Tarleton Richard [ Richard Tarlton] (?–1588), most famous of Elizabethan clowns, probably the ‘Yorick’ referred to by Hamlet. A drawing of him in a manuscript now in the British Museum, reproduced in
Tarleton's Jests (a posthumous work), shows that he was short and broad, with a large, flat face, curly hair, a wavy moustache, and a starveling beard. His usual dress was a russet suit and buttoned cap, with short boots strapped at the ankle, as commonly worn by rustics at the time. A money-bag hangs from a belt at his waist, and he is shown playing on a tabor and pipe. He was one of
Queen Elizabeth's Men, and much of his clowning is believed to have been extempore. Both Marlowe and Shakespeare may have had him in mind when they railed at ‘clownage’. It may have been Shakespeare's desire to confine Tarleton's gagging within reasonable limits that led him to write out in full such richly comic parts as Launce and Speed in
The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Bottom in
A Midsummer Night's Dream, Dogberry in
Much Ado about Nothing, and the First Grave-digger in
Hamlet. There can be no doubt that the genius of Tarleton was responsible for much of the mingling of tragedy and comedy in early English plays, but his greatest achievements lay in the
jig. The music for some of these has survived, but the only known libretto,
Tarltons Jigge of a horse loade of Fooles (
c.1579), is now considered to be a forgery. Tarleton is, however, known to have written for the Queen's Men a composite play, now lost, entitled
The Seven Deadly Sins, the first part containing five short plays, the second three. The outline, or
platt, of the second part has been preserved in manuscript. His enduring popularity may be judged by the number of taverns named after him; one, The Tabour and Pipe Man, with a sign-board taken from the frontispiece to
Tarleton's Jests, still stood in the Borough in London 200 years after his death, while the action of William Percy's
Cuckqueans and Cuckolds Errant (1601) is said to take place in the Tarlton Inn, Colchester. Tarleton himself for some time ran an eating-house in the City, in Paternoster Row.
