Fools and Jesters at the English Court by Southworth John

Author:Southworth, John. [Southworth, John.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780752479866
Publisher: Perseus
Published: 2011-12-16T06:00:00+00:00

14

The Player Fools

With exception perhaps of Monarcho, Elizabeth’s fools were all of the clever, artificial kind; and, during her reign, one of them, Tarlton, was already spending more time on tour than he was at court. The subsequent history of the court jesters may be viewed in two ways: as a process of enfranchisement from the remaining restraints of royal and magnate patronage as more remunerative opportunities opened up to them, or as a forced accommodation to changing tastes and conditions. Both points of view are valid, and may have been complementary; for the pressure for change brought about by the shifting pattern of court patronage is likely to have prompted a perception on the part of the fools that their best interests lay in the future elsewhere. But however we look at it, the story that has still to be told can only be understood in relation to larger developments in drama and the theatre that were taking place at the same time, especially the rise in importance of the players.

Tarlton has been seen to have had a foot in both worlds: the world of the court as Elizabeth’s jester and that of the popular stage as a leading member of the Queen’s Players; but to discover how he came to assume this double role, we shall need to retrace our steps a little.

The origins of professional theatre in England lie much further back in time than is often supposed. Though theatres in the material sense of buildings constructed primarily, if not exclusively, for the performance of plays date, it is true, mainly from the Elizabethan period, it is now well established that groups of travelling minstrel-players had been on the road from early in the thirteenth century.

As Richard Axton has pointed out, the ‘representation of the Lord’s resurrection’ in St John’s churchyard at Beverley in about 1220 was performed outdoors in summer (out of its liturgical season) on the north, unhallowed side of the church by ‘masked actors, as usual (larvatorum, ut assolet)’ – a troupe of professional players.1 The plays were called ‘interludes’ and the players ‘interluders’ probably because they provided amusement between the courses of formal dinners and feasts at court and in magnate households, where drama might alternate with music or displays of tumbling and other minstrel skills. (The drama was not considered to be of any greater value.) The rewards given to Griscote, Visage and Magote at the wedding feast of Elizabeth of Rhuddlan and the count of Holland at Ipswich in 1297 (cited in Chapter 5) would have been for an entertainment of this kind. In 1384/5, players (ludentibus interludium) were visiting King’s Lynn in Norfolk and were rewarded by the mayor for their performances (again, out of their proper liturgical time) of a Corpus Christi miracle play and another on the subject of St Thomas Martyr (Thomas Becket). At Christmas 1406, Richard Mitford, bishop of Salisbury, was entertained by four hominibus del Vise ludentibus i interludium; and in 1428, again at Christmas,

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