CHAPTER XVI

GUILD FOOLS AND COURT FOOLS

[_Bibliographical Note._--The best account of the _Sociétés joyeuses_ is that of L. Petit de Julleville, _Les Comédiens en France au Moyen Âge_ (1889). Much material is collected in the same writer’s _Répertoire du Théâtre comique en France au Moyen Âge_ (1886), and in several of the books given as authorities on the Feast of Fools (ch. xiii), especially those of Du Tilliot, Rigollot, Leber, and Grenier. Mme. Clément (née Hémery), _Histoire des Fêtes civiles et religieuses du Département du Nord_ (1832), may also be consulted. M. Petit de Julleville’s account of the _Sottie_ is supplemented by E. Picot, _La Sottie en France_, in _Romania_, vol. vii, and there is a good study of the fool-literature of the Renascence in C. H. Herford, _Literary Relations between England and Germany in the Sixteenth Century_ (1886). Amongst writers on the court fool are J. F. Dreux du Radier, _Histoire des Fous en Titre d’Office_, in _Récréations historiques_ (1768); C. F. Flögel, _Geschichte der Hofnarren_ (1789); F. Douce, _Clowns and Fools of Shakespeare_ in _Variorum Shakespeare_ (1821), xxi. 420, and _Illustrations of Shakespeare_ (1839); C. Leber in Rigollot, xl; J. Doran, _History of Court Fools_ (1858); A. F. Nick, _Hof-und Volksnarren_ (1861); P. Lacroix (le bibliophile Jacob), _Dissertation sur les Fous des Rois de France_; A. Canel, _Recherches historiques sur les Fous des Rois de France_ (1873); A. Gazeau, _Les Bouffons_ (1882); P. Moreau, _Fous et Bouffons_ (1885). Much of this literature fails to distinguish between the _stultus_ and the _ioculator regis_ (ch. iii). There is an admirable essay by L. Johnson on _The Fools of Shakespeare_ in _Noctes Shakesperianae_ (1887).]

The conclusion of this volume must call attention to certain traces left by the ecclesiastical _ludi_ of the New Year, themselves extinct, upon festival custom, and, through this, upon dramatic tradition. The Feast of Fools did not altogether vanish with its suppression in the cathedrals. It had had its origin in the popular celebration of the Kalends. Throughout it did not altogether lack a popular element. The _bourgeois_ crowded into the cathedral to see and share in the revel. The Fool Bishop in his turn left the precincts and made his progress through the city streets, while his satellites played their pranks abroad for the entertainment of the mob. The feast was a dash of colour in the civic as well as the ecclesiastical year. The Tournai riots of 1499 show that the _jeunesse_ of that city had come to look upon it as a _spectacle_ which they were entitled to claim from the cathedral. What happened in Tournai doubtless happened elsewhere. And the upshot of it was that when in chapter after chapter the reforming party got the upper hand and the official celebration was dropped, the city and its _jeunesse_ themselves stepped into the breach and took measures to perpetuate the threatened delightful dynasty. It was an easy way to avert the loss of a holiday. And so we find a second tradition of Feasts of Fools, in which the _fous_ are no longer vicars but _bourgeois_, and the _dominus festi_ is a popular ‘king’ or ‘prince’ rather than a clerical ‘bishop.’ A mid-fifteenth-century writer, Martin Franc, attests the vogue of the _prince des folz_ in the towns of northern France:

‘Va t’en aux festes à Tournay, A celles d’Arras et de Lille, D’Amiens, de Douay, de Cambray, De Valenciennes, d’Abbeville. Là verras tu des gens dix mille, Plus qu’en la forest de Torfolz, Qui servent par sales, par viles, A ton dieu, le prince des folz[1332].’

The term _Roi_ or _Prince des Sots_ is perhaps the most common one for the new _dominus festi_, and, like _sots_ or _folz_ themselves, is generic. But there are many local variants, as the _Prévôt des Étourdis_ at Bouchain[1333], the _Roi des Braies_ at Laon, the _Roi de l’Epinette_ at Lille, and the _Prince de la Jeunesse_ at St. Quentin[1334]. The _dominus festi_ was as a rule chosen by one or more local guilds or _confréries_ into which the _jeunesse_ were organized for the purpose of maintaining the feast. The fifteenth century was an age of guilds in every department of social life, and the _compagnies des fous_ or _sociétés joyeuses_ are but the frivolous counterparts of religious _confréries_ or literary _puys_. The most famous of all such _sociétés_, that of _l’Infanterie Dijonnaise_ at Dijon, seems directly traceable to the fall of an ecclesiastical Feast of Fools. Such a feast was held, as we have seen, in the ducal, afterwards royal, chapel, and was abolished by the _Parlement_ of Dijon in 1552. Before this date nothing is heard of _l’Infanterie_. A quarter of a century later it is in full swing, and the character of its dignitaries and its badges point clearly to a derivation from the chapel feast[1335]. The Dijon example is but a late one of a development which had long taken place in many parts of northern France and Flanders. It would be difficult to assert that a _société joyeuse_ never made its appearance in any town before the ecclesiastical Feast of Fools had died out therein. Occasionally the two institutions overlap[1336]. But, roughly speaking, the one is the inheritor of the other; ‘_La confrérie des sots, c’est la Fête des Fous sécularisée_[1337].’ Amongst the chief of these _sociétés_ are the _Enfants-sans-Souci_ of Paris, the _Cornards_ or _Connards_ of Rouen and Evreux[1338], the _Suppôts du Seigneur de la Coquille_ of Lyons[1339]. The history of these has been written excellently well by M. Petit de Julleville, and I do not propose to repeat it. A few general points, however, deserve attention.

The ecclesiastical Feast of Fools flourished rather in cathedrals than in monasteries. The _sociétés_ however, like some more serious _confréries_[1340], seem to have preferred a conventual to a capitular model for their organization[1341]. The _Cornards_, both at Rouen and Evreux, were under an _Abbé_. Cambrai had its _Abbaye joyeuse de Lescache-Profit_, Chalons-sur-Saône its _Abbé de la Grande Abbaye_, Arras its _Abbé de Liesse_, Poitiers its _Abbé de Mau Gouverne_[1342]. The literary adaptation of this idea by Rabelais in the _Abbaye de Thélème_ is familiar. This term _abbaye_ is common to the _sociétés_, with some at least of the _Basoches_ or associations of law-clerks to the _Parlements_ of Paris and the greater provincial towns. The _Basoches_ existed for mutual protection, but for mutual amusement also, and on one side at least of their activity they were much of the nature of _sociétés joyeuses_[1343]. At Rheims in 1490 a _Basoche_ entered into rivalry of dramatic invective with the celebrants of the ecclesiastical Feast of Fools[1344]. The _Basoche_ of Paris was in the closest relations to, if not actually identical with, the _société_ of the _Enfants-sans-Souci_[1345]. Just as the law-clerks of Paris were banded together in their _Basoche_, so were the students of Paris in their ‘university,’ ‘faculties,’ ‘nations,’ and other groups; and in 1470, long after the regular Feast of Fools had disappeared from the city, the students were still wont to put on the fool habit and elect their _rex fatuorum_ on Twelfth night[1346]. Yet other guilds of a more serious character, generally speaking, than the _sociétés joyeuses_, none the less occasionally gave themselves over to _joyeuseté_. The _Deposuit_ brought rebuke upon religious _confréries_ up to a quite late date[1347]; and traces of the _fous_ are to be found amongst the recreations of no less a body than the famous and highly literary _puy_ of Arras. The _sociétés joyeuses_, like the _puys_, were primarily associations of amateur, rather than professional merry-makers, a fact which distinguishes them from the corporations of minstrels described in a previous chapter[1348]. But minstrels and _trouvères_ were by no means excluded. The poet Gringoire was _Mère-Sotte_ of the Paris _Enfants-sans-Souci_. Clément Marot was a member of the same body. In the _puy_ of Arras the minstrels traditionally held an important place; and as the literary and dramatic side of the _sociétés_ grew, it is evident that the men who were professionally ready with their pens must everywhere have been in demand.

The primary function of the _sociétés joyeuses_ and their congeners was the celebration of the traditional Feast of Fools at or about the New Year. In Paris, Twelfth night was a day of festival for the _Basoche_ as well as for the minor association of exchequer clerks known as the _Empire de Galilée_. In mid-January came the _fête des Braies_ at Laon, and the _fête_ of the _Abbaye de Lescache-Profit_ at Cambrai. That of the _Prince des Sots_ at Amiens was on the first of January itself[1349]. On the same day three _sociétés joyeuses_ united in a _fête de l’âne_ at Douai[1350]. But January was no clement month for the elaborated revels of increasingly luxurious burghers; and it is not surprising to find that many of the _sociétés_ transferred their attention to other popular feasts which happened to fall at more genial seasons of the year. To the celebration of these, the spring feast of the carnival or Shrovetide, the summer feasts of May-day or Midsummer, they brought all the wantonness of the Feast of Fools. The _Infanterie Dijonnaise_, the _Cornards_ of Rouen and Evreux, the third Parisian law association, that of the _Châtelet_, especially cultivated the carnival. The three obligatory feasts of the _Basoche_ included, besides that of Twelfth night, one on May-day and one at the beginning of July[1351]. On May-day, too, a guild in the parish of St. Germain at Amiens held its _fête des fous_[1352]. It may be noted that these summer extensions of the reign of folly are not without parallels of a strictly ecclesiastical type. At Châlons-sur-Marne, as late as 1648, a chapter procession went to the woods on St. John’s eve to cut boughs for the decking of the church[1353]. At Evreux a similar custom grew into a very famous revel[1354]. This was the _procession noire_, otherwise known as the _cérémonie de la Saint-Vital_, because the proceedings began on the day of St. Vitalis (April 28) and lasted to the second Vespers on May 1. Originally the canons, afterwards the choir-clerks, chaplains, and vicars, went at day-break on May morning to gather branches in the bishop’s woods. Their return was the signal for riotous proceedings. The bells were violently rung. Masks were worn. Bran was thrown in the eyes of passers-by, and they were made to leap over broomsticks. The choir-clerks took the high stalls, and the choir-boys recited the office. In the intervals the canons played at skittles over the vaults; there were dancing and singing and the rest, ‘as at the time of the Nativity[1355].’ The abuses of this festival must have begun at an early date, for two canons of the cathedral, one of whom died in 1206, are recorded to have been hung out of the belfry windows in a vain attempt to stop the bell-ringing. Its extension to St. Vitalis’ day is ascribed to another canon, singularly named Bouteille, who is said to have founded about 1270 a very odd _obit_. He desired that a pall should lie on the pavement of the choir, and that on each corner and in the middle of this should stand a bottle of wine, to be drunk by the singing-men. The canon Bouteille may be legendary, but the wine-bottle figured largely in the festival ceremonies. While the branches were distributed in the bishop’s wood, which came to be known as the _bois de la Bouteille_, the company drank and ate cakes. Two bottle-shaped holes were dug in the earth and filled with sand. On the day of the _obit_ an enormous leather bottle, painted with marmosets, serpents, and other grotesques, was placed in the choir. These rites were still extant at Evreux in 1462, when a fresh attempt to suppress the bell-jangling led to a fresh riot. No explanation is given of the term _procession noire_ as used at Evreux, but a Vienne parallel suggests that, as in some other seasonal festivals, those who took part in the procession had their faces blacked. At Vienne, early on May 1, four men, naked and black, started from the archbishop’s palace and paraded the city. They were chosen respectively by the archbishop, the cathedral chapter, and the abbots of St. Peter’s and St. John’s. Subsequently they formed a _cortège_ for a _rex_, also chosen by the archbishop, and a _regina_ from the convent of St. Andrew’s. A St. Paul, from the hospital dedicated to that saint, also joined in the procession, and carried a cup of ashes which he sprinkled in the faces of those he met. This custom lasted to the seventeenth century[1356].

But the seasonal feasts did not exhaust the activities of the _sociétés_. Occasional events, a national triumph, a royal entry, not to speak of local _faits divers_, found them ready with appropriate celebrations[1357]. The _Infanterie Dijonnaise_ made a solemn function of the admission of new members[1358]. And more than one _société_ picked up from folk-custom the tradition of the _charivari_, constituting itself thus the somewhat arbitrary guardian of burgess morality[1359]. M. Petit de Julleville analyses a curious _jeu_ filled with chaff against an unfortunate M. Du Tillet who underwent the penalty at Dijon in 1579 for the crime of beating his wife in the month of May[1360]. At Lyon, too, _chevauchées_ of a similar type seem to have been much in vogue[1361].

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the entertainment of the _sociétés joyeuses_ was largely dramatic. We find them, as indeed we find the participants in the strictly clerical feasts of Fools[1362] and of Boys[1363], during the same period, occupied with the performance both of miracles and of the various forms of contemporary comedy known as farces, moralities, _sotties_ and _sermons joyeux_[1364]. Of their share in the miracles the next volume may speak[1365]: their relations to the development of comedy require a word or two here. That normal fifteenth-century comedy, that of the farce and the morality, in any way had its origin in the Feast of Fools, whether clerical or lay, can hardly be admitted. It almost certainly arose out of the minstrel tradition, and when already a full-blown art was adapted by the _fous_, as by other groups of amateur performers, from minstrelsy. With the special forms of the _sottie_ and the _sermon joyeux_ it is otherwise. These may reasonably be regarded as the definite contribution of the Feast of Fools to the types of comedy. The very name of the _sermon joyeux_, indeed, sufficiently declares its derivation. It is parody of a class, the humour of which would particularly appeal to revelling clerks: it finds its place in the general burlesque of divine worship, which is the special note of the feast[1366]. The character of the _sotties_, again, does not leave their origin doubtful; they are, on the face of them, farces in which the actors are _sots_ or _fous_. Historically, we know that some at least of the extant _sotties_ were played by _sociétés joyeuses_ at Paris, Geneva and elsewhere; and the analysis of their contents lays bare the ruling idea as precisely that expressed in the motto of the _Infanterie Dijonnaise_--‘_Stultorum numerus est infinitus_.’ It is their humour and their mode of satire to represent the whole world, from king to clown, as wearing the cap and bells, and obeying the lordship of folly. French writers have aptly compared them to the modern dramatic type known as the _revue_[1367]. The germ of the _sottie_ is to be found as early as the thirteenth century in the work of that Adan de la Hale, whose anticipation of at least one other form of fifteenth-century drama has called for comment[1368]. Adan’s _Jeu de la Feuillée_ seems to have been played before the _puy_ of Arras, perhaps, as the name suggests, in the _tonnelle_ of a garden, on the eve of the first of May, 1262. It is composed of various elements: the later scenes are a _féerie_ in which the author draws upon Hellequin and his _mesnie_ and the three _fées_, Morgue, Maglore and Arsile, of peasant tradition. But there is an episode which is sheer _sottie_. The relics of St. Acaire, warranted to cure folly, are tried upon the good burgesses of Arras one by one; and there is a genuine fool or _dervés_, who, like his lineal descendant Touchstone, ‘uses his folly as a stalking-horse to shoot his wit’ in showers of arrowy satire upon mankind[1369]. Of the later and regular _sotties_, the most famous are those written by Pierre Gringoire for the _Enfants-sans-Souci_ of Paris. In these, notably the _Jeu du Prince des Sotz_, and in others by less famous writers, the conception of the all-embracing reign of folly finds constant and various expression[1370]. Outside France some reflection of the _sottie_ is to be found in the _Fastnachtspiele_ or Shrovetide plays of Nuremberg and other German towns. These were performed mainly, but not invariably, at Shrovetide, by students or artisans, not necessarily organized into regular guilds. They are dramatically of the crudest, being little more than processions of figures, each of whom in turn sings his couplets. But in several examples these figures are a string of _Narren_, and the matter of the verses is in the satirical vein of the _sotties_[1371]. The _Fastnachtspiele_ are probably to be traced, not so much to the Feast of Fools proper, as to the spring sword-dances in which, as we have seen, a _Narr_ or ‘fool’ is _de rigueur_. They share, however, with the _sotties_ their fundamental idea of the universal domination of folly.

The extension of this idea may indeed be traced somewhat widely in the satirical and didactic literature of the later Middle Ages and the Renascence. I cannot go at length into this question here, but must content myself with referring to Professor Herford’s valuable account of the cycle, which includes the _Speculum Stultorum_ of Wireker, Lydgate’s _Order of Fools_, Sebastian Brandt’s _Narrenschiff_ and its innumerable imitations, the _Encomium Moriae_ of Erasmus, and Robert Armin the player’s _Nest of Ninnies_[1372].

Wireker was an Englishman, and the ‘Order’ founded in the _Speculum_ by Brunellus, the Ass, was clearly suggested by the _sociétés joyeuses_. Traces of such _sociétés_ in England are, however, rare. Some of the titles of local lords of misrule, such as the Abbot of Marrall at Shrewsbury or the Abbot of Bon-Accord at Aberdeen, so closely resemble the French nomenclature as to suggest their existence; but the only certain example I have come across is in a very curious record from Exeter. The register of Bishop Grandisson contains under the date July 11, 1348, a mandate to the archdeacon and dean of Exeter and the rector of St. Paul’s, requiring them to prohibit the proceedings of a certain ‘sect of malign men’ who call themselves the ‘Order of Brothelyngham.’ These men, says the bishop, wear a monkish habit, choose a lunatic fellow as abbot, set him up in the theatre, blow horns, and for day after day beset in a great company the streets and places of the city, capturing laity and clergy, and exacting ransom from them ‘in lieu of a sacrifice.’ This they call a _ludus_, but it is sheer rapine[1373]. Grandisson’s learned editor thinks that this _secta_ was a sect of mediaeval dissenters, but the description clearly points to a _société joyeuse_. And the recognition of the _droits_ exacted as being _loco sacrificii_ is to a folk-lorist most interesting.

More than one of the records which I have had occasion to quote make mention of an _habit des fous_ as of a recognized and familiar type of dress. These records are not of the earliest. The celebrants of the ecclesiastical Feast of Fools wore _larvae_ or masks. Laity and clergy exchanged costumes: and the wearing of women’s garments by men probably represents one of the most primitive elements in the custom. But there can be little doubt as to the nature of the traditional ‘habit des fous’ from the fourteenth century onwards. Its most characteristic feature was that hood garnished with ears, the distribution of which to persons of importance gave such offence at Tournai in 1499. A similar hood, fitting closely over the head and cut in scollops upon the shoulders, reappears in the _bâton_, dated 1482, of the fools in the ducal chapel of Dijon. Besides two large asses’ ears, it also bears a central peak or crest[1374]. The eared hood became the regular badge of the _sociétés joyeuses_. It is found on most of the seals and other devices of the _Infanterie Dijonnaise_, variously modified, and often with bells hung upon the ears and the points of the scollops[1375]. It was used at Amiens[1376], and at Rouen and Evreux probably gave a name to the _Cornards_[1377]. Marot describes it as appropriate to a _sot de la Basoche_ at Paris[1378]. It belongs also to the _Narren_ of Nuremberg[1379], and is to be seen in innumerable figured representations of fools in miniatures, woodcuts, carvings, the Amiens _monetae_, and so forth, during the later Middle Ages and the Renascence[1380]. Such a close-fitting hood was of course common wear in the fourteenth century. It is said to be of Gaulish origin, and to be retained in the religious cowl. The _differentiae_ of the hood of a ‘fool’ from another must be sought in the grotesque appendages of ears, crest and bells[1381]. Already an eared hood, exactly like that of the ‘fools,’ distinguishes a mask, perhaps Gaulish, of the Roman period[1382]. It may therefore have been adopted in the _Kalendae_ at an early date. But it is not, I think, unfair to assume that it was originally a sophistication of a more primitive headdress, namely the actual head of a sacrificial animal worn by the worshipper at the New Year festival. That the ears are asses’ ears explains itself in view of the prominence of that animal at the Feast of Fools. It must be added that the central crest is developed in some of the examples figured by Douce into the head and neck, in others into the comb only, of a cock[1383]. With the hood, in most of the examples quoted above, goes the _marotte_. This is a kind of doll carried by the ‘fool,’ and presents a replica of his own head and shoulders with their hood upon the end of a short staff. In some of Douce’s figures the _marotte_ is replaced or supplemented by some other form of bauble, such as a bladder on a stick, stuffed into various shapes, or hollow and containing peas[1384]. Naturally the colours of the ‘fools’ were gay and strikingly contrasted. Those of the Paris _Enfants-sans-Souci_ were yellow and green[1385]. But it may be doubted whether these colours were invariable, or whether there is much in the symbolical significance attributed to them by certain writers[1386]. The _Infanterie Dijonnaise_ in fact added red to their yellow and green[1387]. The colours of the Clèves Order of Fools were red and yellow[1388].

It will not have escaped notice that the costume just described, the

## parti-coloured garments, the hood with its ears, bells and coxcomb,

and the _marotte_, is precisely that assigned by the custom of the stage to the fools who appear as _dramatis personae_ in several of Shakespeare’s plays[1389]. Yet these fools have nothing to do with _sociétés joyeuses_ or the Feast of Fools; they represent the ‘set,’ ‘allowed,’ or ‘all-licensed’ fool[1390], the domestic jester of royal courts and noble houses. The great have always found pleasure in that near neighbourhood of folly which meaner men vainly attempt to shun. Rome shared the _stultus_ with her eastern subjects and her barbarian invaders alike; and the ‘natural,’ genuine or assumed, was, like his fellow the dwarf, an institution in every mediaeval and Renascence palace[1391]. The question arises how far the _habit_ of the _sociétés joyeuses_ was also that of the domestic fool. In France there is some evidence that from the end of the fourteenth century it was occasionally at least taken as such. The tomb in Saint Maurice’s at Senlis of Thévenin de St. Leger, fool to Charles V, who died in 1374, represents him in a crested hood with a _marotte_[1392]. Rabelais describes the fool Seigni Joan, apparently intended for a court fool, as having a _marotte_ and ears to his hood. On the other hand, he makes Panurge present Triboulet, the fool of Louis XII, with a sword of gilt wood and a bladder[1393]. A little later Jean Passerat speaks of the hood, green and yellow, with bells, of another royal fool[1394]. In the seventeenth century the green and yellow and an eared hood formed part of the fool’s dress which the duke of Nevers imposed upon a peccant treasurer[1395]. But in France the influence of the _sociétés joyeuses_ was directly present. I do not find that the data quoted by Douce quite bear out his transference of the regular French _habit de fou_ to England. Hoods were certainly required as part of the costume for ‘fools,’ ‘disards,’ or ‘vices’ in the court revels of 1551-2, together with ‘longe’ coats of various gay colours[1396]; but these were for masks, and on ordinary occasions the fools of the king and the nobles seem to have worn the usual dress of a courtier or servant[1397]. Like Triboulet, they often bore, as part of this, a gilded wooden sword[1398]. A coxcomb, however, seems to have been a recognized fool ensign[1399], and once, in a tale, the complete _habit_ is described[1400]. Other fool costumes include a long petticoat[1401], the more primitive calf-skin[1402], and a fox tail hanging from the back[1403]. The two latter seem to bring us back to the sacrificial _exuviae_, and form a link between the court fool and the grotesque ‘fool,’ or ‘Captain Cauf Tail’ of the morris dances and other village revels.

Whatever may have been the case with the domestic fool of history, it is not improbable that the tradition of the stage rightly interprets the intention of Shakespeare. The actual texts are not very decisive. The point that is most clear is that the fool wears a ‘motley’ or ‘patched’ coat[1404]. The fool in _Lear_ has a ‘coxcomb[1405]’; Monsieur Lavache in _All’s Well_ a ‘bauble,’ not of course necessarily a _marotte_[1406]; Touchstone, in _As You Like It_, is a courtier and has a sword[1407]. The sword may perhaps be inherited from the ‘vice’ of the later moralities[1408]; and, in other respects, it is possible that Shakespeare took his conception of the fool less from contemporary custom, for indeed we hear of no fool at Elizabeth’s court, than from the abundant fool-literature, continental and English, above described. The earliest of his fools, Feste in _Twelfth Night_, quotes Rabelais, in whose work, as we have just seen, the fool Triboulet figures[1409]. It is noticeable that the appearance of fools as important _dramatis personae_ in the plays apparently coincides with the substitution for William Kempe as ‘comic lead’ in the Lord Chamberlain’s company of Robert Armin[1410], whose own _Nest of Ninnies_ abounds in reminiscences of the fool-literature[1411]. But whatever outward appearance Shakespeare intended his fools to bear, there can be no doubt that in their dramatic use as vehicles of general social satire they very closely recall the manner of the _sotties_. Touchstone is the type: ‘He uses his folly like a stalking-horse, and under the presentation of that he shoots his wit[1412].’

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