Page:The Elizabethan stage (Volume 2).pdf/364

 of Hamlet, v. 1. 201, he was sufficiently honoured. Another ballad in the same manuscript on the Armada (Archiv. cxiv. 344; Ballads from MS. ii. 92) also claims to be to the tune of Tarlton's 'carroll'; the 'Carroll' itself is unknown. ''Tarltons Newes out of Purgatorie. Onelye such a jest as his Jigge, fit for Gentlemen to laugh at an houre, &c. Published by an old companion of his, Robin Goodfellow' (n.d., but entered in S. R. 26 June 1590; Arber, ii. 553) is a volume of novelle'', put into the mouth of Tarlton's ghost. The writer describes him as 'only superficially seene in learning, having no more but a bare insight into the Latin tung', and physically as 'one attired in russet, with a buttond cap on his head, a great bag by his side, and a strong bat in his hand'. Similarly, Henry Chettle, who put into his mouth a defence of plays forming a section of Kind-hartes Dreame (1592; cf. App. C, No. xlix), knew him in a dream 'by his sute of russet, his buttond cap, his taber, his standing on the toe, and other tricks'. The Cobler of Caunterburie or an Invective against Tarltons Newes out of Purgatorie (1590) is also a volume of novelle, and has practically nothing about Tarlton. On the other hand, Tarltons Jests at least claims to be biographical, although its material, like that of Peele's Jests, largely consists of the flotsam and jetsam of all the jest-books. The earliest extant edition is of 1611. But it was transferred from one publisher to another in 1609 (Arber, iii. 402), the second of its three parts, which mentions the Globe (Halliwell, 23), was entered in S. R. on 4 August 1600 (Arber, iii. 168), and probably therefore the first part was already in print in the sixteenth century. It speaks of Tarlton as a Queen's man (Halliwell, 13, 27, 29, 30, 33), as playing at the Bull in Bishopsgate (13, 24), where he did both the clown and the judge in 'Henry the Fifth' (The Famous Victories) to Knell's Harry, the Curtain (16), and the Bell in Gracechurch Street (24), as singing themes (16, 27, 28, 40), and as jesting in clown's apparel in the royal presence or in the Great Chamber at Court (7, 8). It also tells us, for what the statements are worth, that his father lived at Ilford (40), that he had a wife Kate of light character (17, 19), that he kept the Saba tavern in Gracechurch Street, where he was scavenger of the ward (15, 21, 22), and an ordinary in Paternoster Row (21, 26), and that he had a squint (12) and a flat nose (28). A woodcut on the title-page confirms these peculiarities of feature, and represents a short, broad-faced, cunning-looking man, with curly hair, an elaborate moustache and a starved beard, wearing a cap, and a bag or moneybox slung at his side, and playing on a tabor and a pipe. This appears to be taken from a drawing by John Scottowe in an initial letter to some verses on Tarlton's death in ''Harl. MS.'' 3885, f. 19. Nashe, Pierce Penilesse (1592, Works, i. 188), gives us a hint of his stage methods in describing how at a provincial performance, as the Queen's men 'were now entring into their first merriment (as they call it) the people began exceedingly to laugh, when Tarlton first peeped out his head', and how a 'cholericke wise Iustice' laid his staff about their pates, 'in that they, being but Farmers & poore countrey Hyndes, would presume to laugh at the Queenes men, and make no more account of her cloath