own, which gave the audience much more entertainment than the whole performance befides.* But the peculiar province of the Clown was to entertain the audience after the play was finished, at which time themes were fometimes given to him by fome of the fpectators, to defcant upon; but more commonly the audience were entertained by a jig. A jig was a ludicrous metrical compofition, often in rhyme, which was fung by the Clown, who likewife, I believe, occafionally danced, and was always accompanied by a tabor and pipe." In 4 Roper's Life and Death of More, 8vo. 1716, p. 3. 5" I remember I was once at a play in the country, where, as Tarlton's ufe was, the play being done, every one fo pleafed ta throw up his theame: amongst all the reft one was read to this effect, word by word: "Tarlton, I am one of thy friends, and none of thy foes, "Then I pr'ythee tell how thou cam'ft by thy flat nofe," &c. To this challenge Tarleton immediately replied in four lines of loofe verfe. Tarlton's Jeafts, 4to. 1611. 6" Out upon them, [the players,] they fpoile our trade,—they open our croife-biting, our conny-catching, our traines, our traps, our gins, our fnares, our fubtilties; for no fooner have we a tricke of deceipt, but they make it common, finging gigs, and making jeafts of us, that every boy can point out our houfes as they paffe by." Kind-Hartes Dreame, Signat. E 3. b. See alfo Pierce Pennileffe, &c. 1592: like the queint comedians of our time, "That when the play is done, do fall to rhime," &c. So, in A frange Horfe-race, by Thomas Decker, 1613: "Now as after the cleare ftream hath glided away in his owne current, the bottom is muddy and troubled; and as I have often feen after the finishing of fome worthy tragedy or catastrophe in the open theatres, that the fceane, after the epilogue, hath been more black, about a nafty bawdy jigge, then the moft horrid fcene in the play was; the ftinkards fpeaking all things, yet no man understanding any thing; a mutiny being amongst them, yet none in danger; no tumult, and yet no quietnefs; no mifchiefe begotten, and yet mifchiefe borne; the fwiftnefs of fuch a torrent, the more it overwhelms, breeding the inore pleasure; fo after thefe worthies and conquerors had left the field, another race was ready to begin, at thefe jigs more perfons than one were fometimes introduced. The original of the entertainment which this buffoon afforded our ancestors between the acts and after the play, may be traced to the which, though the perfons in it were nothing equal to the former, yet the fhoutes and noyfe at these was as great, if not greater." The following lines in Hall's Satires, 1597, seem also to allude to the fame cuftom: "One higher pitch'd, doth fet his foaring thought "As it might be, the Turkish Tamburlaine. Rapt to the three-fold loft of heaven hight, "When he conceives upon his fained ftage "Graced with huff-cap terines and thund'ring threats, Big-founding fentences, and words of ftate, "Now leaft fuch frightful fhowes of fortunes fall, "And laughes, and grins, and frames his mimick face, "Then doth the theatre echo all aloud "With gladjome noyfe of that applauding croud. "A goodly boch-poch, when vile ruffettings "Are matcht with monarchs and with mighty kings!" &c. The entertainments here alluded to were probably "the fond and frivolous jeftures," defcribed in the preface to Marlowe's Tambur laine, 1590, which the printer fays, he omitted, "as farre unmeete for the matter, though they have been of fome vaine conceited fondlings greatly gaped at, what times they were fhewed upon the ftage in their graced deformities." It should feem from D'Avenant's prologue to The Wits, when fatyrical interludes of Greece," and the Attellans and Mimes of the Roman ftage." The Exodiarii acted at the Duke's theatre, in 1662, that this fpecies of entertainment was not even then entirely difufed: "So country jigs and farces, mixt among "Heroick fcenes, make plays continue long." Blount in his Glafographia, 1681, 5th edit. defines a farce, "A fond and diffolute play or comedy. Alfo the jig at the end of an interlude, wherein fome pretty knavery is acted." Kempe's Jigg of the Kitchen-ftuffe-woman, and Philips his Figg of the Slyppers, were entered on the Stationers' books in 1595; but I know not whether they were printed. There is, I believe, no jig now extant in print. 7 "Carmine qui tragico vilem certavit ob hircum, HOR. de Arte Poetica. 8 "Urbicus exodio rifum movet Atellane "Geftibus Autonoes;-." Juv. Sat. VI. 71. "Exodiarius in fine ludorum apud veteres intrabat, quod ridiculus foret; ut quicquid lacrymarum atque triftitiæ coegiffent ex tragicis affectibus, hujus fpectaculi rifus detergeret." Vet. Schol. "As an old commentator of Juvenal affirms, the Exodiarii, which were fingers and dancers, entered to entertain the people with light fongs and mimical geftures, that they might not go away oppreffed with melancholy from thefe facred pieces of the theatre." Dryden's Dedication to his Tranflation of Juvenal. See alfo Liv. Lib. VII. c. ii. Others contend that the Exodia did not folely fignify the fongs, &c. at the conclufion of the play, but thofe alfo which were fung in the middle of the piece; and that they were fo called, becaufe they were introduced odis, that is, incidentally, and unconnected with the principal entertainment. Of this kind undoubtedly were the sea or epifodes, introduced between the acts, as the soda were the fongs fung at the opening of the play. The Atellan interludes were fo called from Atella, a town in Italy, from which they were introduced to Rome: and in procefs of time they were acted fometimes in the middle, and sometimes at the end of more ferious pieces. Thefe, as we learn from one of Cicero's letters, gave way about the time of Julius Cæfar's death to the Mines, which confifted of a groffer and more licentious pleafantry than the Atellan interludes." Nunc venio," fays Cicero, and Emboliariæ of the Mimes are undoubtedly the *ad jocationes tuas, cum tu fecundúm Oenomaum Accii, non ut olim folebat, Atellanum, fed ut nunc fit, mimum introduxifti." Epift. ad Fam. IX. 16. The Atellan interludes, however, were not wholly difused after the introduction of the Mimes; as is af certained by a paffage in Suetonius's Life of Nero, c. xxxix. "Mirum et vel præcipue notabile inter hæc fuit, nihil eum patientius quam maledicta et convitia hominum tuliffe; neque in ullos leniorem quam qui fe dictis ante aut carminibus laceffiffent, extitiffe.-Tranfeuntem eum Ifidorus Cynicus in publico clara voce corripuerat, quod Nauplii mala bene cantitaret, fua bona male difponeret. Et Datus Atellanarum hiftrio, in cantico quodam, viewe Hάtep, bylaive μp, ita demonftraverat, ut bibentem natantemque faceret, exitum fcilicet Claudii Agrippinæque fignificans; et in noviffima claufula, Orcus vobis ducit pedes, fenatum geftu notaret. Hiftrionem et philofophum Nero nihil amplius quam urbe Italiaque fubmovit, vel contemptu omnis infamiæ, vel ne fatendo dolorem irritaret ingenia." See alfo Galb. c. xiii. I do not find that the ancient French theatre had any exhibition' exactly correfponding with this, for their SOTTIE rather refembled the Atellan farces, in their original ftate, when they were performed as a diftinct exhibition, unmixed with any other interlude. An extract given by Mr. Warton from an old ART OF POETRY published in 1548, furnishes us with this account of it: "The French farce contains nothing of the Latin comedy. It has neither acts nor fcenes, which would ferve only to introduce a tedious prolixity : for the true fubject of the French farce or SOTTIE is every fort of foolery, which has a tendency to provoke laughter.-The subject of the Greek and Latin comedy was totally different from every thing on the French ftage; for it had more morality than drollery, and often as much truth as fiction. Our MORALITIES hold a place indifferently between tragedy and comedy, but our farces are really what the Romans called Mimes or Priapees, the intended end and effect of which was exceffive laughter, and on that account they admitted all kind of licentiousness, as our farces do at prefent. In the mean time their pleafantry does not derive much advantage from rhymes, however flowing, of eight fyllables." HIST. OF ENG. POETRY, Vol. III. p. 350. Scaliger exprefsly mentions the two fpecies of drama above described, as the popular entertainments of France in his time. "Sunto igitur duo genera, quæ etiam vicatim et oppidation per univerfam Galliam mirificis artificibus circumferuntur; MORALE, et RIDICULUM." Poetices, Lib. I. c. x. p. 17, edit, 1561. remote progenitors of the Vice and Clown of our ancient dramas." No writer that I have met with, intimates that in the time of Shakspeare it was cuftomary to exhibit more than a fingle dramatick piece on one day. Had any fhorter pieces, of the fame kind with our modern farces, (befide the jigs already mentioned,) been presented after the principal performance, fome of them probably would have been printed; but there are none of them extant of an earlier date than the time of the Restoration.' 9 The exact conformity between our Clown and the Exodiarii and Emboliaria of the Roman ftage is afcertained, not only by what I have stated in the text, but by our author's contemporary Philemon Holland, by whom that paffage in Pliny which is referred to in a former page,-" Lucceïa mima centum annis in fcena pronuntiavit. Galeria Copiola, emboliaria, reducta eft in fcenam,—annum centeffimum quartum agens,"-is thus tranflated: "Lucceia, a common VICE in a play, followed the ftage, and acted thereupon 100 yeeres. Such another VICE, that plaied the foole, and made Sporte betweene whiles in interludes, named Galeria Copiola, was brought to act on the stage,-when she was in the 104th yeere of her age." 2 The Yorkshire Tragedy, or All's One, indeed appears to have been one of four pieces that were represented on the fame day; and Fletcher has alfo a piece called Four Plays in One; but probably thefe were either exhibited on fome particular occafion, or were ineffectual efforts to introduce a new fpecies of amusement; for we do not find any other inftances of the fame kind. 3 In 1663, as I learn from Sir Henry Herbert's MSS. Sir William D'Avenant produced The Playhoufe to be let. The fifth act of this heterogeneous piece is a mock tragedy, founded on the actions of Cæfar, Anthony, and Cleopatra. This, Langbaine fays, used to be acted at the theatre in Dorfet Garden, (which was not opened till November, 1671,) after the tragedy of Pompey, written by Mrs. Catharine Philips; and was, I believe, the first farce that ap peared on the English ftage. In 1677, The Cheats of Scapin was performed, as a fecond piece, after Titus and Berenice, a play of three acts, in order to furnish out an exhibition of the ufual length: and about the fame time farces were produced by Duffet, Tate, and others. |