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.