Tarleton’s Resurrection. Part 4/4: Tributes to Tarleton – with a musical discovery from the 16th century

This is the last of four articles about the life and music of Elizabethan clown, Richard Tarleton. Having examined the historical context of clowning; described his comic and serious stage roles and plays; and gathered the evidence for his pipe and tabor style and modern claims that he was a ballad writer; this final article surveys the way Tarleton was remembered posthumously, on the stage, in song, in books, in rhetoric, and in the commercial use of his famous image.   

In particular, this article investigates a broadside tribute to Tarleton registered 23 days after his death, A pretie new ballad, intituled willie and peggie. This essay includes a video performance of the ballad, reuniting its words and music after 400 years.

In these articles I use both spellings of Richard’s surname – Tarleton and Tarlton – according to the historical source.

Tarleton’s unexpected death

Richard Tarleton made his will, died and was buried on the same day, 3^rd September 1588. From this information, James Orchard Halliwell (1844) surmised that he died of the plague, but there were neither plague deaths nor plague measures in the years 1588–91. What we can be sure of is that Tarleton knew he was dying, but neither the reason nor his age at death is known. Since he was first a labourer, then wrote literature from 1570 and joined The Queen’s Players in 1583, it is reasonable to suggest that he was at least 36 years old, and he may have been considerably older.

He must have been very fit when he became a fencing master in 1587, the year before his death. That title meant he had fought and defeated seven recognised masters and was now able to earn an income from teaching fencing. His fatal illness or injury, therefore, must have caused a rapid decline. He was survived by his widowed mother, Katharine, and his 6 year old son, Phillip. He left £700 to Philip, who he placed in the joint care of Sir Francis Walsingham and Sir Philip Sidney, the latter being the boy’s godfather. His wife Kate, since she is not mentioned in his will, had probably died before him.

Broadside ballad tributes

It is a mark of Richard Tarlton’s popularity and recognisability that in the months following his death, five ballads about him were recorded in the Stationers’ Register, the first and second of which were only 20 and 23 days after his demise:

23^rd September 1588: Tarltons Farewell.

26^th September 1588: Peggies Complaint for the Death of her Willye.

2^nd August 1589: A sorowfull newe sonnette, Intituled Tarltons Recantacion uppon this theame gyven him by a gent. at the Bel-savage without Ludgate (noue or elles never) beinge the laste theame he songe.

16^th October 1589: Tarltons repentance of his farewell to his frendes in his sicknes a little before his deathe.

20^th August 1590: a pleasant dyttye dialogue wise betwene Tarltons ghost and Robyn Goodfellowe.

Four of those five ballads have not survived, but the titles in themselves are revealing. Tarltons Recantacion uppon this theame gyven him by a gent. is a real or imagined account of a popular and much-cited part of his act, creating extempore songs from themes given him by the audience (described in the third article). Tarltons Farewell is about his death, probably following the established tradition of writing ballads as if from the mouth of the deceased shortly before their death. (A particular best-seller in this genre was broadsides written for sale at public executions, verses put in the mouth of the convict, exhorting the ballad’s audience to learn from their example and not follow the same path.) Since ballad writing and selling was a money-making business, ballad mongers would seize upon a best-selling broadside, writing a follow-up song to cash in on its popularity. Tarltons Farewell was evidently one such success, indicated by the title of its sequel, Tarltons repentance of his farewell to his frendes in his sicknes a little before his deathe. The significance of pairing Tarlton with Robin Goodfellow in a pleasant dyttye dialogue wise betwene Tarltons ghost and Robyn Goodfellowe is discussed below.

In his prose tract of 1605, Laugh and lie downe: or, The worldes folly, Cyril Tourneur names many popular ballads, such as Come live with me and be my love, Three merry men be we, and All the Green Willow (these three used by William Shakespeare respectively in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Twelfth Night, and Othello). Tourneur also makes reference to a ballad so familiar that he expected his reading audience to know it without him naming it: “let me sing my new Ballet, of the fine foole, to the tune of Tarlton.” Certainty isn’t possible, but for reasons that will soon become apparent, this is very likely to be the ballad registered on 26^th September 1588, Peggies Complaint for the Death of her Willye, to which we now turn. 

The recovery of willie and peggie

Robert Wilson was an acting colleague of Tarlton in The Queen’s Players. Wilson’s play, the three Lordes and three Ladies of London, 1590, performed two years after Tarlton’s death, makes a clear reference to a broadside ballad, a posthumous tribute to Tarleton, which can now be played again after a silence of four centuries (video performance follows):

Wea[lth]. What daintie fine Ballad haue you now to be sold?
Sim[plicity]. Marie child, I haue chipping Norton a mile from Chappell othe heath, A lamentable ballad of burning the Popes dog: The swéet Ballade of the Lincoln:shire bagpipes, And Peggy and Willy, But now he is dead and gone: Mine own sweet Willy is laid in his graue la, la, la, lan ti dan derry, dan da dan, lan ti dan, dan tan derry, dan do.
Wit· It is a dolefull discourse, and sung as dolefully. …
Here simp. sings first, and Wit after, dialoguewise, both to musicke if ye will. …
wil[l]. I pray ye honest man, what’s this?
Sim. Read and then shalt see.
wil. I cannot read.
Sim. Not read & brought vp in London, wentst thou neuer to schole
wil. Yes, but I would not learn.
Sim. Thou wast the more foole: if thou cannot read Ile tel thée, this is Tarltons picture

It is highly likely that the picture on the broadside here referred to is the woodcut seen on the right, also used for Tarltons Iests [Jests], c. 1600, for the broadside ballad of a ghost drummer, A Wonder of Wonders, 1662, and copied by John Scottowe to illustrate the letter T in his manuscript alphabet book, produced in or after 1588. The most likely candidate for the ballad bearing the picture is that sung by Simplicity, “Peggy and Willy, But now he is dead and gone: Mine own sweet Willy is laid in his graue”. This is A pretie new ballad, intituled willie and peggie. To THE TUNE OF tarlton’s carroll.” It survives, not as an original broadside, but in a manuscript copy written in 1589 or 1590, 24 leaves of paper catalogued in the Bodleian Library as MS. Rawlinson poet. 185. There are many manuscripts which include broadsides copied out, and there may be two reasons for this phenomenon: broadsides borrowed from friends and copied by pen; or much-loved ballads transferred from the cheaply-produced and perishable paper of printed broadsheets to the more permanent manuscript notebook.

A pretie new ballad, intituled willie and peggie ends with “qd Richard Tarlton.” “qd” is an abbreviation of the Latin quod, meaning who or which, usually denoting authorship. This is impossible here, as the details of the deceased willie described in the ballad are so obviously those of Richard Tarlton (for which details see the first and second articles), the song laments his passing, and it appears in the Stationers’ Register 23 days after Tarlton’s death. The verses say: he excelled all others at mirth-making; he was commended by great and small wherever he travelled – court, city, country and town; he was a stage performer who delighted all so much they could watch him day and night; he was in favour with the Queen at court, and cheered her when she was sad; he was a Groom of her chamber; a jester who offended no one; a performer who sang the audience’s themes back to them in extempore songs. In this case, then, “qd Richard Tarlton” refers to Tarlton as the subject rather than the author of the verses. (The complete set of verses may be read on page 351 – key in 377 on the page finder – by clicking here.)

Since these verses are so plainly about Richard Tarlton, why is the subject of the story called willie? Tarletons Willy is a piece for cittern in the Cambridge University Library manuscript, Dd.4.23, written out c. 1600 by the scribe Mathew Holmes. The same piece appears in two other Mathew Holmes manuscripts, for the English consort as Tarletons jigg, and for lute without title in Dd.2.11. As we have seen in the third article, the logical explanation for the title Tarletons jigg is that it was a piece played by Tarleton on pipe and tabor in the after-play jig. There are three possible explanations for the alternative title, Tarletons Willy, and they lead to the reconstruction of the ballad.  

The first explanation I include for completeness, to raise it in order to discount it. In the Folger Dowland manuscript, c. 1590, the lute arrangement of John Dowland’s Lachrimae is called Lachrame m^r Dowland (see above). We understand this to mean, of course, not that the piece is called Lachrame m^r Dowland, but that it is Lachrimae by Mr. Dowland. Similarly, in Margaret Board’s lute book, c. 1620–30, we have Mr Dowlands Midnight, meaning a piece by Mr. Dowland called Midnight. If we understand the title Tarletons Willy in the same way, it is the melody for Tarleton’s ballad, willie (and peggie). Taken literally and logically, this would mean Tarleton wrote willie and peggie, “qd Richard Tarlton”, that he imagined in song the sorrow after his own demise. This is not completely impossible, if we imagine that, knowing he was dying, Tarleton wrote his own eulogy as a ballad, published after his death; but the suddenness of his decline and the rushed way in which he made his will on the day of his death argues against this. Realistically, the idea is fanciful and without evidence. That “qd Richard Tarlton” indicates the subject of the ballad, not the author, remains the only credible explanation.  

The second way of accounting for the title of the cittern piece, Tarletons Willy, is that just as Tarleton’s pupil, Robert Armin (who replaced Will Kemp in Lord Chamberlain’s Men) adopted the stage name Pinks, so Willy may have been the name of the country clown character Tarleton created. Thus Tarletons Willy was a tune played in the jig by Tarleton as Willy, hence its alternative title as a consort piece, Tarletons jigg.

The third account of the title complements the second. In the renaissance musical recycling economy, I propose that it seemed fitting that this well-known tune played in the jig by Tarleton’s comic creation, Willy the taborer, was used for the Tarleton tribute ballad, willie and peggie. Thus Tarletons Willy may mean both Tarleton’s comic creation, Willy, and also, the ballad about Tarleton, which is called Willy (and Peggy). Since willie and peggie is “To THE TUNE OF tarlton’s carroll”, we now have a third title for Tarletons jigg / Tarletons Willy. In the medieval period, a carol was a dance that was sung; by the 16^th century, the term had come to mean simply a song. A broadside copied into the same manuscript as willie and peggie, which begins “London ! london ! singe and praise thy lord”, is also “to the tune of Tarleton’s carol”.

The acid test for Tarletons jigg / Tarletons Willy being that of the broadside, and identical with tarlton’s carroll, is whether the words fit the tune. As we now see and hear in the video, the melody of Tarletons Willy and the words of willie and peggie unite so well that it leads to the obvious conclusion that they belonged together. This is, as far as I am aware, the first time in 400 years that the words and tune have been reunited in performance. Click on the picture to play the video.

The association of Tarleton with the name Willy is not unique to willie and peggie, and is confirmed by Edmund Spenser. In his poem, The Teares of the Muses, from his collection, Complaints, 1591, a deceased comic character is lamented:

All Places they with Folly have possess’d,
And with vain Toys the Vulgar entertain;
But me have banished, with all the rest
That whilom wont to wait upon my Train,
Fine Counterfesance, and unhurtful Sport,
Delight, and Laughter deckt in seemly sort.

All these and all that else the comick Stage
With season’d Wit and goodly Pleasance grac’d;
By which Man’s Life, in his likest Image,
Was limned forth, are wholly now defac’d:
And those sweet Wits, which wont the like to frame,
Are now despis’d, and made a laughing Game.

And he the Man, whom Nature self had made
To mock her self, and Truth to imitate,
With kindly Counter under Mimick Shade,
Our pleasant Willy, ah! is dead of late:
With whom all Joy and jolly Merriment
Is also deaded, and in Dolour drent.

Various real persons have been suggested for the identity of Spenser’s “pleasant Willy” who was “dead of late” in 1591. English poet, playwright and literary critic, John Dryden (1631–1700) argued for William Shakespeare, an obvious identification given the name, except that Shakespeare was alive when Spenser wrote the poem. Edmond Malone (Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare, 1790) suggested English poet, dramatist and courtier John Lilly (Lilly, Lylie, Lylly), who also lived when Spenser wrote, so he can likewise be discounted. Edwin Guest (History of English Rhythms, 1838) and William Minto (Characteristics of English Poets, 1874) both suggested Spenser’s friend, Sir Philip Sidney, who conducted masques at court and died in 1586, but he was not a comic and did not himself appear on the stage. Scott McCrea (The Case for Shakespeare, 2004) suggests William Knell, who played lead roles for The Queen’s Men in the 1580s, including the title role in the anonymous play, The Famous Victories of Henry the fifth, opposite Richard Tarlton who played Dericke the clown. Knell died in 1587, stabbed in a fight with the actor John Towne. But it was Tarlton, not Knell, who provided “Joy and jolly Merriment” on “the comick Stage” with The Queen’s Men, so Knell, too, can be discounted. James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps (Illustrations of the Life of Shakespeare. Part the First, 1874) found the clinching argument for Tarlton, only three years dead when Spenser wrote The Teares of the Muses: a folio dated 1611 has a marginal note by the verse in early 17^th century handwriting: “Tarlton died an. 1588”.

Neither Shakespeare, Lilly, Sidney, nor Knell, but only Tarlton could be Spenser’s “pleasant Willy” on the “comick Stage With season’d Wit and goodly Pleasance grac’d” who “is dead of late”, the selfsame “willie” described in the ballad. The words following the broadside, “qd Richard Tarlton”, and the handwritten note on the copy of Muses therefore amount to the same: Willy is Tarlton, strengthening the hypothesis that this was the name Tarlton gave his county clown character. Indeed, Spenser’s complaint that, with Willy’s death, “all Joy and jolly Merriment Is also deaded”, as currently actors “with vain Toys the Vulgar entertain”, is supported by similar contemporaneous comments in relation to Richard Tarleton. Tarltons Jests, 1600, compares the clown with comics since his demise: “I would see our clowns in these days do the like; no, I warrant thee, and yet they think well of themselves, too”. The biographical ballad willie and peggie says “Lyke argoes [Argus, a multiple-eyed giant in Greek mythology] my willie had eyes for to see least any he might offend”. Thomas Fuller’s entry for Tarleton in The history of the worthies of England, 1662, states that his “Jests never were profane, scurrilous, nor satyrical; neither trespassing on Piety, Modesty, or Charity”. In other words, the comic toys of Tarleton were not, as Spenser described the current crop of comics, “vain” and “Vulgar”.

Who is the Peggy of the ballad? Peggy (Peggie, Peggey, Pegg) was one of the standard names for a female lover on broadsides, from the 16^th century right through until the 19^th century, so the name is an obvious choice for an invented character to mourn for Willy/Tarleton. Indeed, Willy or Willie is one of the standard names for a male lover on broadsides during the same long period, so it isn’t a surprise to see the two names matched in a later ballad, Oppertunity Lost, Or The Scotch Lover Defeated. Here Willy followes Peggy still But ner’e attains to have his will, 1672-1696, without implying any connection to Tarleton’s biographical ballad. 

Richard Tarleton: the picture of a man

In summary, in these four articles we have explored that: 

Richard Tarleton began his working life as a London labourer, a water-bearer. He became an actor and was employed in The Earl of Sussex’s Men before being recruited in 1583 by Sir Francis Walsingham to the royal acting company, The Queen’s Players, who played at court and toured England.

In common with all The Queen’s Players, Tarleton was an Ordinary Groom of the Queen’s Chamber; and he also jested for her solo.

Tarleton was an actor during an exciting time of change for those involved in drama, with the introduction of new permanent and dedicated theatre buildings which increased accessibility and audience capacity.   

His most-loved theatrical role was as an artificial fool, meaning a professional clown, jester or comedian. In this role, his quick wit and physical comedy were legendary.

He was not the stereotypical ass-eared, bell-costumed fool, but wore the clothes of the country clown – startups, old slops, bag, russet coat, and buttoned cap – and he played pipe and tabor. His appearance was also notable for his flat nose, a permanent injury from his intervention in bear-baiting, and his hare eye, possibly caused in the same incident.

In his role as theatrical clown, he was also responsible for entertaining audiences in the jig, the light-hearted after-play entertainment. The evidence suggests that, just as Robert Armin’s comic stage name was Pinks, Tarleton’s character was Willy. Part of his act was asking the audience to shout out themes, about which he would instantly devise songs. The tune Tarletons jigg / Tarletons Willy / tarlton’s carroll was likely used in his act. Tarleton may have been a composer of medleys, a comic ballad genre consisting of disjointed parts of other songs amounting to nonsense, and for this he may have used the tune The Spanish Pavan, thereby remembered as Tarletons Medley.

Richard Tarleton also played serious roles, such as the prodigal son; he was a playwright, writing in the tradition of the Christian morality play; and an essayist/poet, specialising in the theme of natural disasters as acts of God to punish human sin.

The scholar Gabriel Harvey saw hypocrisy in Tarleton’s moralistic Christian writing, accusing him of “dissolute, and licentious living”, of “dissembl[ing] with the world”, having “one part for your frends pleasure, an other for your owne.” Tarleton admitted that his sin was, “By God, the sinne of other Gentlemen, Lechery”, adding “I am somewhat of Doctor Pernes religion”, i.e. ‘I act expediently, according to what is profitable’, a reference to Andrew Perne who preserved his employment and his personal safety by serving royalty as either a Catholic or Protestant clergyman, according to the changeable state religion. Proof of Gabriel Harvey’s accusation of duplicity, of appearing moral while living sinfully, may be seen in the testimony of Robert Adams that Tarlton died at the house of “one Em. Ball, a woman of a very bad reputacion”.

And so we turn now to his afterlife, his resurrection in the memories and imaginations of those he entertained.

Tarleton’s resurrection: his legendary afterlife

After his death, Tarleton was commemorated in music, as we have seen with John Dowland’s tribute; in broadside ballads, as we have seen above; and, as we will now see, in books, plays, and advertising.

The last of the five posthumous ballads cited above, a pleasant dyttye dialogue wise betwene Tarltons ghost and Robyn Goodfellowe, was entered in the Stationer’s Register on 20^th August 1590, and has not survived. The title suggests it is on the same theme as an anonymous book printed earlier in the same year, Tarltons Newes out of purgatorie. Onelye such a jest as his Jigge, fit for Gentlemen to laugh at … Published by an old companion of his; Robin Goodfellow. The premise of this fantasy is that Robin Goodfellow was grieving over the death of Tarlton. Robin Goodfellow was a nature sprite (spirit) or fairy, also known as Puck, and that he is chosen as a literary device to grieve for Tarlton is significant: they were both causes of merriment through their impish disruption.

He appears named both Puck and Robin Goodfellow in William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1595–96, as Puck in the anonymous play, Grim the Collier of Croyden; or, The Devil and his Dame, 1600; and as Robin Goodfellow he is the chief character in Ben Jonson’s masque, Love Restored, performed on Twelfth Night, 6^th January 1612. A repeatedly printed 17^th century broadside ballad, The mad-merry prankes of Robbin Good-fellow, registered in 1615, has him coming “FRom Oberon in Fairy Land, the King of Ghosts and shadowes there”, as he does in all his stories. The verses depict him causing his usual disruption: he leads travellers to get lost; in the form of a horse he takes riders on wild uncontrolled rides; when young lovers are getting amorous he farts, snorts, blows out candles and kisses maids; at night he undoes the work of wool-spinners and millers; he pinches maids and throws them out of bed. In the jest book, Robin Good-fellow, His Mad Prankes and Merry Iests, first published in 1628, Robin is often kinder, a domestic and rural sprite whose mischief aids people in turning from bad to good living. For example, he deceives a maiden’s uncle who stands in the way of love, so she can marry the man she desires, and when he comes across a spinning maid with too much work and too little time, he labours through the night for her as she sleeps.

In Tarltons Newes out of purgatorie, Robin Goodfellow fell asleep in a field: “As I lay in a slumber, methought I sawe one attired in russet, with a buttoned 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 wonted shape to remembrance, as he drew more neere and he came within the compasse of mine eie, to judge it was no other but the verye ghoast of Richard Tarlton”. The ghost of Tarlton tells Robin they are alike, that he mourns for one of his own, that they are both mischievous but good-hearted spirits: “thinke me to bee one of those Familiares Lares that were pleasantly disposed then endued with any hurtfull influence, as Hob Thrust, Robin Goodfellow and such like spirites”. The “Familiares Lares” were the family guardians or domestic deities of ancient Rome, and a “Hob Thrust” or hobthrush was a helpful household spirit or goblin. Tarlton’s role in Newes out of purgatorie is to recount that he has come from that place of torment in Roman Catholicism where sinners’ sinful deeds are purged. He relates what he has seen and heard to Robin, explaining the variety of reasons souls are tormented, including the purgatorial punishments given to “popes, cardinals, abbots, monks, and priests; for none of all these did God ever make”.

Another best-selling publication featuring Tarlton has more basis in his life than his afterlife, the aforementioned Tarltons Iests [Jests]. Drawne into these three parts. 1 His Court-wittie Iests 2 His sound Citie Iests. 3 His Country prettie Iests. It first appeared in 1600, the earliest surviving copy is from 1613, and editions continued to be published until 1638. Some of the stories are simply recycled standard jest book material, as they appear in other publications as if the jest was enacted by another popular figure. As we have seen in the second article, many of these tales are undoubtedly apocryphal, imagining Tarlton saying and doing things that would be funny in the fantasy world of the stage, but brutal if enacted in reality as the book presents them. This padding of recycled and apocryphal material is not true of every story, some of which in context and character bears the hallmark of the man we know from other witnesses. 

The nature of the man was called upon in a tract written under the pseudonym Martin Marprelate, Hay Any Work For Cooper, 1589, as part of an ecclesiastical argument, the details of which do not concern us here. Tarltons Iests shows that Richard was able to use his verbal skill to bamboozle, amuse, and escape from dangerous or compromising situations. Similarly, Martin Marprelate writes in a witty, inventive and verbally dextrous way, one might say in the style of Tarlton, who Marprelate holds up as a figure to emulate when he urges his enemy, “if ever thou prayedst in thy life for anybody’s souls, now pray for thy brother Doctor Squire and Tarleton’s souls. They were honest fellows”. 

In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, 1600, there is an oddly out of place invective against bad clowning and a scene lamenting the death of a worthy jester. The obvious explanation, as we will see, is Shakespeare’s anger against Will Kemp and his sorrow for the loss of Richard Tarlton. 

When Tarlton died, William Shakespeare’s career was just beginning. Shakespeare’s own clown was William Kemp or Kempe (c. 1560–c. 1603), whose fame grew to the point where Thomas Nashe described him as “Iestmonger and Vice-gerent generall to the Ghost of Dick Tarlton” in his dedication for An Almond for a Parrat, 1590. By 1592 Kempe was one of Lord Strange’s Men. In 1594, upon the dissolution of Strange’s Men, Kemp was one of a core of five actor-shareholders in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men alongside William Shakespeare and Richard Burbage, but Kemp suddenly left the company at the peak of their success five years later.

John Falstaff was a popular comic character in Henry IV, Part 1 and Part 2, played by Will Kemp in 1596–99, and Shakespeare promised his return in Henry V, but the character was absent from that play. In February or March 1599, Kemp sold his share in the new Globe theatre and instead, on the first Monday in Lent, he set out on his “nine daies wonder”, a morris dance from London to Norwich accompanied by his taborer, Thomas Slye. Kemp was later to return to the stage, but not with Shakespeare.   

We have no record of why Kemp, a sharer in plans for The Globe with Shakespeare and others of the company, did not appear in any productions in the new theatre, open by mid–1599. For his part, Shakespeare either thought the role of Falstaff in Henry IV was so associated with Kemp that he could not be played by another actor in Henry V, or he wanted to avoid all association with Kemp in new plays. Lines in Hamlet, 1600-01, indicate the latter explanation: Shakespeare has Hamlet speaking to the actors who have come to perform in the castle, with lines so jolting and disconnected to the play that they must be bitterly aimed at someone, and that could only be Kemp.

Act 3, Scene 2: “And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them, for there be of them that will themselves laugh to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too, though in the meantime some necessary question of the play be then to be considered. That’s villainous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it.”

It appears that Shakespeare felt his art as a playwright was usurped and ruined by Kemp’s inappropriate extempore clowning. Later in the same play – Act 5, Scene 1 – Hamlet describes Yorick the jester. The number of years Shakespeare gives since Yorick’s death, his humble origins, his royal service, and the tender remembrance of his jesting, all fit the details of Tarlton’s life.  

Gravedigger Here’s a skull now hath lien you i’ th’ earth three-and-twenty years.
Hamlet Whose was it?
Gravedigger A whoreson mad fellow’s it was. Whose do you think it was?
Hamlet Nay, I know not.
Gravedigger A pestilence on him for a mad rogue! He poured a flagon of Rhenish on my head once. This same skull, sir, was, sir, Yorick’s skull, the King’s jester.
Hamlet This?
Gravedigger E’en that.
Hamlet, taking the skull. Let me see. Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio — a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath bore me on his back a thousand times, and now how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar?

Another play which remembers Tarleton fondly – half a century after Hamlet, and this time naming him openly – is The Country Captaine by William Cavendish, 1649, in which the character Engine says, “What did you heare of the new play? I am affrayed the witts are broaken, there bee men will make affidavit, they have not hearde a good iest since Tarleton died”.

In 1651 Tarlton’s name was still being used to sell copy, as a byword for the best in wit. In that year, a comic play by “J .S.” was printed, The Prince of Priggs revels, its title page declaring itself to be “Repleat with various conceits, and Tarltonian mirth”. The play was not to be performed, being written during the closure of theatres under the Puritans, as the opening lines say: “SInce that the Apes and Parrots of the Stage, Are silenc’d by the Clamours of the Age”. Tarlton himself is not mentioned in the body of the text, so what “Tarltonian mirth” precisely means is therefore not made clear: it may refer to the parts of the play in rhyming verse, reflecting his extemporised sung verses, his themes, described in the third article. 

In the first article, we saw the affection for Richard Tarlton shown by his acting colleague Robert Wilson in his play, the three Lords and three Ladies of London, 1590. Tarlton’s presence was felt posthumously in that play in scripted words, in the ballad willie and peggie sung in his honour (performed in the video above), and by his image on stage on the ballad sheet. This image, a woodcut, was probably the same one used for the cover of Tarltons Iests and the ballad, A Wonder of Wonders, 1662, and a similar representation was drawn for the letter T in John Scottowe’s alphabet book, after 1588. Tarlton’s image was used in other ways. In his Virgidemiarum. The three last bookes. Of byting Satyres, 1598, bishop and satirist Joseph Hall wrote:

O honour farre beyond a brazen shrine
To sit with Tarleton on an Ale posts signe!   

William Percy’s play, The Cuck-queanes and Cuckolds Errants, 1601, begins with the appearance of Tarlton’s ghost and confirms the use of his picture for tavern signs. The drama is set in “a wyne-Tauerne” called “the Tarlton in Colchester”, outside of which the “signe of the Tarlton” is used to invite customers in, a case of art imitating life. The 1631 edition of Annales, or a general Chronicle of England, an expansion by Edmund Howes of a work by John Stow published in 1592, 1601 and 1605, confirms the same use of Tarleton’s image. As we see below, every page of Annales has printed marginal annotations. On page 698, in the chapter on The life and Raigne of Queene Elizabeth, the account of the year 1583 has a passage about Francis Walsingham founding The Queen’s Players. It records that Richard Tarleton was recruited “for a wondrous plentifull pleasant extemporall wit,” with the comment, “hee was the wonder of his time”. The marginal note adds, “Tarleton so beloued that men use his picture for their signes.” In The history and antiquities of the parish of St. Leonard Shoreditch, 1798, Sir Henry Ellis confirmed that more than two centuries after Tarleton’s death, “His portrait, with tabor and pipe, still serves as a sign to an alehouse in the Borough”.    

It is highly probable that such alehouse signs were copies of the woodcut of Tarlton used on broadsides. Woodcuts were designed for easy mass-production, and this accounts for the depiction being the source for two images in 1792 by the engraver Sylvester Harding, two centuries after its first appearance, as we see below.

We end these four articles about the remarkable Richard Tarlton with the tribute by John Davies of Hereford. In his Wits Bedlam, Where is had Whipping-cheer to cure the Mad, 1617, Davies gave Tarlton high praise 29 years after his death. In the last line, “Counterfet” means an imitation or act.

Here within this sullen Earth
Lies Dick Tarlton, Lord of mirth;
Who in his Grave still, laughing gapes
Syth all Clownes since have beene his Apes:
Earst he of Clownes to learne still sought;
But now they learne of him they taught
By Art far past the Principall;
The Counterfet is, so, worth all.

 

© Ian Pittaway. Not to be reproduced in any form without permission. All rights reserved.

 

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