Perhaps the truest likeness of Shakespeare’s fools to the actual Motleys, is the Clown in Twelfth Night. He preaches and quotes Latin with the facility of Chicot, and as if he had been much with the parson. The threat to hang him or turn him away, may show that loss of service was held to be a disaster; while the way in which (upon permission) he shows his mistress to be a fool, is an excellent illustration of the liberty arrogated by the professor of wit. Malvolio saw him put down in contention with an ordinary fool. These trials of wit were not uncommon when the household buffoon was common also; but it was all in jest. Nothing the jester uttered, however he meant it, was ever taken for serious. “There is no slander,” says Olivia, “in an allowed fool.” This shows the worth attached to Motley’s sayings; the clown, too, very accurately defines his own standing, when he says, “I am not her fool, but her corruptor of words;” and Viola exquisitely and perfectly portrays all that the fool should be, in the words:—
“This fellow’s wise enough to play the fool;
And to do that well craves a kind of wit:
He must observe their mood on whom he jests,
The quality of persons and the time;
And, like the haggard, check at ev’ry feather
That comes before his eye. This is a practice,
As full of labour as a wise man’s art:
For folly, that he wisely shows, is fit;
But wise men, folly fallen, taint their wit.”
It is impossible that any pen could better describe the requirements of the jester, his qualifications, the duty to be performed, and the way to perform it. No court fool of Shakespeare’s time or memory could have sat for the portrait. Neither Patch, nor Pace, nor Chester, nor Clod could have done so; perhaps Heywood comes nearest to it, but he was probably not in Shakespeare’s mind, when he imagined a more brilliant fool than ever sat at the hearth of a prince and railed at his patron.
Beaumont and Fletcher, in the Mad Lover, cannot be said to be nearly so successful in their description of the fool and his quality, though there is allusion in it to the would-be professors, worth noticing.
“Every idle knave that shows his teeth,
Wants and would live, can juggle, tumble, fiddle,
Make a dog-face, or can abuse his fellow,
Is not a fool at first dash. You shall find, Sir,
Strange turnings in this trade.”
In the Wit Without Money of these authors, we have a glimpse of a sort of household joker of those times, in the person of Shorthose, the widow’s fool, who grows dull in the country, brightens up by town associations, loves good living, dislikes morning prayers, and has a turn for clever similes and smart sayings, in the style of stage valets. He is superior, after all, to Tony, in A Wife for a Month, who is a mere low-comedy fool, with a wit to which Shakespeare’s jesters would scorn to condescend. In this piece, however, we again trace the presence of the whip, as a permanent menace against offending Motley, in English houses. The usurping Frederick, indeed, says to him, “Thou art a fool, and may’st do mischief lawfully;”—nevertheless, not only the fool’s master, but others of less authority, frequently threaten to chastise this official with an undefined position.
Geta, in the Prophetess, is described as a “jester,” but he is little more than a stage servant, who alludes to “turn-spits,” and who becomes duller the higher he rises in station. Villio, in the Double Marriage, is a type of the philosophical fool, of whom there were many; and who, with the wit of common sense, judges content in a cottage to be better than a throne with a thorn in the side of the king who sits on it. We have still fewer reflections of the jester in Penurio and Soto, of Woman Pleased, and in Jaques and Pedro of Women’s Prize. Beaumont and Fletcher have more success in painting the household dwarf than the household fool. The fidelity of Zoilus, dwarf to a duke’s son, in Cupid’s Revenge, is a compliment to his class. He is as ugly as most of these creatures were, who moreover lived in constant feud with the more gigantic jester, if there was one in the house. Zoilus is described as being “an ape’s skin stuffed; with a pudding in ’s belly;” and yet his lady loves him, for which, however, he is sent to death. Even Base, the jester to the passionate lord, in Nice Valour, is but a weak representative of our official friend. He has but one jest, and that is but a poor one. A servant says, “There comes a Cupid drawn by six fools.” To which Base replies, “That’s nothing, I ha’ known six hundred fools drawn by one Cupid.” There is a finer touch of the real Motley in Massinger’s Calandrino (Great Duke of Florence), when he remarks:—
“I confess,
I am not very wise, and yet I find
A fool, so he be parcel knave, in court
May flourish and grow rich.”
And his distinction between country and court air is quite in the fool’s vein:—
“As this court air taught me knavish wit,
By which I am grown rich, if that again
Should turn me fool and honest, vain hopes, farewell!
For I must die a beggar.”