Richard Tarlton

Encyclopaedia Britannica ^ | Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

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Tarlton takes his place in theatrical history as creator of the stage yokel; his performance in this role is thought to have influenced Shakespeare's creation of the character Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Tarlton himself is said to have been the model for the court jester Yorick described in Hamlet. Tarlton's popularity and genius were undisputed. Thomas Nashe wrote that audiences began "exceedingly to laugh when he first peept out his head"; Edmund Spenser mourned him as "our pleasant Willy . . . with whom all joy and jolly merriment/Is also deaded"; and in 1643 Sir Richard Baker said that "for the . . . Clown's part he never had his match, never will have." Few of his actual roles as a comedian are known, however. Contemporary sketches show Tarlton in country homespun, holding a pipe and tabor and standing on one toe.

Tarlton is first mentioned in 1570 for his didactic ballad on the "late great floods." The Stationers' Register of 1576 credits him with "a newe booke in Englishe verse intituled Tarltons Toyes." By 1579 he was a well-known actor and Queen Elizabeth I's favourite jester, the only one able to "undumpish" her when she was out of humour and the only one allowed to tell her of her faults. In 1583 he became a leading comic actor of the Queen's Men and groom of Her Majesty's chamber. His plays, which were praised by contemporaries, are all lost. Of later jestbooks that were published as Tarlton's, such as Tarltons Newes out of Purgatorie (c. 1590) and Tarlton's Jests (1611), most are of dubious authenticity, but, like inn signboards that depicted him as late as 1798, they attest to the endurance of his fame.

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TOPICS: History; Science; Travel
KEYWORDS: bitwithadog; elizabethan; england; godsgravesglyphs; johndowland; renaissance; richardtarlton; tarlton; tudors; williamkempe; williamshakespeare; willkempe

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One of Dowland's early works, Tarleton's Resurrection, performed on the archlute by David Tayler. Tarleton's Reconstruction: Dowland's original music does not survive, and the later sources present only the outside lines of what would have been a four or five part composition. Dowland's lute solos invariably have room in the polyphonic web for a tenor or alto part, and here I have created a tenor part for the last section in the style of Dowland, using an inverted counterpoint of the melody divided along the hexachord. Dowland's solo remained popular well into the early 17th century. Richard Tarleton: Tarleton was the favorite jester of Queen Elizabeth I, and he died in 1588, the same year that Dowland received his degree from Oxford. Dowland was very much interested in a court position, and may have written the work as a gesture to the Queen. An accomplished comedic actor, Tarleton was also a playwright and fencing master who could improvise pentameter as part of the play or to spar with unruly audience members. One of the few known representations of Tarleton shows him playing a pipe and tabor. The title of the work is often given as "rissurection," "riserrectionne" or "riserrectione;" the spelling variants are the result of the Latin and Italian forms of the word. As Dowland was justifiably proud of his skills in Latin translation, I have used the Latin form of the word, and this spelling, resurrection, was by far the most common form in the time of Queen Elizabeth I. 

John Dowland: Tarleton's Resurrection; David Tayler, archlute | 2:24 
Voices of Music | 526K subscribers | 63,303 views | January 18, 2013

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Thought this thread was about “Bloody Ban” Banastre Tarleton.

https://www.nps.gov/people/banastre-tarleton.htm