APPENDIX.
Well might Old England * have been called “Merrie,” for the court had its masques and pageantry, and the people their plays, ** sports, and pastimes. There existed a jovial sympathy between the two estates, which was continually brought into action, and enjoyed with hearty good-will. Witness the Standard in Cornhill, and the Conduit in “Chepe;” when May-poles were in their glory, and fountains ran with wine.
* The English were a jesting, ballad-singing, play-going
people. The ancient press teemed with “merrie jests.”
The following oddities of the olden time grin from our
bookshelves. “Skelton's merrie Tales;”
“A Banquet of Jests, Old and New” (Archee's); “A new Booke
of Mistakes, or Bulls with Tales, and Bulls without Tales;”
“The Booke of Bulls Baited, with two Centuries of bold Jests
and nimble Lies “Robin Good-Fellow, his mad Pranks and merry
Jests “A merry Jest of Robin Hood “Tales and quicke
answers;”
“xii. mery Jests of the Wyddow Edyth “The merry jest of a
shrewde and curste Wyfe lapped in Morrelles-skin for her
good behavyour “Dobson's Drie Bobbes. Sonne and Heire to
Scoggin, full of mirth and delightful recreation;”
“Peele's Jests “Tarlton's. Jests “Scoggin's Jests “The Jests
of Smug the Smith;”
“A Nest of Ninnies,” &e. &e.
** There were not fewer than seventeen playhouses in and
about London, between 1570 and 1629.
A joyous remnant of the olden time was the coart-fool. “Better be a witty fool than a foolish wit.” What a marvellous personage is the court-fool of Shakspeare! His head was stocked with notions. He wore not Motley in his brain.
The most famous court-fools were Will Summers, or Sommers, Richard Tarlton, and Archibald Armstrong, vulgo Archee, jester to King Charles I. Archee was the last of the Motleys; unless we admit a fourth, on the authority of the well-known epigram.
“In merry old England it once was a rule,
The king had his poet and also his fool;
But now we're so frugal, I M have you to know it,
Poor Cibber must serve both for fool and for poet!”