SIMON.

'Faith, dress him how you will, I'll give him
That gift, he will never look half scurvily enough.
Oh, the clowns that I have seen in my time.

The very peeping out of one of them would have
Made a young heir laugh, though his father lay a dying;
A man undone in law the day before

(The saddest case that can be) might for his second

Have burst himself with laughing, and ended all
His miseries. Here was a merry world, my masters!
Some talk of things of state, of puling stuff;

There's nothing in a play like to a clown,

If he have the grace to hit on it, that's the thing indeed. SIMON.

Away then, shift; clown to thy motley crupper.

Whoever is desirous of obtaining general and accurate information concerning the great variety of dresses that belong to some of the characters in question at different periods, must study ancient prints and paintings, and especially the miniatures that embellish manuscripts. These will afford sufficient specimens; but the difficulty of ascertaining how the theatrical fools and clowns of Shakspeare's time were always habited, is insuperable. In some instances the plays themselves assist by peculiar references that leave but little doubt; but this is not the case in general. It is to be lamented that our artists did not ap

propriate more of their labours to the representation of theatrical subjects, and the fortunate discovery of a single ancient painting of this kind. would be of more importance than a volume of conjectural dissertations. As it may be presumed that former theatrical managers exhibited with fidelity on the stage the manners of their own times, a reference to the materials which remain to illustrate the dress of the real fools, may supply the defect before alluded to.

It may be collected both from the plays themselves, and from various other authorities, that the costume of the domestic fool in Shakpeare's time was of two sorts. In the first of these the coat was motley or parti-coloured, and attached to the body by a girdle, with bells at the skirts and elbows, though not always. The breeches and hose close, and sometimes each leg of a different colour. A hood resembling a monk's cowl, which, at a very early period, it was certainly designed to imitate, covered the head entirely, and fell down over part of the breast and shoulders. It was sometimes decorated with asses ears, or else terminated in the neck and head of a cock", a fashion as old as the

Plate II. fig. 1. Plate VI. fig. 2. 3. 4.

fourteenth century. It often had the comb or crest only of the animal, whence the term cockscomb or coxcomb was afterwards used to denote any silly upstart. This fool usually carried in his hand an official scepter or bauble, which was a short stick ornamented at the end with the figure of a fool's head, or sometimes with that of a doll or puppet. To this instrument there was frequently annexed an inflated skin or bladder, with which the fool belaboured those who offended him, or with whom he was inclined to make sport; this was often used by itself, in lieu, as it should seem, of a bauble". The form of it varied,

x Plate II. fig. 3.

y Plate III. fig. 7. 8. 9. Plate V. Hence the French call a bauble marotte, from Marionnette, or little Mary : but if the learned reader should prefer to derive the word from the Greek popos, or the Latin morio, he is at full liberty to do so; and indeed such preference would be supported by the comparatively modern figure of the child's head, which the term marotte might have suggested. The bauble originally used in King Lear is said to have been extant so late as the time of Garrick, and the figure of it would certainly have been worth preserving. To supply its place a representation is given of the head of a real bauble very finely carved in ivory. See plate IV. fig. 3. 4. A bauble is very often improperly put into the hands of Momus.

Plate III. fig. 2. 6. 7. 9. Plate VI. fig. 1.3.

and in some instances was obscene in the highest degree. It was not always filled with air, but occasionally with sand, or pease. Sometimes a strong bat or club was substituted for the bau, blea. In the second tale of the priests of Peblis, a man who counterfeits a fool is described "with club and bel and partie cote with eiris;" but it afterwards appears that he had both a club and a bauble. In an inventory of the goods of the ancient company of Saint George at Norwich, mention is made of "two habits, one for the club-bearer, another for his man, who are now called fools ;" and the author of Tarlton's newes out of purgatory, 1630, 4to, describes a dream in which he saw cc one attired in russet with a button'd cap on his head, a great 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."

In some old prints the fool is represented with a sort of flapper or rattle ornamented with bells. It seems to have been constructed of two round and flat pieces of wood or pasteboard, and is, no

a Plate III. fig. 4; and see Strutt's Dress and habits of the people of England, plate LXXI.

Blomefield's Hist. of Norfolk, ii. 737.

doubt, a vestige of the crotalum used by the Roman mimes or dancers. This implement was used for the same purpose as the bladder, and occasionally for correcting the fool himself whenever he behaved with too much licentiousness. Such a castigation is actually exhibited in one ancient German edition of the Ship of fools, by Sebastian Brandt; but the usual punishment on this occasion was a simple whipping. In some old plays the fool's dagger is mentioned, perhaps the same instrument as was carried by the Vice or buffoon of the Moralities; and it may be as well to observe in this place that the domestic fool is sometimes, though it is presumed improperly, called the Viced. The dagger of the latter was made of a thin piece of lath; and the use he

c Plate III. fig. 1. In the Imperial library at Vienna, there is a manuscript calendar, said to have been written in the time of Constantius the son of Constantine the great, with drawings of the twelve months. April is represented as a man dancing with a crotalum in each hand. This instrument was probably constructed of brass, in order to make a rattling noise. See it represented in Plate III. fig. 3, which is copied from a print in Lambeci Bibl. Cæsar. Vindobon. tom. iv. p. 291. These months are also given in Montfaucon's antiquities.

See Ben Jonson's Devil is an ass, Sc. 1.