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THE DRAMATURGICAL AND THEATRICAL HERITAGE Unlike in the other two plays, it would be very difficult to contrast so sharply the characters of The True Chronicle Historie of King Leir, although this binary opposition is quite evident in the case of Leir’s daughters and two counselors, Perillus and Skalliger. Yet some of them, including the Gallian king’s servant Mumford, the Mariners, and the Watchmen, do not show either good or bad moral qualities or any loyalty towards the king on the basis of which one could add them to either of the groups. They appear mainly for the sake of entertainment, and they remain rather indifferent to the question of governance and the legacy of royal power, and thus they hardly have any didactic function. Among the dramatis personae, however, the role of court jesters contributes significantly to the moral of the plot, which has been given more than adequate attention in the secondary literature in the case of all the three plays. In Magnyfycence, Fansy and Foly stand out among the courtly vices with their “comic dimension,” and they also manifest jester-like qualities. First, as Happé argues, they wear the attire and have the accessories of fools: the stage directions specify that, when he first comes on stage, Foly is holding a bauble in his hands, and such a baton was the traditional property of jesters. Similarly, Fansy appears in a fool’s costume,'”’ as Foly’s greeting reveals: “What frantyke Fansy, in a foles case?”"* Moreover, Foly also possesses a book to which he refers as his bible to help him teach others how to behave like fools: “Fyrst I lay before them my bybyll, / And teche them howe they sholde syt ydyll, / To pyke theyr fyngers all the day longe; / So in theyr eyre I synge them a songe / And make them so longe to muse / That some of them renneth strayght to the stuse.”!!® Second, they also find plenty of occasions for sheer entertainment, for example Foly’s extensive use of distorted proverbs, which turns his diction into nonsense to which Happé refers as “proverbial topsy-turveydom:”!!6 110 Mary, I pray God your mastershyp to save. / I shall gyve you a gaude of a goslynge that I gave, / The gander and the gose both grasynge on one grave. / Than Rowlande the reve ran, and I began to rave, / And with a bristell of a bore his berde dyd I shave. [...] Sym Sadyglose was my syer, and Dawcocke my dame. / I coude, and I lyst, garre 110 ‘The term itself derives from Beatrice K. Otto’s comprehensive study and refers to a character that embodies the fool as both a courtier and an entertainer. C.f. Beatrice K. Otto: Facets of the Fool, in Beatrice K. Otto: Fools are everywhere: the court jester around the world, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2001, 1-46. Norland: Drama, 183. “Hic ingrediatur Foly qu(at)iendo crema et faciendo Multum, feriendo tabulas, et similia.” Skelton: Magnyfycence, line 1042. Peter Happé: Fansy and Foly: the Drama of Fools in Magnyfyncence, Comparative Drama 27:4 (1994), 434. Skelton: Magnyfycence, line 1044. Ibid., lines 1218-1224. Happe: Fansy and Foly, 437. 11 BE 11. DS 11. u 11 i 11 a 116 « 33 6
