21. "Item, That all stayrs in the house, and other rooms that neede shall require, bee made cleane on Fryday after dinner, on paine of forfeyture of every on whome it shall belong unto, 3d.
"All which sommes shalbe duly paide each quarter-day out of their wages, and bestowed on the poore, or other godly use."[140:A]
To the tribe of household servants, must be added, as a constant inmate in the houses of the great, during the life of Shakspeare, and, indeed, to the close of the reign of Charles I., that motley personage, the Domestic Fool, who was an essential part of the entertainment of the fire-side, not only in the palace and the castle, but in the tavern and the brothel.
The character of the "all-licens'd fool" has been copied from the life, with his usual naïveté and precision, and with an inexhaustible fund of wit, in many of the plays of our poet; yet, perhaps, we shall no where find a more condensed and faithful picture of the
manners of this once indispensable source of domestic pleasantry, than what has been given us by Dr. Lodge:—"This fellow," says he, "in person is comely, in apparell courtly, but in behaviour a very ape, and no man; his studie is to coine bitter jeasts, or to shew antique motions, or to sing baudie sonnets and ballads: give him a little wine in his head, he is continually flearing and making of mouthes: he laughs intemperately at every little occasion, and dances about the house, leaps over tables, out-skips mens heads, trips up his companion's heeles, burns sack with a candle, and hath all the feats of a lord of misrule in the countrie: feed him in his humor, you shall have his heart, in meere kindnesse he will hug you in his armes, kisse you on the cheeke, and rapping out an horrible oth, crie God's soule Tum I love you, you know my poore heart, come to my chamber for a pipe of tabacco, there lives not a man in this world that I more honour. In these ceremonies you shall know his courting, and it is a speciall mark of him at the table, he sits and makes faces."[141:A]
On the passages in this quotation distinguished by Italics, it will be necessary to offer a brief comment. From Shakspeare we learn that the apparel of the domestic fool was of two kinds; he had either a parti-coloured coat fastened round the body by a girdle, with close breeches, and hose on each leg of different colours; or he wore a long petticoat dyed with curious tints, and fringed with yellow. With both dresses was generally connected a hood, covering the whole head, falling over part of the breast and shoulders, and surmounted with asses ears, or a cocks-comb. Bells and a bauble were the usual insignia of the character; the former either attached to the elbows,
or the skirt of the coat, and the latter, consisting of a stick, decorated at one end with a carved fool's head, and having at the other an inflated bladder, an instrument either of sport or defence.
Bitter jests, provided they were so dressed up, or so connected with adjunctive circumstances, as to raise a laugh, were at all times allowed; but it was moreover expected, that their keenness or bitterness should be also allayed by a due degree of obliquity in the mode of attack, by a careless, and, apparently, undesigning manner of delivery, and by a playful and frolic demeanour. For these purposes, fragments of sonnets and ballads were usually chosen by the fool, as a safe medium through which the necessary degree of concealment might be given, and the edge of his sarcasm duely abated; a practice of which Shakspeare has afforded us many instances, and especially in his Fool in King Lear, whose scraps of old songs fully exemplify the aim and scope of this favourite of our ancestors.[142:A]
A few household arrangements, in addition to those developed in Sir John Harrington's orders, shall terminate this branch of our subject.
We have seen, when treating of the domestic economy of the country squire, that it was usual to take their banquet or dessert, in an arbour of the garden or orchard; and in town, the nobility and gentry, immediately after dinner and supper, adjourned to another room, for the purpose of enjoying their wine and fruit; this practice is alluded to by Shakspeare, in Romeo and Juliet[142:B]; and Beaufort, in the Unnatural Combat of Massinger, says:—