The next, the Lord of May and Lady bright,
The Chambermaid and Serving-man, by night
That seek out silent hanging: then mine Host
And his fat Spouse, that welcomes to their cost
The galled traveller, and with a beck’ning
Informs the tapster to inflame the reck’ning:
Then the beast-eating Clown, and next the Fool,
The Bavian, with long tail and eke long tool;
Cum multis aliis, that make a dance.’
Evidently some of these dramatis personae are not traditional; the ingenuity of the presenter has been at work on them. ‘Bavian’ as a name for the fool, is the Dutch baviaan, ‘baboon.’ His ‘tail’ is to be noted; for the phallic shape sometimes given to the bladder which he carries, cf. Rigollot, 164. In the Betley window the fool has a bauble; in the Vinkenboom picture a staff with a bladder at one end, and a ladle (to gather money in) at the other. In the window the ladle is carried by the hobby-horse. ‘The hobby-horse is forgot’ is a phrase occurring in L. L. L. iii. 1. 30; Hamlet, iii. 2. 144, and alluded to by Beaumont and Fletcher, Women Pleased, iv. 1, and Ben Jonson, in the masque quoted above, and in The Satyr (Cunningham, ii. 577). Apparently it is a line from a lost ballad.