unscrupulous of the “Fous du Roi” at the court of France. To a lady, suffering from an eruption on the face, and who consequently declined to drink wine with the rest, he exclaimed, “A murrain of that face which makes all the body fare the worse for it.” This rudeness, which drove the poor lady from table, was only rewarded by a shout of laughter.

Tarleton wore his fool’s attire when the Queen dined; and even attended her thus attired when she dined abroad, “in his clown’s apparel; being all dinner-while in the presence with her, to make her merry.” There seems to have been a distrust of the power of the host and the guests to make themselves agreeable, and so the Queen took her fool with her, even when she dined at the Lord Treasurer’s, at Burleigh House, in the Strand. It was to the gate of that house that Tarleton gave the name of “his Lordship’s alms-gate,” because, he said, it was for ever closed.

On one occasion, the noble owner of this mansion having thus entertained the Queen, besought her Majesty to remain all night; a request to which she would not for a moment listen. The lords present applied to Tarleton, offering him any reward if he could succeed in inducing the Queen to sleep at Burleigh House. The rest of the story is so strange, that I prefer leaving it to my readers as it is given in the Shakespeare Society’s reprint of the old jest-book.--“Quoth he, ‘Procure me the parsonage of Sherd.’ They caused the patent to be drawn presently. He got on a parson’s gown and a corner cap, and standing upon the stairs where the Queen should descend, he repeated these words:--‘A parson or no parson? A parson or no parson?’ but after she knew his meaning, she not only stayed all night, but the next day willed that he should have possession of the benefice. A madder parson was never; for he threatened to turn the bell-metal into lining for his purse, which he did, the parsonage and all, into ready money.”

Among his best similes, perhaps, was the one he made when asked by a lord what soldiers were like in time of peace. “They are like chimneys in summer,” said Tarleton, whose neat jest on this occasion seems to have passed off without laughter. But perhaps this was not said by him. Not all the jests set down to him were uttered by him. That which describes him as replying to a courtier who saluted him with a “Good morrow, fool and knave,”--“I can’t bear both; I’ll take the first, you are welcome to the other,”--is attributed to an Italian jester.

At this period the court jester was not bound to reside within the precincts of the court, and to wear no suit but his clown’s apparel, without permission to the contrary. This custom had even fallen into disuse in France, where it had prevailed for a very lengthened period. Tarleton’s official duties, however, kept him late at court. We find him on one occasion wending homeward at one in the morning, when it was unlawful for the lieges to be abroad after ten o’clock at night. He accordingly fell into the hands of the watch, to whom, on being challenged, he had announced himself as “a woman;” for what is the use, he asked, of my telling you what you know? The watch declared he must be committed for being out-of-doors after ten o’clock. “It is now past one!” cried the watch, emphasizing the enormity. “Good!” said Tarleton; “if it be past one o’clock, it will not be ten these eight hours. Watchmen had wont to have more wit; but for want of sleep they have turned fools.” The guardians of the night recognized the Queen’s jester, and they let him pass, rejoiced at being entertained for a moment by an official whose duty it was to entertain her Majesty’s sacred self.

On another occasion, when challenged in company with two others, he announced his companions as being makers of eyes and light. The pious custodes solemnly laid hold of him for flat blasphemy; but when he explained that one of his companions made spectacles and the other candles, of course the watch fell into uncontrollable laughter, as watchmen will do, even at smaller jests than this.

He was not always in such seemly society as the above; for we meet with him angering a certain huffing Kate, at a tavern; running up a score for sixteen dozen pots of ale at a country ale-house; bandying wit, at his own inn-door, with beggars, whom he sometimes found a match for him; and, after living for days at other hostelries, getting himself arrested as a Jesuit in disguise, and then refusing to discharge his account, because of the false arrest. At ordinaries he would expose the first he could find to his rascally purpose, to the ridicule of the company; and a finely-dressed gentleman passing down Fleet-street, was sure to have an unpleasant time of it, if he happened to be espied by Tarleton. His wife was as often the victim of his wit as any one else; but she was often as sharp as he, and the smart things said were, like Lady Mary Montague at a “Twitnam Assembly,” more smart than clean. When he was keeping an ordinary in Paternoster-row, he and Mistress Richard were invited out to supper, “and because he was a man noted, she would not go out with him into the street, but entreats him to keep on one side, and she another; which he consented to. But as he went, he would cry out to her and say, ‘Turn this way, wife;’ and anon, ‘On this side, wife,’--so the people flocked the more to laugh at them. But his wife, more than mad angry, goes back again, and almost forswore his company.” They kept together, nevertheless, at the ordinary, where his customers not only found wit in the royal jester, but wit in his mustard, as he proved, to his own satisfaction at least, when he said that mustard and the person dining, resembled “a witty scold meeting another scold; and knowing this scold will scold, begins to scold first: so the mustard, being licked up, and knowing that you will bite it, begins to bite you first!” It must surely have been brighter jokes than this that procured for him invitations to dinner at the houses of aldermen and justices, who thought it well to treat a Queen’s jester, and laugh at jokes that might have been dished up for their liege lady.

As a stage-player, Tarleton was the favourite clown of the people at large. They roared at the coarse extemporary songs which he rattled forth for their amusement and his profit. They shouted at his admirable “gagging,” his improvised speeches, his interlarded jokes with the audience, and his allusions even to religious controversies then raging. Learned physicians praised the voice which uttered, the comical face which heightened, the wit, and the head which was the very temple and head-quarters of facetiousness. It mattered little whether he was in or out of the vein, he was comic in spite of himself; in spite of themselves, people would laugh, and all essayers in his line were frightened out of their specialty, out of sheer despair of being able to be tolerated while he lived or was remembered. No wonder the Queen liked to see him act, as well as listen to his jests at court. The very rudest as well as the highest, could appreciate him as an actor--all but the county justice immortalized, although not named, by Nash, and in whose presence, as also that of the whole township over which this justice presided, Tarleton and his fellow-comedians were playing. The jester had scarcely made his head visible on the stage when the country auditory burst into fits of laughter. “Whereat,” says Nash, “the justice, not a little moved, and seeing, with his becks and nods, he could not make them cease, he went with his staff and beat them round about unmercifully on the bare pates, in that they, being but farmers and poor country hinds, could presume to laugh at the Queen’s man, and make no more account of her cloth in his presence.”

Metropolitan magistrates gave more license, and London audiences were not charged with disrespect of her Majesty, because they laughed immoderately at her jester. Tarleton was one night playing at the Bull, in Bishopsgate-street. The play was an old one, touching Henry V.; he, of course, played the clown, but the actor of Judge Gascoyne being absent, Tarleton good-naturedly undertook to play the Judge also. The actor who performed the part of the Prince, dealt the Judge such a box of the ear, when that pseudo-historical incident came on, that Gascoyne shook again, but he did not forget his dignity. He re-appeared as Clown, to whom is told the unseemly scene in court. “Strike a judge!” cried Tarleton. “It could not be but terrible to him, when the report so terrifies me that methinks the blow remains still on my cheek; that it burns again!” “The people,” adds the narrator, “laughed at this mightily;” and we may well fancy a clever and a favourite low comedian turning such an incident to capital account.

It was not exactly a time for jests when

“In the year 1588,” cried Philip, “the English I’ll humble. I’ve taken it into my Majesty’s pate, and their lion, oh down he shall tumble!”

We do not suppose, however, that the Queen’s jester fell sick at his lodgings in Haliwel-street, Shoreditch, because of the Spanish Armada. He is supposed to have been seized by the plague. On the 3rd of September, in the year just named, he, at all events, fell mortally ill; and he at once made his will: in this document he is described as “one of the Gromes of the Quene’s Majestie’s chamber.” He leaves all his goods and “cattells,” etc. etc., to his son Philip; but there is nothing to show that they exist anywhere. Nevertheless, he appoints guardians to his son, delivers to them “one penny of the good and lawful money of England,”--“to the use of the said Philipp Tarleton, by waye of possession and seisin of all my said goodes and cattells,” and having duly executed this deed, which is of some length, the Queen’s jester turned his face to the wall and died, on the evening of the day on which he had fallen ill. Before night had come on, he was lying in a grave of the parish churchyard; where many of the Elizabethan actors lie around him.

People reckoned from his time as from an era. “The year of Tarleton’s death” was as common a saying as “the year of the Armada.” His portrait was to be seen in every house; and in some residences, above the altar of Cloacina was suspended the _effigies_ of joyous Dick Tarleton.

At this period, the household fool was still, and he continued to be so for many subsequent years, to be found on most establishments of any consequence. Some of the best specimens of this class are to be found in Armin’s “Nest of Ninnies.” Before turning to the pages of the old literary actor, it may be as well to state that the ordinary dress of the jester of this period, is depicted by Mr. Douce, as consisting of a motley coat, with a girdle, bells at the skirt and, sometimes, at the elbows. The breeches and hose fitted close to the body, the colour on each leg being different. The hood covered not only the head, but the shoulders, and was crowned by the usual cock’s-comb. Some jesters carried a staff with a fool’s head at the end of it; others a staff suspended from which was a blown bladder with a few peas in it. This was the costume of the artificial fool. The natural fool was mostly attired in a long gown-like dress, occasionally of costly velvet, and adorned with yellow fringe,--_yellow_ being then commonly known as the “fool’s colour,” as dark blue was that of the serving man.