His very name, as we have said, links him with the morality-play. In fact, all the Vices suggested, Iniquity, Fraud, Covetousness, and Lady Vanity, are taken from the moralities. The choice of Iniquity was not without meaning, and was doubtless due to its more general and inclusive significance. In Shakespeare’s time Vice and Iniquity seem to have been synonymous terms (see Schmidt), from which it has been inferred that Iniquity was the Vice in many lost moralities.[48]
Of the original Vice-traits Iniquity lays vigorous claim to that of the corrupter of man. Pug desires a Vice that he may ‘practice there-with any play-fellow’, and Iniquity comes upon the stage with voluble promises to teach his pupil to ‘cheat, lie, cog and swagger’. He offers also to lead him into all the disreputable precincts of the city. Iniquity appears in only two scenes, Act 1. Sc. 1 and Act 5. Sc. 6. In the latter he reverses the usual process and carries away the devil to hell. This point has already been discussed (p. xxiv).
Aside from these two particulars, Iniquity is far nearer to the fool than to the original Vice. As he comes skipping upon the stage in the first scene, reciting his galloping doggerel couplets, we see plainly that the element of buffoonery is uppermost in Jonson’s mind. Further evidence may be derived from the particularity with which Iniquity describes the costume which he promises to Pug, and which we are doubtless to understand as descriptive of his own. Attention should be directed especially to the wooden dagger, the long cloak, and the slouch hat. Cushman says (p. 125): ‘The vice enjoys the greatest freedom in the matter of dress; he is not confined to any stereotyped costume; ... the opinion that he is always or usually dressed in a fool’s costume has absolutely no justification’. The wooden dagger, a relic of the Roman stage,[49] is the most frequently mentioned article of equipment. It is first found (1553-8) as part of the apparel of Jack Juggler in a print illustrating that play, reproduced by Dodsley. It is also mentioned in Like Will to Like, Hickescorner, King Darius, etc. The wooden dagger was borrowed, however, from the fool’s costume, and is an indication of the growing identification of the Vice with the house-fool. That Jonson recognized it as such is evident from his Expostulation with Inigo Jones:
No velvet suit you wear will alter kind; A wooden dagger is a dagger of wood.
The long cloak, twice mentioned (1. 1. 51 and 85), is another property borrowed from the fool. The natural fool usually wore a long gown-like dress,[50] and this was later adopted as a dress for the artificial fool. Muckle John, the court fool of Charles I., was provided with ‘a long coat and suit of scarlet-colour serge’.[51]
Satan’s reply to Pug’s request for a Vice is, however, the most important passage on this subject. He begins by saying that the Vice, whom he identifies with the house fool, is fifty years out of date. Only trivial and absurd parts are left for Iniquity to play, the mountebank tricks of the city and the tavern fools. Douce (pp. 499 f.) mentions nine kinds of fools, among which the following appear: 1. The general domestic fool. 4. The city or corporation fool. 5. Tavern fools. Satan compares Iniquity with each of these in turn. The day has gone by, he says:
When euery great man had his Vice stand by him, In his long coat, shaking his wooden dagger.
Then he intimates that Iniquity may be able to play the tavern fool:
Where canst thou carry him? except to Tauernes? To mount vp ona joynt-stoole, with a Iewes-trumpe, To put downe Cokeley, and that must be to Citizens?
And finally he compares him with the city fool: