attach themselves to Burbadge's, or to any other one theatre, is further borne out by the indications in the Jests of Tarlton, which there is no reason to reject, however apocryphal they may be in detail, as evidence of the theatrical conditions under which the famous mime appeared. The Jests frequently speak of Tarlton as a Queen's man and never mention any other company in connexion with him.[1] And, as it happens, they record performances at the Curtain,[2] the Bell,[3] and the Bull,[4] but none at the Theatre. Nashe, however, tells us that Tarlton made jests of Richard Harvey and his Astrological Discourse of 1583 there;[5] and an entry in the Stationers' Register makes it possible to add that shortly before his death he appeared at the Bel Savage.[6] The stage-keeper in Bartholomew Fair (1614), Ind. 37, gives us a reminiscence of a scene between Tarlton and John Adams, 'I am an Asse! I! and yet I kept the Stage in Master Tarletons time, I thanke my starres. Ho! and that man had liu'd to haue play'd in Bartholmew Fayre, you should ha' seene him ha' come in, and ha' beene coozened i' the Cloath-quarter, so finely! And Adams, the Rogue, ha' leap'd and caper'd vpon him, and ha' dealt his vermine about, as though they had cost him nothing. And then a substantiall watch to ha' stolne in vpon 'hem, and taken 'hem away, with mistaking words, as the fashion is, in the Stage-practice.'
Tarlton's own talent probably ran more to 'jigs' and 'themes' than to the legitimate drama. But the palmy days of the Queen's company were those that intervened between its foundation in 1583 and his death on 3 September 1588. To it belonged the men whom such an actor of the next generation as Thomas Heywood could remember as the
- ↑ Tarlton, 12, 13, 27, 29, 30, 31, 33, 37, 'while the queenes players lay in Worcester', 'when the queenes players were restrained in summer, they travelled downe to S. James his fair at Bristow', 'in the country where the queenes plaiers were accepted into a gentlemans house', 'at Salisbury, Tarlton and his fellowes were to play before the maior and his brethren', 'the queenes players travelling into the west country to play, and lodging in a little village some ten miles from Bristow'.
- ↑ Tarlton, 16, 'one in mockage threw him in this theame, he playing then at the Curtaine'.
- ↑ Tarlton, 24, 'Tarlton then, with his fellowes, playing at the Bel by . . . the Crosse-keyes in Gracious streete'.
- ↑ Tarlton, 13, 'at the Bull in Bishops-gate-street, where the queenes players oftentimes played'. It was here (Tarlton, 24) that Tarlton and Knell played The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth.
- ↑ Nashe, Pierce Penilesse (Works, i. 197; cf. i. 308).
- ↑ Arber, ii. 526, 'A sorowfull newe sonnette intituled Tarltons Recantacon uppon this theame gyven him by a gentleman at the Bel savage without Ludgate (nowe or ells never) beinge the laste theame he songe'. The tract is not extant.
