[1400] Douce, 509, quoting ‘the second tale of the priests of Peblis,’ which, for all I know, may be a translation, ‘a man who counterfeits a fool is described “with club and bel and partie cote with eiris”; but it afterwards appears that he had both a club and a bauble.’
[1401] Douce, 510.
[1402] Douce, 512, quoting Gesta Grayorum, ‘the scribe claims the manor of Noverinte, by providing sheepskins and calves-skins to wrappe his highness wards and idiotts in’; cf. King John, iii. 1. 129 ‘And hang a calf’s-skin on those recreant limbs.’
[1403] Douce, 511.
[1404] Twelfth Night, i. 5. 63; As You Like It, ii. 7. 13, 43; King Lear, i. 4. 160; Midsummer Night’s Dream, iv. 1. 215. But the ‘long motley coat guarded with yellow’ of Hen. VIII, prol. 16, does not quite correspond to anything in the ‘habit de fou.’
[1405] King Lear, i. 4. 106. Cf. Taming of the Shrew, ii. 1. 226 ‘What is your crest? a coxcomb?’
[1406] All’s Well that Ends Well, iv. 5. 32. There are double entendre’s here and in the allusion to the ‘bauble’ of a ‘natural’ in Romeo and Juliet, ii. 4. 97, which suggest less a ‘marotte’ than a bauble of the bladder type; cf. p. 197.
[1407] As You Like It, ii. 4. 47.
[1408] Cf. ch. xxv.
[1409] Twelfth Night, ii. 3. 22.