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...