He excelled in tragedy as well as comedy, a circumstance that has escaped the research of all his biographers. This curious fact is recorded in a very scarce volume, “Stradlingi ( Joannis) Epigrammata,” 1607, which contains verses on Tarlton. He was born at Condover in the county of Salop; was (according to tradition) his father's swineherd, and owed his introduction at court to Robert Earl of Leicester. Certain it is that Elizabeth took great delight in him, made him one of her servants, and allowed him wages and a groom. According to Taylor the water poet, (“Wit and Mirth”) “ Dicke Tarlton said that hee could compare Queene Elizabeth to nothing more fitly than to a sculler; for,” said he, “neither the queene nor the sculler hath a fellow.” He basked all his eccentric life in the sunshine of royal favour. The imperial tigress, who condemned a poor printer to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, for publishing a harmless tract, civilly asking her, when tottering and toothless, to name her successor, listened with grinning complacency to the biting jests and waggeries of her court-fool; grave judges and pious bishops relaxed their reverend muscles at his irresistible buffooneries; while the “many-headed beast,” the million, hailed him with uproarious jollity. Here * I must needs remember Tarlton, in his time with the queen his soveraigne, and the people's generall applause.
“Richard Tarlton, ** for a wondrous plentifull, pleasant, extemporal wit, was the wonder of his time. He was so beloved that men use his picture for their signes.”
“Let him *** (the fanatic Prynne) try when he will, and come upon the stage himself with all the scurrility of the Wife of Bath, with all the ribaldry of Poggius or Boccace, yet I dare affirm he shall never give that contentment to beholders as honest Tarlton did, though he said never a word.”
* Heywood's Apology for Actors.
** Howes, the editor of Stowe's Chronicle.
*** Theatrum Redivivum, by Sir Richard Baker.
“Tarlton, when his head was onely seene,
The tire-house doore and tapistrie betweene,
Set all the multitude in such a laughter,
They could not hold for scarse an houre after.” *
* Peacham's Thalia's Banquet, 1620.
In those primitive times (when the play was ended) actors and audiences were wont to pass jokes—“Theames,” as they were called—upon each other; and Tarlton, whose flat nose and shrewish wife made him a general butt, was always too many for his antagonist. If driven into a corner, he, as Dr. Johnson said of Foote, took a jump, and was over your head in an instant. In 1611 was published in 4to. “Tarlton's Jests, drawn into Three Parts: his court-witty Jests; his sound-city Jest's; his country-pretty Jests; full of delight, wit, and honest mirth.” This volume is of extraordinary rarity. In the title-page is a woodcut of the droll in his clown's dress, playing on his pipe with one hand, and beating his drum with the other. In Tarlton's News out of Purgatory, the ancient dress appropriated to that character is thus described. I saw one attired in russet, with a buttoned cap on his head, a bag by his side, and a strong bat in his hand; so artificially attired for a clowne, as I began to call Tarlton's woonted shape to remembrance; and in Kind-Hart's Dreame (1592), “The next, by his suit of russet, his buttoned cap, his taber, his standing on the toe, and other tricks, I knew to be either the body or resemblance of Tarlton, who living, for his pleasant conceits, was of all men liked, and dying, for mirth left not his like.” This print * is characteristic and spirited, and bears the strongest marks of personal identity. When some country wag threw up his “Theame,” after the following fashion:—