Published by T. Tegg, Cheapside, Sept.r 1839.
Figs. 1 and 3 below are from A booke of Christian prayers, &c., 1590, 4to, being figures belonging to a dance of Death. Fig. 2 is from the frontispiece to Heywood's comedy of The fair maid of the exchange. Similar figures of the costume of fools in the time of James I., or Charles I., may be seen in The life of Will Summers, compiled long after his time. Figs. 4 and 5 are from La grant danse Macabre, printed at Troyes without date, but about the year 1500, in folio, a book of uncommon rarity and curiosity. Fig. 6 is from the Stultarum virginum scaphæ, seu naviculæ of Badius Ascensius, another work of much rarity, and far exceeding that of the ship of fools by Sebastian Brandt. In all the editions of the latter, a great variety of the fools of the fifteenth century will be found. Fig. 7 is from a French translation of St. Augustine on the city of God, printed at Abbeville 1486. It exemplifies the use of the tabor and pipe by fools; a practice that seems to have been revived by Tarlton in the time of Elizabeth. Figures 3, 4, and 6, have been introduced to show the costume of female fools. Among others of this kind that might deserve notice is a very interesting one in the picture, by Holbein, of Henry the Eighth's family already mentioned.
FOOTNOTES:
[45] See a note by Mr. Ritson in Twelfth night, Act II. Scene 3, edit. Steevens, vol. iv. p. 53.
[46] Defence of poesie, near the end.
[47] Mirrour of monsters, 1587, 4to, fo. 7.
[48] Arte of English poesie, 1589, 4to, fo. 243.