Potter’s Wife. An like your grace, it is the watermen that call for
passengers to go westward now.”
Dekker took the exclamation “Westward, ho!” for the title of a comedy; and Jonson, Chapman, and Marston adopted that of “Eastward, ho!” for one jointly written by them a few years afterwards.
Fools. Mr. Douce, in his essay “On the Clowns and Fools of Shakespeare,” has made a ninefold division of English fools, according to quality or place of employment, as the domestic fool, the city or corporation fool, the tavern fool, the fool of the mysteries and moralities. The last is generally called the “vice,” and is the original of the stage clowns so common among the dramatists of the time of Elizabeth, and who embody so much of the wit of Shakespeare.
A very palpable distinction is that which distinguishes between such creatures as were chosen to excite to laughter from some deformity of mind or body, and such as were chosen for a certain alertness of mind and power of repartee—or, briefly, butts and wits. The dress of the regular court fool of the middle ages was not altogether a rigid uniform, but seems to have changed from time to time. The head was shaved, the coat was motley, and the breeches tight, with, generally, one leg different in color from the other. The head was covered with a garment resembling a monk’s cowl, which fell over the breast and shoulders, and often bore asses’ ears, and was crested with a coxcomb, while bells hung from various parts of the attire. The fool’s bauble was a short staff bearing a ridiculous head, to which was sometimes attached an inflated bladder, by which sham castigations were inflicted; a long petticoat was also occasionally worn, but seems to have belonged rather to the idiots than the wits. The fool’s business was to amuse his master, to excite his laughter by sharp contrast, to prevent the over-oppression of state affairs, and, in harmony with a well-known physiological precept, by his liveliness at meals to assist his lord’s digestion.[980]
The custom of shaving and nicking the head of a fool is very old. There is a penalty of ten shillings, in one of Alfred’s Ecclesiastical Laws, if one opprobriously shave a common man like a fool; and Malone cites a passage from “The Choice of Change,” etc., by S. R. Gent, 4to, 1598—“Three things used by monks, which provoke other men to laugh at their follies: 1. They are shaven and notched on the head like fooles.”
In the “Comedy of Errors” (v. 1), the servant says:
“My master preaches patience to him, and the while
His man with scissors nicks him like a fool.”
Forfeits. In order to enforce some kind of regularity in barbers’ shops, which were once places of great resort for the idle, certain laws were usually made, the breaking of which was to be punished by forfeits. Rules of this kind, however, were as often laughed at as obeyed. So, in “Measure for Measure” (v. 1):
“laws for all faults,
But faults so countenanc’d, that the strong statutes
Stand like the forfeits in a barber’s shop,
As much in mock as mark.”
Gambling. It was once customary for a person when going abroad “to put out” a sum of money on condition of receiving good interest for it on his return home; if he never returned the deposit was forfeited. Hence such a one was called “a putter-out.” It is to this practice that reference is made in the following passage (“The Tempest,” iii. 3):