Ayant pour sceptre en main une peinte marotte,
Tu sois parmi Paris pourmené doucement,
Vestu de jaune et vert en ton accoustrement.’
[1386] Leber, in Rigollot, lxviii.
[1387] Julleville, Les Com. 195, 203.
[1388] Du Tilliot, 84.
[1389] See e. g. the plate (p. 9) and description (p. xii) of Touchstone in Miss E. Fogerty’s ‘costume edition’ of As You Like It.
[1390] Twelfth Night, i. 5. 95, 101; Lear, i. 4. 220.
[1391] To the English data given by the historians of court fools may be added Wardrobe Account 28 Edw. I, 1299-1300 (Soc. Antiq.), 166 ‘Martinetto de Vasconia fatuo ludenti coram dicto domino Edwardo,’ and Lib. de Comp. Garderobae, temp. Edw. II (MS. Cotton, Nero, C. viii. ff. 83, 85), quoted by Strutt, 194 ‘twenty shillings paid to Robert le Foll to buy a boclarium ad ludendum before the king.’ Robert le Foll had also a garcio. For fools at the Scottish court of James IV cf. L. H. T. i. cxcix, &c.; iii. xcii, &c.; and on Thomas, the fool of Durham Priory in the fourteenth century, Appendix E (1).
[1392] Rigollot, 74; Moreau, 180, quoting a (clearly misdated) letter of Charles V to the municipality of Troyes, which requires the provision of a new ‘fol de cour’ by that city as a royal droit. The king’s eulogy of his fool is rather touching: ‘savoir faisons à leurs dessus dictes seigneuries que Thévenin nostre fol de cour vient de trespasser de celluy monde dedans l’aultre. Le Seigneur Dieu veuille avoir en gré l’âme de luy qui oneques ne faillit en sa charge et fonction emprès nostre royale Seigneurie et mesmement ne voult si trespasser sans faire quelque joyeuseté et gentille farce de son métier.’