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(1)A Note on the Formative Process of Elizabethan 'new Fools'. SHIBA. A Note on the Formative Process of Elizabethan 'new Fools' Shiro SHIBA Richard Tarlton was the first of famous Elizabethan jigging clowns, We can not find his name in the patent to players granted in 1574. He must, however, "have been eminent in his profession within a short time after this date, for early in 1583 we find him chosen one of the Queen's players, and a groom of the chamber, which office he held until his death in 1588", as J. O. Halliwell indicates. l Tarlton's lively theatreactivities on the stage and page are remarkable, although we could not trace and examine all of them. In 1585, it is said, the Queen's Men planned a device called Five. Plays in One and Three Plays in One. These are considered "the original two parts of Tarlton's popular The Seven Deadly Sins" (1585).2 Since it is lost now (though we can see the" Platt" of the second part of the play extant in Dulwich College, MS. XIX, as Greg relates it),3 we cannot know what the whole of Tarlton's Deadly Sins is like. From. Tarlton's Jest and News out of Purgatory, we learn that the immortal Tarlton assumed the clown's part of Derick in The Famous Victories. of Henry V (1586);4 it is said that he created the role. 5 The popular dimension of Tarlton's role in the play emphasized the double-dealing (of illusion and reality) function of the clown;6 one day, according to a contemporary anecdote, Tarlton went still further by playing the parts of both the clown and the judge and showing his own extemporary wit. 7 Halliwell's remarks deserve our attention: -119-.

(2) ;t"jt •. £:~J. . ;t{t. 20. ~. 2~. 2009. 3. It must be recollected that the clown was a much more important. and privileged personage in his day than our own. He not only entered on the stage at stated intervals, but continually mixed with the company, and attempted to excite merriment by any species of buffoonery that occurred to him; and frequently entered into a contest of raillery and sarcasm with some of the audience. s. Tarlton's fame was based on his extempore wit, his gift for improvisation, and his jigs. His legendary jests appeared in three sections, which emphasize the broad social base of his appeal: Tarlton's jests, Drawn into. three parts: His Court Witty jests: His Sound City jests: His Country pretty jests (1611). "This remarkable unity of court, city, and country jesting paved the way for the Elizabethan clown and was of considerable consequence to Shakespeare's dramatic method".9 Together with Kempe, Armin, and Robert Wilson, Tarlton created the modern clown and fool of Renaissance drama combining elements of the morality vice and outmoded court fool. At the same time he brought the country jig to the Elizabethan stage, a form described by Charles Read Baskervill as a "professional offshoot of the folk art of song and dance".10 Tarlton was "not only a stage clown but a man of many parts, a maker of plays and ballads, a drummer, tumbler and qualified Master of Fencing".ll The great popularity which Tarlton possessed may be readily seen from the numerous allusions to him in a lot of writers of the time. 12 The year 1588 witnessed the Death of Tarlton as well as the Spanish Armada. Tarlton's compeer, Robert Wilson, "a more scholarly wit",13 played -120 -.

(3) A Note on the Formative Process of Elizabethan 'new Fools'. SHIBA. in the same company with him, M, C. Bradbrook says, "Wilson was the first common player to gain wide reputation as an author" ,14 Edmund Howes tells of "the establishment of the Queen's troupe of twelve players, among whom are 'two rare men', Tarlton and Wilson, and the latter is noted 'for a quicke delicate refined ex temporal wit''' ,15 Francis Meres, in Palladis Tamia (1598), also couples him with Tarlton; after praising Tarlton, he continues: "And so is now our wittie Wilson, who for learning and extemporall witte in this facultie is without compare or compeere, as, to his great and eternall commendations, he manifested in his challenge at the Swanne on the Bank side" ,16 Wilson is taken to be the author (uR, W,") of The Three Ladies of London (1581), The Three. Lords and Three Ladies of London (1588), and The Cobbler's Prophecy (1590), After Tarlton and Wilson, the famous clown was William Kempe, the leading one of the Chamberlain's Men from its formation in 1594 (and then he shifted to the Worcester's Men), Like Tarlton, whom he succeeded "as well in the fauour of her Maiesty, as in the opinion & good thoughts of the generall audience", 17 he usually played the clown, and was greatly applauded for his buffoonery, his extemporal wit, and his performance of the jig, IS Some reference, among others, to Kemp and the clown's tricks is found in Pilgrimage to Parnassus (1597), V, 674, a Cambridge university play, where Dromo, "drawing in a clowne with a rope", says:. Why, what an ass art thou! dost thou not/knowe a playe cannot be without a clowne? Clownes have/been thrust into pia yes by head and shoulders ever since/Kempe -121-.

(4) )z7 • j'f*j • )zit. 20 ~ 2 ~. 2009. 3. could make a scurvey face .... Why, if thou canst but drawe thy mouth awrye, /laye the legg over thy staffe, sawe a peece of cheese/asunder with thy dagger, lape up drinke on the earth, l/warrant thee theile laughe mightilie. 19. Kempe was an actor for Shakespeare's early clowns. He acted Peter in Romeo and Juliet (IV. v) and Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing (IV. ii), as evidenced by "the substitution of the name Kempe for the speech heading of the character in the text of the two plays" .20 In 1600, when theatres closed for Lent, Kempe set off on his famous 'morris dance' from London to Norwich. The success of this attempt may have activated "the bombastic idea of dancing to Italy" .21 His name appears in the 1623 folio list of Shakespearean actors. Kempe was the last of the famous Elizabethan clowns. He was "better known for harlequinade and jigs than wit.... He is rightly or wrongly thought to have been the culprit charged by Hamlet with speaking more than was set down for him" .22 Kempe was a clown fool. In his speech to the players, Hamlet himself confirms "the drastic change in the clown's role within Elizabethan drama: traditional clowning of extempore wit, improvisation has become out of place in the more self-contained artistic unity of the Renaissance play":23 "... let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them ... ". (Hamlet, III. ii). The reproach of Hamlet's simply reflects as aristocratic or connoisseur like impatience about knockabouts, loud laughter and extemporary speeches; to put it other way, we could claim at least that the amount of traditional clowning has been decreasing in a way. Kempe jigged out of the stage in 1599;24 and his successor Robert - 122-.

(5) A Note on the Formative Process of Elizabethan 'new Fools'. SHIBA. Armin, as Andrew Gurr indicates, was as renowned for being a playwright and pamphleteer as for being a fool-actor. 25 He was of "a rising social group (he was the son of a tailor of King's Lynn, Norfolk").26 David Wiles observes:. [Armin] was an intellectual, a Londoner, and as well attuned to Renaissance notions of folly as to the English folk tradition. As an actor, Armin's skills lay in mime and mimicry, skills which could easily be adapted to a theatre based on satire and the mimesis of manners (ibid.).. As regards the condition of the contemporary stages, Welsford says:. Court fools seem to have been fairly popular on the stage between 1598-1605, a fact which was probably due to the fact that Armin, who was interested in fool-literature, was at that time becoming a successful comic actor. 27. Kempe's successor in Shakespeare's company (Kempe played in the Worcester's Men in 1600-1601) had significantly different talents. Armin was a playwright as Tarlton and Wilson had been: but, as Gurr claims, "much less an extemporizer" (ibid.). He was known for his singing rather than his wit. Shakespeare had probably written Falstaff and Dogberry with Kempe in mind, and it is for Armin that he produced Feste and Lear's Foo1. 28 Armin was not a clown at all; but played a natural fool or court jester. Here it is worth noting the crucial difference between the clown -123-.

(6) :>t"J': • 1;:1;I\r • :>tit. 20 ~ 2. q. 2009. 3. and the fool which is elucidated by Goldsmith: the fools in general are characters in the plot, not irrelevant entertainers who wander across the stage at will; they are more consciously ironical and sarcastic in their humour than are the clowns, whereas the clown's jigs and buffoonery are often independent turns with no bearing on the rest of the plays.29 These facts may reflect their original status: court fool and country clown. In Shakespearean dialogue, the word "fool" is generally used with enormous freedom; but the word "clown" used limitedly. David Wiles's definition of these words is also helpful in our discussion:. The term 'fool'was the normal colloq uial term for a man like Armin..... 'The fool' was a type of role identified by an. iconographic costume, a costume containing the insignia of 'folly' .... The term 'clown' belongs ether to specialized playhouse vocabulary or to a neo-chivalric discourse concerned with morality and class .... [I] n a theatre-related context the term 'the clown'refers always to the resident clown or fool in a professional company.3D. Shakespeare succeeded in creating a theatrical joke concerning this original difference between them. In As You Like It, what could be regarded as very unusual takes place: Touchstone, the urbane court fool entering Arden's country world of rustics, performs his part as a very self-conscious opposite to Tarlton and Kemp, and enjoys a sophisticated game of reversed clowning against the stereotype. 31 The old practice of country clowns like Hob and Lob, Rustjcs and Hodge, and Dericke, in. Cambises, Horestes, and Famous Victories, going from country to Court ·124-.

(7) A Note on the Formative Process of Elizabethan 'new Fools'. SHIBA. and meeting lords and kings, is inverted in the play where Touchstone, the court fool, leaves the court for the country and marries a clownish girl, Audrey (becoming a country clown). This is a reversal of roles, from court fool to country clown, the reverse or inversion of Bottom the weaver going to Court in Midsummr-Night's Dream. This was, most likely, only done by Armin, an unprecedentedtype and complex kind of fool. Touchstone, as it were, is making fun of the clown tradition or signalling the changing tradition of clown. 32 This device is most probably a dramatic embodiment of Shakespeare's sarcastic comments on the clown role as in Hamlet's speech, or perhaps Shakespeare's suggestive signal to the audience of his creation of a crucially new type fool. After Touchstone, Armin's next part was Feste. Feste is clearly the most artificial and wisest of all the fools; and at the same time, as Charles Felver points out, he is perhaps "more than any other figure in the play, the master of the Twelfth Night revels" .33 A fool, in general, is a resident in an inverted world, and well versed in inversion or reversion of the worldly values and logic, as is found in the feasts of fools; the Lord of Misrule is an example of reversed roles. Feste, who looks upon himself as Olivia's "corrupter of words", shrewdly and sharply makes a fool of Olivia, practising "chopp'd logic":. CLO. Good madonna, why mourn'st thou? OLI. Good fool, for my brother's death. CLO. I think his soul is in hell, madonna. OLI. I know his soul is in heaven, fool. CLO. The more fool, madonna, to mourn for your brother's -125-.

(8) X$ . iti#r • XfL. 20 {l:; 2 ~. 2009. 3. soul, being in heaven. Take away the fool, gentlemen.. (Twelfth Night, 1. v. 66-71). When Viola asks him if he is not the Lady Olivia's fool, he denies the title, suggesting that it would be more fitting to her husband, when she takes one. Viola suggests that she has seen him at Orsino's; and he replies that fools are readily to be found there:. Foolery, sir, does walk about the orb like the sun, it shines every where.. (III. i. 38-39). After this witty passage, in which Feste has educated Viola on the role of fool, she makes the following intriguing comment:. VIO. This fellow is wise enough to play the fool, And to do that well craves a kind of wit.. (60-61). This view on the fool, including what follows (62-68), helps the audience recognise the role of the fool, and partly reveals a complex mechanism of the quite new fool's conscious behaviour, as shall be seen later on. Shakespeare's boldest, most poignant, and even tragic use of the fool is in King Lear; Lear's Fool participates in an integral, not impertinent part of the tragedy, although he is rather a natural fool, not so artificial as Feste or Touchestone. In Lear, Shakespeare further develops "the apothegmatic wisdom of the fool" (in Glena Wood's term)34 more than in As You Like It and Twelfth Night. The Fool plays his own complex -126-.

(9) A Note on the Formative Process of Elizabethan 'new Fools'. SHIBA. role in an ironic tragicomic structure of the play, Indeed, "the Fool's antics and words are comic with tragic overtones and insight; Lear's are tragic, with comic undertones and blindness" (ibid,), Lear's Fool is the court-jester and stage-fool who can see and speak the truth with impunity, and is a fusion of (or perhaps has inherited from) all those fools in the folk drama dimension, But his actual behaviour is multivalent or multisignificant in the tragedy: he is a rich hybrid fool. Thus he is much more complex than Touchstone or Feste, His jests, far from mitigating his master's woes, intensify them by forcing the King to realize the depth of his folly, far from relieving the tension, sometimes aggravate it, and seem even to drive him to madness. (King Lear, I. v), while as a Chorus pointing us to the absurdity of Lear's action,35 The Fool is both the sweet and bitter fool of his own song (I. iv, 140-147), for behind his sharpest taunts there moves a tender love for Lear (d, I. iv, 172-178); he suggests in his song (II. iv, 78-85) that he will still follow Lear, even when things become worse, Even when the worse condition grows even worse, the Fool sings with stoic resignation mixed with a little comic tone:. He that has and a little tiny. wit~. With heigh-ho, the wind and the rain ~ Must make content with his fortunes fit, Though the rain it raineth every day.. (King Lear, III. ii. 74-77). This is an adaptation of Feste's Song 36 (with which he concludes. Twelfth Night) which was sung by Armin as in King Lear:. -127-.

(10) X'f: .. ~fI\J. • X{~. 20 ~ 2 {j-. 2009. 3. When that I was and a little tiny boy, With hey, ho, the wind and the rain, A foolish thing was but a toy, For the rain it raineth every day.. (Twelfth Night, V. i. 389 392). Armin published a play called The History of the two Maids of More-. Clacke with the Life and Simple Manner of fohn i'th Hospital in 1609.37 As Hotson and then Felver have pointed out, the play is constructed as a vehicle for Armin so that he can double the roles of 'John i'the Hospital and Tutch the clown'.38 The woodcut on the title page portrays Armin in the role of John, wearing the standard blue-coat livery (see Stage Directions) of Christ's Hospital. He is marked out as a fool by the objects which hang from his belt: a handkerchief to mop his dribble, and a pen and inkhorn which signify that this adult has yet to complete his schooling. 39 Tutch, the "quick-witted clown" (Dramatis Personae), is a servant of a gentleman. In his final scene (XXII), Armin/Tutch, the artificial fool, becomes Armin/Tutch/John, the natural fool (Tutch disguises as John) :. SIR WILLIAM. Came ye by foot Iohn, or by water? TUTCH. A horse- backe ith boat. SIR WILLIAM. Art not gal'd with riding, Iohn? TUTCH. No, but weary with sitting, nurse shall sing a Geneua psalme, and bids these beggers [sic] welcome. SIR WILLIAM. How beggars, Iohn? TUTCH. All the world is so, ha, ha, ha. EARLE. He saies true, chide him not, we are no lesse. -128-.

(11) A Note on the Formative Process of Elizabethan 'new Fools'. SHIBA. (Two Maids, XXII, 178-185). The complex relationship of clown, artificial fool, and natural fool is one of Armin's special concerns. This is a complex fool which is highly developed from the role of Tarlton as a simple jigging clown. Armin's jest books show us something of the actuality of jestership:. Fool upon Fool (1600) comprises sketches of six natural fools;40 A Nest of Ninnies 41 (1608) is an expansion of Fool upon Fool, with the similar anecdotes. The passage in a verse illustrates a difference between natural and artificial fools:. Natural fooles are prone to selfe conceite: Fooles artificial!, with their wits lay wayte To make themselues fooles, liking the disguise, To feede their owne min des, and the gazers eyes. 42. We should remember, as Lippincott notes, that "the realistic picture of actual fools by Armin is obviously a valuable contrast to Shakespeare's fool characters, even though the two sets are entirely different" .43 In addition, Armin's Quips upon Questions, sub-titled A Clown's Conceit on. Occasion Offered (1600), gives us valuable insight into the Elizabethan sub-culture of clowns and their improvisational art. 41 Armin seems to be conscious of some audience and his own profession when he explains foolery and role-playing in "He plays the Foole" among the Quips. He reminds his audience (his words deserve our quotation, although they might be rather long) :. 129-.

(12) x"Ji: • :Z;t~J • X{t. 20 ~ 2 i3. 2009. 3. True it is, he pIa yes the Foole indeed; But in the Play he playes it as he must: Yet when the Play is ended, then his speed Is better then the pleasure of thy trust: For he shall haue what thou that time hast spent, Playing the foole, thy folly to content.. He pIa yes the Wise man then, and not the Foole, That wisely for his lyuing so can do: So doth the Carpenter with his sharpe toole, Cut his owne finger oft, yet liues by't to. He is a foole to cut his limbe say I, But not so, with his toole to liue thereby.. Then 'tis his case that makes him seeme a foole, It is indeed, for it is anticke made:. Thus men waxe wise when they do goe to schoole, Then for our sport we thanke the Taylers trade, And him within the case the most of all, That seemes wise foolish, who a foole you call.. Meete him abrode, and he is wise, mee thinkes, In curtesie, behauiour, talke, or going, Of garment: eke when he with any drinkes, Then are men wise, their mony so bestowing, To learne by him one time, a foole to seeme, And twentie times for once, in good esteeme. -130 --.

(13) A Note on the Formative Process of Elizabethan 'new Fools'. SHIBA. Say I should meete him, and not know his name, What should I say, Yonder goes such a foole? I, fooles wiosay so; but the wise will aime At better thoughts: whom reason still doth rule, Yonder's the merry man, it ioyes me much, To see him ciuill, when his part is such,. QUIP. A merry man is often thought unwise,. Yet mirth in modesty's loude [sic] of the wise: Then say, should he for a foole goe? When he's a more foole that accountes him so, Many men descant on anothers wit, When they haue lesse themselues in doing it,45. For their taking the appearance or surface of foolery as realities, Armin excites his audience's attention and charges them with shallowness, We should here carefully note that there is a highly significant similarity between Armin's views on fooling and Viola's more remarkable remarks on Feste in Twelfth Night:. This fellow is wise enough to play the fool, And to do that well craves a kind of wit. He must observe their mood on whom he jests, The quality of person, and the time; And like the haggard, check at every feather That comes before his eye, This is a practice As full of labor as a wise man's art: -131.

(14) X"f: .. ~liI\J. • x1r.. 20 ~ 2 ~-. 2009. 3. For folly that he wisely shows is fit, But wise [men], folly-fall'n, quite taint their wit.. (III. i. 60 68). Viola here indicates a further idea beyond a traditional one about the fool's function of truth telling, such function as is found in the Wit in the fool's coat and coxcomb: "Ah, syr, this foole here hath got sum wyt!" (Wit and Science, 1. 729); and in Will Summers, the King's Jester: "Ha, ha, the foole tels you true" (When You See Me, 1. 361).46 As Felver suggests, this view is "an explanation and justification of the new fool's role to an audience accustomed to the older comic clown, who was more or less naturally funny, who had no entry into all society as the fool did, and who was, therefore, limited to a much smaller role in the development of the plot" .17 Moreover, Viola's comment on Feste is, I believe, the only instance in Shakespeare in which a self-conscious mechanism of artificial-fool playing is betrayed most clearly.48 The Elizabethan theatre was notoriously quick in its changes of fashion; and by 1599 chronicle history, heroic tragedy, and romantic comedy were becoming passe, while the "little eyasses", citizen comedy, and satire were soon to strut and fret their hour. 49 It was then that Shakespeare transcended, not imitated, the recorded tradition of fool, and created a quite new type of fool who is an ascetic entertainer and sarcastic, cynic commentator at once, and does not provoke so much a loud laughter as gives some warning and lesson to other characters on the stage and the audience. Shakespeare shows us jesters in the ideal, not what they were, but all they could never be. Nevill Coghill is precisely right to say that. -132-.

(15) A Note on the Formative Process of Elizabethan 'new Fools'. SHIBA. ... it was Armin who made this possible. Not his book, but himself, as an actor; for him, through him, Shakespeare created the witty Fool, the singing Fool, the fey, the tragic Fool. Armin joined Shakespeare's Company just before the turn of the century, in 1599; and from that moment began Shakespeare's vision of the Fool and his high art. 50. Indeed, Shakespeare's fool in particular is a rich hybrid in which the court fool, the vice of the morality plays, the genius of Dick Tarlton, and individual talents in Shakespeare's troupe merged with countless other elements of clowning and popular entertainment. But Shakespeare's fools and clowns are nonetheless steeped in a tradition that is not primarily one of character but of social and dramatic functions. 51 To Shakespeare's new-type fools, Feste, Touchstone, and Lear's Fool, we could add another fairly newer-type fool, mingling clown and king in a tragic hero, Hamlet and Edgar. Now Hamlet's accusation of the clown's excessive improvisation and self-embodiment is to be involved with more meanings, as we relate and make a detailed explanation about them in Clowns and Kings: Serious Jocularity in Shakespeare (2003) .52. Notes: The text of Shakespeare, which is used in the paper, is The Riverside. Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans with the assistance of J. J. M. Tobin, 2nd (Boston & New York, 1997). Unless otherwise stated, the place of publication of those books we shall refer to is London.. -133-.

(16) x"j': .. ~VI'T. • xft. 20 ~ 2 {}-. 2009. 3. Tarlton's Jest and News out of Purgatory, ed. J. O. Halliwell, 1844, pp. x-xi. In the paper, we shall discuss leading clown/fool-actors, Tarlron, Robert Wilson, William Kempe, and Robert Armin, who had very important bearnings and links with Shakespeare and the development of his fools (John Singer, George Attewell, Thomas Pope, Thomas Greene, and others are here not our concern), examining and elucidating the formative process of the kind of new fools. 2. See E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage (1923), 1961, Vol. III, p. 497; and. ct.. Frederick G. Fleay, A Chronicle History of the London Stage 1559-1642, 1890, p. 83. For a dissenting opinion, see G. M. Pinciss, "Thomas Creede and the Repertory of the Queen's Men", Modern Philology, 67 (May, 1970), p. 329. The evidence of Tarlton's authorship of the play, as Chambers points out, is furnished by Gabriel Harvey's letter: "not Dunsically botched-vp, but right·formally conueied, according to the stile and tenour of Tarletons president, his famous play of the seauen Deadly sinnes. Which most dea[d]ly, but most liuely, playe I might haue seene in London, and was verie gently inuited thereunto at oxford by Tarleton (sic) himselfe" (from Four Letters [1592], Elizabethan. Critical Essays, ed. G. Gregory Smith [1904], 1967, Vol. II, p. 232). 3. W. W. Greg, Dramatic Documents from the Elizabethan Playhouses: Stage Plots:. Actors' Parts: Prompt Books: Reproductions and Transcripts (1931; rpt. Oxford, 1969). 4. Tarlton's Jest and News out of Purgatory, pp. 24-25.. 5. J. Q. Adams ed., Chief Pre-Shakespearean Dramas: A Selection of Plays. Illustrating the History of the English Drama from its Origin Down to Shakespeare (Boston, 1924), p. 667 6. Robert Weimann, Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition in the Theater:. -134-.

(17) A Note on the Formative Process of Elizabethan 'new Fools'. SHIBA. Studies in the Social Dimension of Dramatic Form and Function. ed .. Robert Schwartz (London and Baltimore. Md.). p. 189. 7. "At the Bull [Inn] at Bishops-gate was a play of Henry the fift, wherein the judge was to take a box on the eare: and because he was absent that should take the blow. Tarlton himselfe, ever forward to please, tooke upon him to play the same judge. besides his owne part of the clowne: and Knel then playing Henry the fift, hit Tarlton a sound boxe indeed, which made the people laugh the more because it was he, but anon the judge goes in, and immediately Tarlton in his clownes cloathes comes out, and asks the actors what news [?]: 0 saith one hadst thou been here, thou shouldest have seene Prince Henry hit the judge a terrible box on the eare: What. man, said Tarlton, strike a judge? It is true, yfaith. said the other. No other like, said Tarlton, and it could not be but terrible to the judge, when the report so terrifies me, that me thinkes the blow remaines still on my cheeke, that it burnes againe. The people laugh at this mightily .... " (Tarlton's jests and News. out of Purgatory, pp. 24-25). 8. Tarlton's jests and News out of Purgatory, p. xviii.. 9. Weimann. Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition, p. 186.. 10 C. R. Baskervill. The Elizabethan jig and Related Song Drama (Chicago. 1929).. p. 28. Baskervill says, "It is possible that Tarlton's importance in the early history of the stage jig accounts in part for the trend toward clownish drollery" (p. 96). 11 Andrew Gurr. The Shakespearean Stage. 1574--1642 (1970), 3'd ed., 1992, p. 85; and Edwin Nungezer. A Dictionary of Actors and of Other Persons Associated. with the Public Representation of Plays in England Before 1642 (1929; rpt. New York, 1975), pp. 347-354. 12 Tarlton's jests and News out of Purgatory, p. xxviii, note 2; and Nungezer.. -- 135 _.-.

(18) ;'<:$ •. ~,pr.r. • )Zit. 20. ~. 2 Jij-. 2009. 3. Dictionary of Actors, pp. 347-365. 13 Gurr, Shakespearean Stage, p. 86. 14 The Rise of the Common Player: A Study of Actor and Society in Shakespeare's. England, 1964, p. 178. 15 Nungezer, Dictionary of Actors, p. 395. 16 Francis Meres, "A Comparison of English Poets", G. G. Smith, Elizabethan Critical. Essays, II, 323. 17 Thomas Heywood, An Apology for Actors, 1612, Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints (New York, 1941), Sig. E2.. 18 Kempes Nine Daies Wonder: Performed in a Daunce from London to Norwich, with an introduction and notes by Alexander Dyce, printed for the Camden Society (London and New York, 1850), p. v. A passage in Antipodes, which is quoted by Alexander Dyce, is illustrative of the true nature of impromptu actions and extemporary wit of the clown, such as Tarlton and Kempe:. Letoy.. But you, Sir, are incorrigible, and. Take licence to yourself to adde unto Your parts your owne free fancy; and sometimes To alter or diminish what the writer With care and skill compos'd; and when you are To speake to your coactors in the Scene, You hold interloqutions with the Audients.. Byplay. That is a way, my Lord, has bin allow'd On elder stages to move mirth and laughter.. Letoy. Yes, in the dayes of Tarlton and Kempe, Before the stage was purg'd from barbarisme, And brought to the perfection it now shines with: Then fooles and jesters spent their wits, because. -- 136--.

(19) A Note on the Formative Process of Elizabethan 'new Fools'. SHIBA. The Poets were wise enough to save their owne For profitabler uses, (Act II. sc. I, Sig. D3). 19 Parnassus: Three Elizabethan Comedies, 1597-1601, ed. W. D. Macray (Oxford, 1886), p. 22. Kempe with Burbage is introduced in 2Return from. Parnassus (1602), another Cambridge university play, where he is greeted with an allusion to his "dancing the morrice ouer the Alpes" (Parnassus: Three. Elizabethan Comedies, p. 139). Besides these, there are frequent allusions to Kempe and his jigs. See Nungezer, Dictionary of Actors, pp. 216·222. 20 Nungezer, ibid., p. 217; and Kemps Nine Daies Wonder, pp. vi vii. Probably Launce (Two Gentlemen), Costard (Love's Labour's Lost), Bottom (Midsummer. -Night's Dream), and Falstaff (though later on by Thomas Pope, who had joined the Chamberlain's Men in 1594) were also acted by Kempe, as Nungezer indicated in his dictionary. 21 David Wiles, Shakespeare's Clown: Actor and Text in the Elizabethan Playhouse (Cambridge and New York), 1987, p. 36. Wiles briefly discusses Kempe's biography in "Kempe: a Biography", ibid. 22 Gurr, Shakespearean Stage, p. 87. 23 Weimann, Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition, p. 191. 24 Kempe says, "I haue without good help daunst my selfe out of the world", in the dedication of Kempes Nine Daies Wonder. As for his departure from the Chamberlain's Men, see Gurr, Shakespearean Stage, p. 87; and H. D. Gray, "The Roles of William Kempe", MLR 25 (1930), pp. 261-273. 25 Gurr, ibid., p. 85. Nungezer infers that by 1599 Armin had probably joined the Chamberlain's Men at the Curtain (Dictionary of Actors, p. 17). Cf. Wiles,. Shakespeare's Clown, pp. 137-138. 26 Wiles, "Robert Armin", Shakespeare's Clown, pp. 136-163. Cf. Nungezer, ibid., p.15.. 137-.

(20) x"J': . ~~tf • x1~. 20. ~. 2 [j.. 2009. 3. 27 The Fool: His Social and Literary History, 1935, p. 244. 28 Gurr, Shakespearean Stage, p.87. Probably Touchstone was also played by Armin. Charles S. Felver's suggestion is worth quoting here: "The only Shakespearean part which Armin directly alludes to as his in any of his works is that of Constable Dogberry, and yet it is clear that this was a part fashioned originally not for Armin but for Kempe .... The evidence for Armin's appearance in this part comes from his dedication of the Italian. Taylor and his Boy (1609) to the viscount Haddington and his wife, Lady Elizabeth Fitswater. Armin asks pardon of the Lady for "the boldness of a Beggar, who hath been writ downe for an Asse in his time, & pleades under. forma pauperis in it still, not-withstanding his constableship and Office .... (Robert Armin, Shakespeare's Fool: A Biographical Essay, Research Series V, Kent, Ohio, 1961. p. 39). In connection with the new fool-actor Armin, we shall briefly refer to the essentials of Shakespearean principal fools, Touchstone, Feste, and Lear's Fool in the paper. 29 Robert Hillis Goldsmith, Wise Fools in Shakespeare, with an Introduction by Oscar James Campbell (East Lansing, Mich, 1955), pp. 40-41. 30 Wiles," 'The clown' in playhouse terminology" , Shakespeare's Clown, pp. 6669. 31 Gurr, Playgoing in Shakespeare's London, (Cambridge, 1987), p. 127. I am much indebted to Gurr for this idea. 32 David Wiles also emphasises a change of convention of the clown: "The clown in As You Like It is allowed to complete his wooing within the text. The clown in Twelfth Night is given the final song, and the announcement that "our play is done". Some kind of dance may still have followed, but it did not complement the script in the same way. See "Kempe's Jigs", Shakespeare's. Clown, p. 56.. -138-.

(21) A Note on the Formative Process of Elizabethan 'new Fools'. SHIBA. 33 Charles Felver, Robert Armin, Shakespeare's Fool: A Biographical Essay (Kent State University Bulletin Research Series, 5: Kent, OH, 1961), p. 49. Felver's indication is worth noting: "The fool's part is third in the play, ranking after the parts of Toby and Viola and Shakespeare was never again to write so many lines (347) for a fool or clown" (ibid.). 34 See Glena Wood, "The Tragi Comic Dimensions of Lear's Fool", Costerus, 5 (1972), pp. 197-226. In this connection, Enid Welsford lucidly argues in The. Fool that "Lear's tragedy is the investing of the King with motley: it is also the crowning and apotheosis of the Fool" (p.269). 35 Robert Hillis Goldsmith, Wise Fools in Shakespeare, with an Introduction by Oscar James Campbell (East Lansing, Mich., 1955), p.65; 0.]. Campbell,. The Living Shakespeare: Twenty-Two Plays (New York, 1958), p. 876; and G. Wilson Knight, "King Lear and the Comedy of the Grotesque", The Wheel of. Fire: Interpretations of Shakespearian Tragedy with Three new Essays (1930), 1967, p. 163.. 36 King Lear, ed. Kenneth Muir (The Arden Shakespeare, 2nd series: 1952), 1968, p. Ill, note.. 37 An Old Spelling, Critical Edition of 'The History of the Two Maids of MoreClacke', ed. A.S. Liddie (London and New York), 1979. All citations from Two Maids are from this text. Incidents about Blue John of Christ's Hospital are found in Fool upon Fool (and Nest of Ninies). We do not discuss The. Valiant Welshman ('R. A', 1612); Wiles notes that the attribution of the play to Armin has been challenged, but, on inadequate grounds. See his. Shakespeare's Clown, p. 143. 38 Leslie Hotson, Shakespeare's Motley (New York, 1952), pp. 102103; and Felver, Robert Armin, p.17. 39 lowe this description to Wiles. Wiles's chapter on Armin in his Shakespeare's. -139-.

(22) )('$ ·:ifv~J. • )( {t. 20 ~ 2i}. 2009. 3. Clown (pp. 136-163) is very helpful to me. 40 There are, among others, stories of Will Summers, the jester of Henry VIII, who is included as a merry fool in the book (The Collected Works of Robert. Armin, ed.]. P. Feather, London & New York, 1972, Vol. 0. Summers's similar stories are told in The Defence of Conny Catching by Robert Greene. Leslie Hotson says, "Fool upon Fool testifies to [Armin's] close study of the strange qualities and doings of certain actual living 'naturals'" (Shakespeare's Motley, p. 100). There was a vogue for fool literature after 1595, as F.P. Wilson's check -list indicates. See Wilson, "The English lest-Books of the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries", Shakespearian and other Studies, ed. Helen Gardner (Oxford, 1969), pp. 285-324.. 41 Fools and Jesters, with a Reprint of Robert Armin's Nest of Ninnies (1608), with an Introduction and Notes by ]. P. Collier, 1842. Austin Gray indicates that Armin's humour and his kindness of heart shine out on every page of his Nest. of Ninnies ("Robert Armin, the Foole", PMLA, xlii (1927), pp. 673-685). 42 In 'A flat Foole' of Fool upon Fool, Sig. B2 (A Nest of Ninnies, p. 12). 43 H. F. Lippincott, "King Lear and the Fools of Robert Armin", SQ, XXVI (Summer, 1975), pp. 243-253. Lippincott points out the most important difference between Armin's and Shakespeare's fools: Armin's fools do not play roles; they are merely foolish; they lack the multiplicity of Shakespeare's fools (ibid., p. 246). 44 Wiles, Shakespeare's Clown, p. 138.. 45 The Collected Works of Robert Armin, I, Sig. C. 46 Cf. a proverb: "No man can play the fool so well as the wise man", M. P. Tilly ed., A Dictionary of Proverbs in the England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth. Centuries (1950), supplemented by R. W. Dent, Shakespeare's Proverbial Language: An Index, 1981; and Proverbial Language in English Drama,. -140-.

(23) A Note on the Formative Process of Elizabethan 'new Fools'. SHIBA. Exclusive of Shakespeare, 1495-1616, 1984; and Welsford, The Fool, p. 237. 47 Felver, Robert Armin, p.30. 48 It is interesting to note that the clown Robin addresses himself as an artificial fool: "Then I that am a foole by Art, am better then you that/are fooles by nature" (The Miseries of Enforced Marriage (1607), MSR, 1963, 11. 48-49). As Felver says, this is the only indication given in the play that the clown is to be regarded as an artificial fool (Robert Armin, p.63). 49 J. A. B. Somerset, "Shakespeare's Great Stage of Fools 1559-1607", Mirror up. to Shakespeare (London and Toronto), 1984, p. 77. There is another change in taste which is signal led in the Globe play A Warning for Fair Women (anon. by the Chamberlain's Men, 1599): the comic debate between Comedy and Tragedy in the Prologue, which might be a playwright's self-conscious device, hostility to mingling tragedy and comedy. lowe this idea to Andrew Gurr privately. 50 "Wags, Clowns and Jesters", More Talking of Shakespeare, ed. John Garrett, 1959, p. 6. Cf. Gareth Lloyd Evans, "Shakespeare's Fools: The Shadow and the Substance of Drama", Stratford-upon-Avon Studies 14: Shakespearian. Comedy, eds. Malcolm Bradbury and D. J. Palmer (London and New York, 1972), pp. 142-159. 51 Weimann, Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition, p.12. 52 Especially see chapters 5 and 6.. -141-.

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