'Alas, poor Yorick.' Death, the fool, the mirror and the danse macabre

Stefanie Knöll (Hrsg.) Narren – Masken – Karneval Meisterwerke von Dürer bis Kubin aus der Düsseldorfer Graphiksammlung »Mensch und Tod« Die Abbildung der vorderen Umschlagseite zeigt: Wilhelm Ludwig Lehmann (1861–1932), Tod als geigender Narr, frühes 20. Jahrhundert. (u.l.) Hans Holbein d. J. (1497/98–1543), Die Küniginn, aus: Icones Mortis, Basel 1554. (o.r.) Gedruckt mit Unterstützung der Gesellschaft von Freunden und Förderern der Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf e.V. und der Humatia Stiftung für Sepulkralkultur des Kuratorium Deutsche Bestattungskultur e.V. Kuratorium Deutsche Bestattungskultur e.V. Herausgeberin: Stefanie Knöll Textredaktion: Stefanie Knöll, Katharina Mura, Jessica Küsters Bildredaktion: Stefanie Knöll, Johanna Fleischmann Verlagslektorat: Viola Keilbach Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Bibliothek: Die Deutsche Bibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über <http://dnb.ddb.de> abrufbar. 1. Auflage 2009 © 2009 Verlag Schnell & Steiner GmbH, Leibnizstraße 13, 93055 Regensburg Satzherstellung: Echtzeit Medien, Nürnberg Umschlaggestaltung: Anna Braungart, Tübingen Druck: Erhardi Druck GmbH, Regensburg ISBN 978-3-7954-2109-0 Alle Rechte vorbehalten. Ohne ausdrückliche Genehmigung des Verlags ist es nicht gestattet, dieses Buch oder Teile daraus auf fototechnischem oder elektronischem Weg zu vervielfältigen. Weitere Informationen zum Verlagsprogramm erhalten Sie unter: www.schnell-und-steiner.de Inhalt Vorwort . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Narren Thorsten Noack Der Narr wird verrückt. Medizinische Konzepte des Wahnsinns im Europa der Frühen Neuzeit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Sophie Oosterwijk „Alas, poor Yorick“. Death, the fool, the mirror and the danse macabre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Michael Overdick Zur Darstellung von Tod und Verdammnis in den Illustrationen zu Sebastian Brants Narrenschiff. . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Masken Miriam Seidler „Vivat Kasperl, der den Tod bezwungen“. Kasper und Tod im Puppentheater des 19. Jahrhunderts . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Stefanie Knöll Maskierung und Demaskierung. Der Tod beim Maskenball . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Anja Schonlau Warum trägt der Tod eine Maske? Zur Kultur- und Literaturgeschichte allegorischer Seuchendarstellung am Beispiel von Gerhart Hauptmanns Pestdrama Die schwarze Maske . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Karneval Wolfgang Oelsner „Im Himmel ist der Teufel los“. Närrische Todes- und Jenseitsvorstellungen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Ruth von Bernuth „Dem dot zu drucz und dracz“. Zum Tod im Fastnachtspiel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 Gertrude Cepl-Kaufmann Die Fastnachtsbeichte. Carl Zuckmayers Erzählung als Welttheater der Moderne . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 Katalog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 Anhang Allgemeine Literatur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 Autoren . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181 Abbildungsnachweis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182 Sophie Oosterwijk ‘Alas, poor Yorick’ Death, the fool, the mirror and the danse macabre* In the famous graveyard scene in the last act of Shakespeare’s Hamlet the prince, newly returned to Denmark after his aborted sea journey to England, accosts a clown who is digging a fresh grave for – as it turns out – the recently drowned Ophelia. One of the skulls that the gravedigger has unearthed and that Hamlet takes in his hands turns out to be that of Yorick, his dead father’s former jester, “a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy” (Hamlet, V, i, 178). Hamlet, who has recently played the fool or madman himself in order to hide his plans for revenge from his uncle, thus comes to face the mortal remains of the fool he once knew: “Where be your gibes now, your gambols, your songs, your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now to mock your own grinning?” (Hamlet, V, i, 183–186). The fool’s skull conjured up for at least one author a comparison with “a familiar figure from the Dance of Death, the capering transi in his antic cap and bells”.1 Another Shakespeare scholar had earlier remarked, “The association of the Fool and Death in the famous pictures of Hans Holbein had haunted Shakespeare’s imagination since he wrote of the antic Death crouching within the hollow crown circling a king’s brow”.2 Yet Shakespeare was not the first to associate the fool with Death. Yorick is believed to have been modelled on Queen Elizabeth I’s famous jester Richard (or Dick) Tarlton who had died in 1588, over a decade prior to the first performance of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.3 As a court jester and performer, Tarlton combined wit with low comedy through which he was able to “undumpish” the queen but also to tell her about her faults.4 Similarly, whereas Hamlet recalls Yorick’s “infinite jest” and “most excellent fancy” the gravedigger remembers the dead fool as “a mad rogue” who once poured a flagon of Rhenish wine on his head (Hamlet, V, i, 173–174). Yorick never occurs as a live character in Hamlet; when we first encounter him, the fool’s features are already reduced to the permanent grin of death – the archetypal rictus of the skull – and his once witty tongue has long since disappeared. Even in this state Yorick manages to teach Hamlet about the ultimate fate that awaits all mankind, which fits in with the traditional role of the court jester: to convey truth and wisdom through jokes and laughter. Nonetheless, the fool can also epitomise absolute folly, as illustrated in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure where the Duke reminds the condemned Claudio that only fools cling desperately to life: “Merely, thou art Death’s fool; for him thou labour’st by thy flight to shun, and yet run’st toward him still” (Measure for Measure, III, i, 11–13). This essay aims to address the association of the fool and Death further, especially within the context of the danse macabre, but also with references to the Bible and to Shakespeare’s characters in order to illustrate different aspects of the fool. The medieval fool and the danse macabre The late-medieval theme of the danse macabre or Totentanz probably developed in the course of the fourteenth century, albeit that the earliest recorded example dates from 1424–1425 when a mural was painted on the walls of one of the charnel houses in the parish cemetery of Les Saints Innocents in Paris.5 In 1485 this mural with its accompanying verse dialogue about the dead summoning the living was reproduced as a book with woodcut illustrations by the Parisian printer Guy Marchant. It is important to note that the dead figures are originally described in the French poem as le mort (i.e. the dead counterpart of the living) instead of la mort (i.e. Death personified); yet this changes in later versions, most notably in the Danse Macabre des Femmes where we initially find la morte. The living characters in the danse are nearly all revealed as fools who blindly pursue earthly pleasures and ambitions at the cost of their souls’ salvation. Thus le mort rebukes the patriarch who had vainly aspired to become pope, “Fole esperance decoit lome” (man is deceived by foolish hope).6 The minstrel, too, is accused of having entertained ‘sos et sotes’, i.e. the foolish men and women who enjoyed dancing to his worldly tunes. The fool himself did not appear as a separate character in the mural in Paris, however. Throughout the visual danse macabre tradition, the dead dancers caper amongst the living while mocking them with impunity. The fool is no respecter of rank, either; he treats everyone alike, irrespective of their social status. Traditionally the fool Narren occupied an anomalous position between masters, courtiers and servants. He was dressed in a special costume that set him apart, such as particoloured clothes and the typical fool’s cap with bells and ass’s ears; his cap was sometimes topped with a coxcomb, i.e. the red crest or even the complete head and neck of a cockerel or hen (Cat. No. 27). He would also carry a staff known as a bauble, which could be a wooden or flaccid club (the German Narrenwurst) that had obvious phallic connotations.7 Other forms of bauble were a pig’s bladder attached to a stick or the special fool’s staff known as a marotte, which was topped with a carved miniature fool’s face – a mirror image of the fool or alter ego, with which he is often shown holding mock-conversations (Cat. No. 7).8 People’s views of the fool veered between two extremes. Claude Blum summed up the relationship between death and folly in holy scripture as two semantic triads of folly-wisdom-death and folly-sin-death.9 An example of the former is St Paul’s warning in 1 Corinthians 3:18–19 that he who seems wise in this world should become a fool (stultus) in order to be wise, because the wisdom of this world is foolishness to God. Yet in medieval psalters the fool can often be found as an illustration of the opening words “Dixit insipiens in corde suo: Non est Deus” of psalm 53 (52). Frequently, these D-initials show him, the representative of ultimate folly, as an antithesis to the (wise) king.10 In medieval and renaissance culture there was a further difference between the ‘natural’ and the ‘artificial’ fool, albeit that the distinctions are often blurred. The former was a mere simpleton, imbecile or innocent; a ‘frantic fool’ in the tradition of Lancelot who is temporarily rendered insane through love, or Tristan whose appearance of madness allows him to visit his beloved Yseut unhindered.11 Likewise, it is neglected love that Polonius blames for Hamlet’s supposed madness. The French king Charles VI – known as ‘le Fol’ because of his recurrent bouts of insanity – kept various fools, including a madman named Haincelin Coq who was apparently prone to frenzied leaping and dancing.12 Henry VIII greatly favoured his fool Will Somer whose often eccentric sayings seemed to contain much wisdom, and some fools were even believed to prophesy.13 This ambiguity is reflected in Shakespeare’s As You Like It, where Rosalind’s observation “Thou speak’st wiser than thou art ware of” suggests that the fool Touchstone may actually utter wise words without knowing it (As You Like It, II, iv, 54).14 The medieval and renaissance fool could also be a buffoon or prankster, his humour being of the farcical kind. Finally, there was the clever jester who deliberately used shrewdness and wit to tell the truth to his betters, even if he sometimes carried his freedom of speech too far for their liking; Shakespeare’s King Lear thus threatens his “all-licens’d Fool” (Lear, I, iv, 108, 198) with the whip for telling an unpalatable truth.15 Like Yorick, the court jester | 21 1 Death, the Doctor and the Fool, from Jean Miélot’s poem Le Mors de la Pomme, c.1468–1470. could combine buffoonery and wit. Yet while jesters might employ bawdy humour and repartee to entertain or censure the court, the traditional fool was frequently used to illustrate folly and vice, such as lust and gluttony, which made him the antithesis of a wise man.16 Because he is such a familiar figure in medieval culture, the fool would seem an obvious choice as one of the characters in the medieval Vado Mori tradition, a Latin monologue poem that is often regarded as a precursor of the Danse Macabre.17 Later printed Danse Macabre editions by Marchant even include a version of the poem as an additional text above the woodcuts. Preceded by the sapiens or wise man, the stultus laments: “Vado mori, stultus. Mors stulto vel sapienti / non jungit pacis foedera: vado mori” (I, the fool, am going to die. Death signs a peace deal with neither fool nor wise man: I am going to die). Yet there was no fool among the thirty male characters in the danse macabre mural in Paris nor in Marchant’s original 1485 edition; he is likewise absent in the extensive danse macabre cycle in a Parisian book of hours of c. 1430–1435 in New York (Morgan Library, MS M. 359, fols. 123r–151r). 22 | Narren 2 Triboulet lying dead before his royal master, c.1480, miniature illustrating the poem Complainte contre la Mort. 3 Triboulet’s encounter with Death, c.1480, miniature illustrating the poem Complainte contre la Mort. The fool occurs in related French works of the period, however. A manuscript of c. 1468–1470 of Jean Miélot’s didactic poem Le Mors de la Pomme (Paris, BnF ms. fr. 17001, fol. 113v) juxtaposes the fool in motley with the docteur or scholar (Fig. 1).18 While the latter resembles the traditional author who expounds the moral message for the benefit of the reader at the start and end of the danse macabre, the fool with his coxcomb and marotte acts as a chorus when he comments perceptively “Qui bien scet morir Il est sage” (it is a wise man who knows how to die well). More importantly, the fool is the protagonist of the poem Complainte contre la Mort by King René of Anjou’s court jester Triboulet, in which the latter accuses Death of attacking him without cause.19 An illuminated manuscript copy of c.1480 (The Hague, Royal Library ms. 71 G 61) contains five miniatures in which Triboulet with his customary marotte is initially shown lying dead before his royal master (fol. 16r; Fig. 2), then his encounter with Death (fol. 17r; Fig. 3), Death’s attack on him (fol. 24r), the fool lying in his grave (fol. 32v), and finally Triboulet kneeling before the Virgin and Child (fol. 38v). The poem’s opening lines emphasise yet again that the true fools are people who live without due consideration of their own mortality: Folles et folz qui en vie demourez Attenda[n]t mors souv[ene]z q[u]i fault q[ue] mourez Ou tost ou tart ch[asc]un soit bel ou let Tant bien sages Rassis amoderez You foolish women and men who are still alive, While you await death remember that you must die, Everyone of you, sooner or later, whether handsome or ugly, Wise, as well as calm or immoderate. The setting of the miniature on fol. 32v shows the type of charnel house that once displayed the danse macabre mural in Paris. Perhaps the absence of the fool in the danse macabre mural in Paris is not so very surprising, for the fool does not fit easily into the hierarchical structure of the scheme. More importantly, in the danse macabre the dead dancers themselves assume the role of the fool as they mix freely with all ranks Narren | 23 of the living while by their mockery and appearance they show every man what he really is and what he will become. Visually each dead dancer serves his living counterpart as a distorted mirror, just like the fool who holds up an allegorical mirror to his betters through a semblance of folly or – in Triboulet’s poem – through a portrayal of himself as a victim of Death. One may compare the popular trickster Till Eulenspiegel, who was often depicted holding up an owl and a mirror as references to his name and his role in life.20 The idea of Death (or the dead) holding up a mirror to the living is emphasised at the very start of the poem by the acteur or author who explains to the reader that “En ce miroer chascun peut lire / Qui le conuient ainsi danser” (In this mirror everyone can read how it behoves him to dance in this way).21 Juxtaposing the fool with Death might thus cause confusion, for who would be mocking whom when both characters play traditionally similar roles? The fool in the German Totentanz tradition It was in a famous mural in Basel that the fool made his earliest known appearance in the danse. The nearly life-sized paintings on the churchyard wall of the Dominican convent – known as the ‘Grossbasler Totentanz’ to distinguish it from the later ‘Kleinbasler Totentanz’ wall-painting in the Dominican nunnery in Klingenthal – were probably created around 1440. The mural was traditionally believed to commemorate the outbreak of the plague that hit the city in 1439, even though direct connections between the plague and the danse are actually rare.22 As the thirtieth of the thirtynine characters in this famous scheme, the Narr or jester belongs to a group of fifteen new characters that supplemented the earlier Latin-German Totentanz version of just twenty-four figures.23 These fifteen figures were probably conceived specially for the mural in Basel, and the introduction of the fool seems no coincidence here:24 Basel was an important centre for Fastnachtspiele or carnival plays, and also the place where Sebastian Brant was to publish his Narrenschiff or Ship of Fools in 1494 (see essay by Michael Overdick).25 Only fragments of the mural in Basel survive from its destruction in 1805, but in 1621 a series of engravings of the Grossbasler Totentanz had been published by Matthäus Merian (Cat. No. 9).26 In these engravings Death frequently mocks his victims by mimicking their behaviour or adopting part of their costume or attributes: for example, he wears the typical cardinal’s hat or the armour of a knight, and wields the cook’s skewered roast chicken, thereby reinforcing the idea of Death as a mirror image or alter ego of the living. Death likewise matches the outfit of the Narr with bells on 4 Death and the Fool in the Kleinbasler Totentanz mural. his cap and sleeves and merrily raises a string of bells in his right hand, whereas the living fool despondently lowers his marotte. In fact, the living Narr appears to have struggled in his profession, for his feet are bare and there is a large hole in his left hose. The accompanying dialogue poem confirms Death as the stronger of the two fools. He exhorts the living fool – whom he addresses as “Heyne” – to leap along with him and to leave his “Kolben” or staff behind. In response, the fool admits that he would rather suffer a hard life and daily blows from his master and the servants than to engage in a duel with Death, even though the latter is a mere “Dürrling” (scrawny creature). The fool’s lament as well as the state of his clothes illustrate the lowly position he occupies in his master’s household where his jokes have evidently not always met with approval. Unfortunately, Merian’s version is no accurate representation of the original mural of c.1440 in either visual appearance or text: when his engravings were published in 1621, the mural had already undergone renovation work and alteration.27 In fact, a comparison with the capering figure of Death in Hans Holbein the Younger’s woodcut of Death and the Queen (Cat. No. 4) shows such a striking resemblance to the dead dancer in motley in Merian’s engraving (except that the image is reversed) that it raises the question whether Holbein modelled his Death in motley on the Grossbasler image or whether a later restorer of the mural was instead inspired by Holbein’s 24 | Narren 5 Death in motley with the chaplain, woodcut from Der doten dantz mit figuren clage und antwort schon von allen staten der werlt, attributed to the printer Heinrich Knoblochtzer and first published c.1486–1488. 6 Death in motley with a Franciscan (?), from a copy by an unknown artist of Wilhelm Werner von Zimmern’s Totentanz cycle, c.1600 woodcut.28 More reliable evidence for the original appearance of the Grossbasler scheme is provided by the lost Kleinbasler Totentanz mural of the second half of the fifteenth century at Klingenthal (Fig. 4), which was modelled on the Grossbasler mural.29 While the two living fools seem very similar in pose and appearance, in the Klingenthal mural Death is dressed in his traditional shroud instead of fool’s motley, if we can rely on the antiquarian watercolour copy that Emanuel Büchel produced in 1767–1768. The Klingenthal text also differs from that of the Grossbasler scheme, although the fool is once again ordered to relinquish his “Kolpen” or staff and join the dance: vnd miner frawen nit mer sagen and say nothing more to my wife. so mus ich mit dir do hin Now I must go away with you. we we es mach neit enders syn. Alas, alas, it cannot be otherwise. [Death:] heine woluff du must springen Heine, come on, you must hop. Es ist gar zeit los die gelingen It is high time to go. Din kolpen mosz du varen lon You must relinquish your bauble vnd mit mir zum dantz gon. and join me in the dance. [Fool:] O we ich wolt gerne hultz uff tragen Alas, I would gladly fetch wood As noted earlier, Merian’s depiction of Death as a fool may not have been based on the original appearance of the Grossbasler Totentanz. Nonetheless, there is another example of Death dressing up in similar fashion in the woodcut of Death and the cappellan (chaplain) in Der doten dantz mit figuren clage und antwort of c.1486–88, which is attributed to the printer Heinrich Knoblochtzer (Fig. 5). Throughout this edition Death is given a variety of musical instruments and sometimes a special outfit; the bell on the tip of Death’s hood in this woodcut is the sign of the fool, even if there is no obvious reason why the chaplain should be mocked in this way. The same figure with a triangle, but this time wearing motley and the typical fool’s cap, was used around 1600 by an unknown artist for a variation on Death and a Franciscan (?) as painted by Wilhelm Werner von Zimmern in a Totentanz cycle of c.1540 (Fig. 6).30 The fool occurred in his own right again towards the end of the row of secular figures in a Totentanz mural of c.1490, which is located in the Turmhalle of the Marienkirche in Narren | 25 7 The fool in the Totentanz mural in the Marienkirche, Berlin, second half of the fifteenth century, reconstruction drawing. Berlin (Fig. 7).31 The condition of the mural has deteriorated so much since its discovery in 1860 that only fragments of the dialogue text are legible today. The fool is indicated in the landlady’s plea to Death, “nym den doren ick gha vnde tappe ber” (take the fool; I shall go and tap beer), but the Tor himself has been lost just like the figures of the infant and his mother on his left; fortunately his appearance and the larger part of his verses have been recorded. A reconstruction drawing shows him with a plain red cap and bells on the sleeves of his particoloured red-and-blue costume. Death’s first four lines are now only partly legible, but enough remains to identify a reference to the drum that is shown lying at the fool’s feet and a warning that there will be no respite. The fool’s reply combines indignant retort – he calls Death a “vule kockyn” (dirty scoundrel) – with a vain plea for postponement, and finally an appeal to Christ in which he humbly describes himself as a “vule partyer” (foul deceiver). Bernt Notke did not include a fool in his painted Totentanz for the Marienkirche in Lübeck, nor is there a fool in the printed Des dodes dantz edition of 1489, of which a sole copy survives in the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel. Yet in the Dodendantz edition that was printed in Lübeck in 1520, the fool does occur as a shoulder-length figure in a cap with bells, albeit that this re-used woodcut originally illustrated a Narrenschyp edition of 1497.32 The fool’s text consists of a dialogue in two six-line stanzas, each with its own heading. Death mocks the fantastically named fool (“Hyntze Sychelenfyst van Geckeshusen”) for his incorrigibly foolish behaviour and love of the good life: he will remain a fool until forced to dance to Death’s pipes. Hyntze’s keen enjoyment of food (“fetten sloeke”) and drink at the expense of his superiors suggests a more enjoyable lifestyle than that of the Grossbasler fool. Yet the shrewd opportunism and fatal self-indulgence that are evident in his words will 26 | Narren imperil his soul: after all, greed and gluttony were deadly sins. The fool appeared alongside the child in the lost mural that Niklaus Manuel painted onto the cemetery wall of the Dominican convent in Bern in 1516–1519/1520, as recorded in the 1649 watercolour copy by Albrecht Kauw (Cat. No. 15).33 The juxtaposition of the child and the fool is interesting because both were traditionally held to lack reason;34 they also shared an uncertain social status. The fool wears a yellow outfit with the traditional cap and bells, but his bare legs and feet may be a sign of his low status and relative poverty. His allusion to the avarice of other fools may reflect the words in Luke 12:20 to the covetous rich man: “Thou fool (stulte), this night thy soul shall be required of thee”. The fool’s pose and the club in his right hand suggest an attempt to ward off Death, yet there is also an erotic element in Death’s unusually long wavy hair and the insertion of his/her hand underneath the fool’s slashed robe. Having established a place in the German Totentanz tradition, the fool occurs again in Jakob von Wyl’s series of paintings on canvas of c.1615 for the Jesuit College in Luzern.35 The influence from Holbein’s woodcuts is especially noticeable in the artist’s inclusion of companions to the main protagonists, e.g. the maid attending the empress and the fool hiding behind the duke or Churfürst (Cat. No. 20). As Death grabs the noble’s headdress the fool looks over his master’s shoulder at the figure of Death. The relative positions of Death and the fool are interesting: whereas it was previously the fool who held up a mirror to his master, now the latter is looking Death in the face and seeing what he himself must shortly become. The position of the fool in this late Totentanz example shows that his role in life has ended; his master no longer needs him. The fool in the French danse macabre It is debatable whether the occurrence of the fool in the Totentanz murals at Basel served as the inspiration, but at some point the popular figure of the professional sot was introduced into the French danse macabre.36 Following the success of his 1485 Danse Macabre edition, Marchant published two new versions in 1486 with ten additional characters and accompanying woodcuts: le legat and le duc, le maistre descole and lomme darmes, le promoteur and le geolier, le pelerin and le bergier, le hallebardie and le sot (Cat. No. 26). The author of these new stanzas is unknown, but medieval texts were subject to scribal variance and the additional stanzas may already have been in circulation; there is no proof that Marchant commissioned them. The fool is the only living character in Marchant’s woodcuts whose legs (covered in bells) follow the movements of the dead dancers. It is unclear whether he is watching le mort or the marotte in his right hand; the corpse figure on his left faces the viewer rather than the fool. Addressing the fool as “Mon amy sot” (my friend the fool, or: my foolish friend), le mort elaborates on the fact that wise men and fools alike must join the dance.37 The sot admits that death unites even former enemies in complete harmony: “Sages et sotz [...] Tous mors sont dun estat commun” (wise and fool alike, all the dead share the same condition). The play on the words “estat commun” refers not just to the dead being all reduced to mere corpses, but also to previous differences in their status while alive. Death and the fool are of one accord in uttering these sentiments, and the fool once again shows himself to be wiser than most of his fellow men in the danse. Marchant’s male sot was to have his counterpart in the female sotte in the Danse Macabre des Femmes. Modelled on the older all-male French Danse Macabre, this all-female poem is traditionally attributed to the poet Martial d’Auvergne (1430/1435–1508). It was first published by Guy Marchant in an expanded Danse Macabre edition in 1486, albeit originally with only one woodcut of the queen and the duchess; a full range of female characters was only printed and illustrated in a later edition of 1491, when the bigotte (hypocrite) and the sotte were added as two new characters (Cat. No. 27).38 The protagonists of the Danse Macabre des Femmes are characterised especially by marital status, age, and a wider variety of professions than we find in the earlier male Danse. It is not known when this female Danse was written, but a date of 1482 for the earliest known manuscript version (Paris, BnF ms. fr. 1186) would make it doubtful that the poem was specially commissioned by Marchant, as is often claimed.39 The Danse Macabre des Femmes presents the sotte in a relatively positive way. Death (“la mort”) tells her that she should come first in the dance: this seeming mark of respect is at the same time a reminder that she would thus be leading a string of worldly fools. Death proceeds to mock her appearance and the fact that this will be the fool’s last performance. In response, the sotte warns all pretty ladies to leave their folies behind and consider their own mortality. Innocent of both misdeeds and lies, she asks for forgiveness from her fellowmen and paradise as a gift from God. This self-assessment sums up the fool: forgiveness may be needed, but ultimately the fool does not lie. The juxtaposition of the fool and the bigotte in Marchant’s edition is probably no coincidence. His woodcut depicts the sotte with her prominent coxcomb in an almost argumentative pose: she raises her right hand either in surprise or in an attempt to ward off Death, while brandishing her marotte in her left. Narren Death and the fool in renaissance prints The theme of Death and the fool proved popular with renaissance artists. In the early sixteenth century, the Grossbasler Totentanz mural inspired Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/1498–1543) to produce several danse macabre designs of his own. After moving to Basel in 1515, Holbein designed a dagger sheath as well as an alphabet with danse macabre motifs in the early 1520s (Cat. No. 22). Far better known, however, is his series of woodcuts in which he explored the potential of the Totentanz for social and religious satire. Forty-one woodcuts from this series were published by the brothers Gaspar and Melchior Trechsel in Lyon in 1538 under the title Les simulachres & historiees faces de la mort. The delayed publication may be due to the fact that the woodcarver Hans Lützelburger had died in 1526 before he could complete the series.40 Therefore, the fool does not appear in the original edition published by the Trechsel brothers on behalf of the book dealers Jean and François Frellon – or, at least, not in his own right. It is instead in the woodcut of Death and the Queen that Death appears in the guise of a fool, complete with fool’s cap (Cat. No. 4), just as he is shown alongside the living fool in Merian’s engraving (Cat. No. 9). Holding an hourglass aloft in his left hand, he grabs the queen by her wrist to pull her away from amongst her group of courtiers, thus taking liberties beyond what even a fool was licensed to do. Of course, the guise of a court jester is a fitting one for Death to assume in this court setting, just as he adapts his appearance to his victims’ status in other woodcuts, e.g. when he transfixes the knight with his own lance. Yet there was a long tradition of fools mocking women, especially for their vanity, which matches the role that Death frequently takes on in the danse macabre. Moralising prints and paintings about female vanity often show a woman looking for her reflection in a mirror, only to see a figure of Death or a skull grinning back at her; an image that also occurs in Wilhelm Werner von Zimmer’s illustrated Totentanz manuscript of the 1540s where Death’s own face is reflected in the mirror he holds up for the Jungfrau.41 The same idea is in Hamlet’s mind when he orders Yorick’s skull: “Now get you to my lady’s chamber and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come” (Hamlet, V, i, 186–188). The vanitas theme of female beauty had a long tradition but the sexual frisson inherent in the juxtaposition of a woman’s charms and Death’s rotting corpse was to prove irresistable for some renaissance artists, including the Nuremburg-born engraver Hans Sebald Beham (1500–1550).42 His 1541 engraving of Death and a Young Woman (Fig. 8) is a chilling adaptation of his earlier etching The Fool and a Young Woman of 1540 and may have been inspired by Holbein’s Totentanz | 27 woodcut of Death and the Queen. Both versions are a parody of the usual courtship scenes of this period and a variation on the popular theme of the unequal couple, whether a combination of a young woman with an old man and vice versa, or an archetypally shrewd woman with a fool.43 Beham’s engraving not only plays on the sexual theme of the lustful fool and the woman – his staff is dangling suggestively behind the lady’s back – but also on the vanitas theme, as evident in the hourglass and the posy of flowers held by the woman; flowers are not only an emblem of courtship but also of the transitoriness of life, i.e. short-lived beauty much like that of the woman herself. This idea is further underlined by the accompanying Latin motto “Omnem in homine venvstatem mors abolet” (Death destroys all beauty in man). While the lady’s pensive face is seen only in profile, Beham offers us a startling full view of Death’s face underneath the fool’s cap as he leans over to address his female companion, thereby offering himself as a mirror to the viewer in the medieval Sum quod eris (I am what you will be) tradition.44 Meanwhile, by 1547 there was a new edition of Holbein’s Les simulachres & historiees faces de la mort with twelve new woodcuts, of which seven had probably been designed for the original series. Among these new woodcuts was that of the fool, who is shown striding alongside Death in a barren landscape (Cat. No. 5).45 Death plays the bagpipes, which fits in with Death’s traditional exhortation that everyone must dance to his pipes. In this case, however, the instrument has strong sexual connotations: the pipe played by Death runs parallel to the fool’s penis, which is revealed underneath the fool’s robe that Death appears to be lifting up yet further. Fools also often played the bagpipes, which is another shared characteristic. Moreover, Death and the fool appear to be sharing a joke in this woodcut, as suggested by the gesture made by the fool with his left hand. The claim by Lutz Malke that Holbein’s fool is mentally retarded and his gesture indicative of his uncomprehending state is highly questionable.46 Holbein’s woodcut may illustrate a natural fool, yet this does not mean the gesture is simply one of innocence – quite the opposite. Once again, a comparison may be drawn with Shakespeare’s natural fool Touchstone, whose animal lust persuades him to woo and wed the country goatherd Audrey, foul though she may be; Touchstone rhymes her name with “bawdry”, and lechery is furthermore suggested by the fact that Audrey lives by the copulation of goats – traditionally a symbol of lust.47 Holbein’s fool does not wear his traditional fool’s cap but the bells on his costume and his earthly humour make him easily identifiable. He is a lecherous older man who suggestively swings his flaccid Narrenwurst in his right hand. The bawdy connotations are obvious and part of the conventional image of the fool. The letter R in Holbein’s Danse Macabre alpha- 28 | Narren 8 Death and the Young Woman, 1541, engraving by Hans Sebald Beham. 9 Death and the Fool, woodcut in the margin of John Day’s Christian Prayers and Meditations first published in 1569, fol. 165r. bet features a struggling fool whose robe is likewise raised by Death to reveal his genitalia (Cat. No. 22); here, too, the fool’s bauble is used as a phallic symbol. The Latin text from Proverbs 7:22 that accompanies Holbein’s woodcut confirms the fool as a man driven by animal lust, which will lead him to eternal damnation. performer: a conjurer or stage magician versed in astronomy, whose slights of hand and illusions will not deceive Death. This makes him the opposite of the fool; he is instead a learned man who uses “Maugik natural” to trick people through clever illusions, whereas the fool offers truth in the guise of jest. The fool is once again presented as an emblem of folly in the margins of Christian Prayers and Meditations, first published in 1569 by John Day (1522–1584; Fig. 9).49 The marginal illustrations in this book include an extensive Dance of Death cycle of thirty-six lay male and twenty-six female characters with short English monologue verses. The graphic work is good, even if the accompanying verses are uninspiring doggerel. The two-line verses assigned to each character contain either a direct address by Death to a living character, such as “Thogh Mayor thou be: / Come go with me”, or a more general statement, as in the lines “High & low: / With me Death and the fool in England The fool was an equally well-known figure in English culture. When the monk-poet John Lydgate (c.1371–1449) translated the French Danse Macabre into Middle English in or around 1426, he introduced a few new characters, including a tregetour who is named as “Maister Jon Rikelle, some tyme tregetowre / Of nobille harry, kynge of Ingelonde”.48 Yet the tregetour is not a true jester but a different type of Narren | 29 10 ‘The Daunce and Song of Death’, Elizabethan broadsheet published by John Audelay in 1569 (London, British Library, Huth 50 (32)) must go” to the viscount. The fool occurs towards the end of the cycle on fol. 156r (repeated on fol. 165r): he is addressed by Death with the lines “Of foolish and fonde: / I breake the bonde”.50 This short verse makes the fool an emblem of folly rather than of wisdom, and thus no better than all the other fools around him. In an Elizabethan broadsheet entitled The Daunce and Song of Death that was published by John Audelay in 1569 – the same year as Day’s Christian Prayers and Meditations – the fool also appears to represent foolishness (Fig. 10).51 Dead dancers lead three pairs of contrasting figures around an open grave above which Sickness is perched, playing a tune on his tabor and fife. Labels identify each figure as they follow the steps of their dead companions: they are a king and a beggar to represent status, an old man and a naked child as representatives of the Ages, and the wise man paired with the fool. While the wise man carries a sextant as an emblem of learning, the fool in motley swings the bladder attached to his bauble. Four separate scenes in the corners depict clockwise (starting bottom left) the prisoner, the rich man, the judge, and finally a pair of richly dressed lovers seated in a bower at a table laden with food and drink. The pair may represent an unequal couple because the bearded lover is no longer young; he is fondly stroking the woman’s cheek as Death summons them to join the dance. It is surely no coincidence that whereas five of the figures in the circle are concentrating on their dance, the fool alone is looking back towards the couple as he waves his bauble in their direction. Perhaps he is still lusting after good food, drink and women, like his counterparts in the 1520 Lübeck edition and in Holbein’s woodcut; on the other hand, his final gesture may express his dismissal of this world’s vain follies. After all, madness, folly and wisdom often came together in the fool, and there is much truth in the saying quoted by Touchstone, “The fool doth think he is wise, but the wiseman knows himself to be a fool” (As You Like It, V, i, 30–31). 30 | Narren Conclusion This essay is not an attempt to present a complete overview of the occurrence of the fool in danse macabre schemes throughout Europe. Instead, the examples given serve to show how closely related the figures of Death and the fool are. Thus, Death may assume the appearance of the fool either to suit the context – as in Holbein’s woodcut of Death and the Queen (Cat. No. 4) – or to offer himself as a mirror image to the living fool, as in Merian’s engraving (Cat. No. 9), or even to join forces with the fool to convey the same message to the world, viz. that to the fool and to Death alike all men are equal. The fool himself may either have natural wisdom in recognising the truth about human nature, or act as a complete fool by giving free reign to his baser instincts. It is a wise man who is sufficiently prepared to leave the world behind and accept death with a glad heart. Hamlet’s encounter with the mortal remains of the former court jester in the local churchyard initially inspires reminiscences about Yorick’s frolics when the fool was alive and the prince young and carefree. Now, however, the gravedigger considers the prince no less mad than the fool had previously been, for Hamlet is supposed to have lost his wits and been sent to England where “the men are as mad as he” (Hamlet, V, i, 149–150). The scene of ‘mad’ Hamlet gazing upon the fool’s skull in his hands recalls the fool holding discourse with his marotte – an image used by Hans Holbein in the margin of Erasmus’ own copy of the 1515 edition (printed in Basel) of his Praise of Folly (Fig. 11). The fool in Holbein’s drawing seems mesmerised by his dumb alter ego; the sketch is supposed to illustrate a sinner caught up in self-love.52 Yet a mirror can also reveal truth, and a man who recognises his folly – or, in some cases, mortality – in his own reflection is well on the road towards attaining wisdom. What matters in Hamlet, V, i is the ultimate truth about death that the fool’s grinning skull confronts the prince with. In his feigned madness Hamlet could still joke about the dead Polonius being mere food for worms (Hamlet, IV, iv, 17–31), but now death has become a more immediate prospect not just for Hamlet but for nearly all remaining protagonists in the play. This outcome is also illustrated in a marginal danse macabre cycle in the Croy-Arenberg Book of Hours, which was produced probably in Bruges around 1500: its two sequences of a male and female danse end with three medallions that show Death with the female fool, then Death * In memoriam Dr. Christa Grössinger FSA (1942–2008). I am grateful to Sally Badham, Gerard Kilroy, Stefanie Knöll, Mireille Madou, Martine Meuwese, Johannes Tripps, Patrick Valvekens and Jean Wilson for their helpful sug- 11 Hans Holbein the Younger, Fool with marotte, pen-and-ink drawing in the margin of Erasmus’ own copy of the 1515 edition (printed in Basel) of Praise of Folly, fol. K 4v with the male fool, and finally Death pushing over a boat occupied by a crowd of people, including a king, an emperor and a fool.53 If Yorick belongs to a line of fools on whom Death has the last laugh in the danse macabre, in death he offers a far more effective lesson about the absurdity of man’s vain ambitions than he could ever have done while alive; in fact, the dead fool here represents Death.54 Contemplating Yorick’s skull, Hamlet recognises that all earthly glory and endeavour will ultimately come to nothing and that man has no choice but to face death. Just as Death has silenced the witty fool forever, he has also reduced such heroes as Alexander and Caesar to mere dust. Thus, even a prince, a king or an emperor will ultimately be nothing but clay with which people may plug a beer-barrel or a hole to keep the wind out (Hamlet, V, i, 197–209) – an image that takes the ubi sunt question to greater extremes than earlier authors might have dared, though fools would have delighted in its absurdity.55 gestions and comments on this paper. Quotations from Shakespeare’s plays in this essay are based on the Arden edition. Narren 1 Michael Neill, Issues of Death. Mortality and Identity in English Renaissance Tragedy, Oxford 1997, p. 235. 2 Muriel C. Bradbrook, Shakespeare, the Craftsman, The Clark Lectures 1968, London 1969, p. 59, referring to Richard II’s speech about the “antic” Death in Richard II, III, ii, 160–170. See also Harry Morris, The Dance-of-Death Motif in Shakespeare, in: Papers on Language and Literature 20 (1984), pp. 15–28; and Phoebe S. Spinrad, The Summons of Death on the Medieval and Renaissance English Stage, Columbus 1987, esp. pp. 216–218. 3 Bradbrook 1969, pp. 58–59, 68, 135, suggests that Richard Burbage and Robert Armin, who originally played the roles of Hamlet and the gravedigger, could not have failed to remember Tarlton in this scene. 4 Tarlton’s Jests, a collection published well after the jester’s death, includes a reputed example of his ‘drunk act’. See John Southworth, Fools and Jesters at the English Court, Sutton 1998, esp. pp. 114–117, 124–128, 200, n. 34; Enid Welsford, The Fool. His Social and Literary History, London 1968 (1935), esp. pp. 282–284. 5 Sophie Oosterwijk, Kaiser, König, Kriegesmann – Der Totentanz im Pariser Friedhof Saints Innocents im Schlaglicht der politischen Wirren der Zeit, in: L’art macabre 9 (2008), pp. 108–134; Sophie Oosterwijk, Of dead kings, dukes and constables. The historical context of the danse macabre in late-medieval Paris, in: Journal of the British Archaeological Association 161 (2008), pp. 131–162. The mural was destroyed probably in 1669. 6 See Gert Kaiser (ed.), Der tanzende Tod. Mittelalterliche Totentänze, Frankfurt a. M. 1983, p. 80. 7 Shakespeare’s clown Lavache uses sexual innuendo in referring to his staff with the words “And I would give his wife my bauble, sir, and do her service” (All’s Well That Ends Well, IV, v, 27), while Mercutio reproaches Romeo that “this drivelling love is like a great natural that runs lolling up and down to hide his bauble in a hole” (Romeo and Juliet, II, iv, 91–93). The “great natural” is the idiot or innocent fool, while the word “lolling” can refer both to his tongue and to his bauble. 8 Compare the engraving of the fool in Roemer Visscher’s emblematic book Sinnepoppen (1614), in which the fool points to his bauble with the words ‘Elck heeft de zijn … Dit is de mijn’ (Everyone has his own. This is mine), i.e. to each his own folly. See John Manning, The Emblem, London 2002, fig. 127. The term marotte is said to have been derived from ‘Margot’, which was the stage name of the female fool. See Anne Tukey Harrison (ed.), The Danse Macabre of Women. Ms. fr. 995 of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Kent/ London 1994, p. 122, note to line 6 of the stanza of Death (“la mort”) to the sotte. 9 Claude Blum, La folie et la mort dans l’imaginaire collectif du Moyen Age et du début de la renaissance (XIIe–XVI-siècles). Positions du problème, in: Herman Braet and Werner Verbeke (eds.), Death in the Middle Ages, Mediaevalia Lovaniensia, I:IX, Louvain 1983, pp. 258–285, at p. 260. 10 D. J. Gifford, Iconographic Notes Towards a Definition of the Medieval Fool, in: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 37 (1974), pp. 336–342; also Southworth 1998, chapter 1; Mezger 1991, esp. pp. 75–77. 11 Southworth 1998, pp. 50–51; Sarah Lowson, Madness in Medieval Arthurian Literature, in: Catherine Dousteyssier-Khoze and Paul Scott (eds.), (Ab)normalities, Durham Modern Language Series 20, Durham 2001, pp. 77–86. As Lowson points out, there is an ongoing debate about whether Tristan’s madness is meant to be real or just a ploy. The story of Lancelot’s madness is retold in Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, books XI–XII. Lancelot suffers several bouts of madness in the French Lancelot en Prose of the early thirteenth century, while Chrétien de Troyes’ Yvain also goes mad when his lady disdains him. 12 Welsford 1968, pp. 118–119; Southworth 1998, p. 58. Haincelin apparently wore out unusual quantities of shoe leather and also once tore his clothes to shreds while dancing for the king. 13 Southworth 1998, esp. chapter 8; Welsford 1968, esp. pp. 165–170 and also 159 (where Somer is described as an ‘artificial’ instead of a ‘natural’ fool); Sandra Billington, A Social History of the Fool, Brighton 1984, esp. pp. 33–35. In Saxony the court fool Claus Narr was famous for his prophesies. See Ruth von Bernuth, Aus den Wunderkammern in die Irrenanstalten. Natürliche Hofnarren in Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit, in: Anne Waldschmidt, Kulturwissenschaftliche Perspektiven der Disability Studies, Kassel 2003, pp. 49–62. 14 Yet compare Duke Senior’s description of Touchstone using “his folly like a stalking-horse, and under the presentation of that he shoots his wit” (As You Like It, V, iv, 105–106). | 31 15 Likewise, Tarlton is said to have been dismissed by Elizabeth I for scurrilous remarks about two of her favourites, while Henry VIII is recorded by the imperial ambassador Chapuys as having nearly murdered his fool Sexton or Patch (an innocent who had formerly belonged to Cardinal Wolsey) for having called Anne Boleyn “ribaude” and her daughter Elizabeth a bastard. See Southworth 1998, pp. 116 and 68, respectively. 16 See the depictions of the fool in Christa Grössinger, Humour and Folly in Secular and Profane Prints of Northern Europe 1430–1540, London/Turnhout 2002, esp. in chapter 5 on women. 17 The Vado Mori tradition probably originated in the early thirteenth century; different versions survive. See Hellmut Rosenfeld, Der mittelalterliche Totentanz. Entstehung, Entwicklung, Bedeutung, Cologne 1968 (1954), pp. 323–325, at p. 325, and Id., Vadomori, in: Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 124 (1995), pp. 257–264. 18 Leonard P. Kurtz (ed.), Le Mors de la Pomme, Publications of the Institute of French Studies Inc., New York 1937, p. 14. Miélot’s poem is a free adaptation of the danse macabre theme combined with biblical stories of the Fall, the death of Abel, the Flood, Christ’s Passion and the Last Judgement. In the third miniature, Death is offered three darts and a sealed document, which he brandishes in most subsequent scenes; the seal was mistaken for an apple in Mezger 1991, p. 437, 439. 19 Anne S. Korteweg, Splendour, Gravity & Emotion. French Medieval Manuscripts in Dutch Collections, English edn. of the 2002 Dutch exhibition catalogue (Praal. Ernst. Emotie), Zwolle 2004, pp. 158–159. I am grateful to Dr Mireille Madou for bringing this manuscript to my attention. 20 In the closet scene Hamlet likewise uses the image of a mirror when confronting his mother: “You go not till I set you up a glass / Where you may see the inmost part of you” (Hamlet, III, iv, 18–19). 21 The presentation of death as a mirror to the living was a popular medieval concept. See, for example, Jane H. M. Taylor, Un miroir salutaire, in: Jane H. M. Taylor (ed.), Dies Illa. Death in the Middle Ages, Proceedings of the 1983 Manchester Colloquium, Vinaver Studies in French 1, Liverpool 1984, pp. 29–43; Susanna G. Fein, Life and Death, Reader and Page. Mirrors of Mortality in English Manuscripts, in: Mosaic 35:1 (2002), pp. 69–94. 22 This tradition was recorded by Matthäus Merian. See Kaiser 1983, pp. 194– 195; Reinhold Hammerstein, Tanz und Musik des Todes. Die mittelalterlichen Totentänze und ihr Nachleben, Bern/München 1980, p. 183; Franz Egger, Basler Totentanz, Basel 1990. 23 This version of twenty-four characters can be found, for example, in the earliest surviving Totentanz manuscript copy dated 1443–1447 (Heidelberg, University Library Cpg 314) and in the Heidelberg Blockbook of c.1458–1465 (Heidelberg, University Library Cpg 438). See Kaiser 1983, pp. 276–329; Hammerstein 1980, esp. pp. 29–42, 149, 152–153, 189–191; Rosenfeld 1968, pp. 308–318, 320–323. 24 Hammerstein 1980, p. 184, compares the introduction of the fool to the earlier addition of the tregetour in John Lydgate’s Middle English Dance of Death, but the latter is not a true fool. See the discussion below. 25 Holger Eckhardt, Totentanz im Narrenschiff. Die Rezeption ikonographischer Muster als Schlüssel zu Sebastian Brants Hauptwerk, PhD thesis Osnabrück 1994, Frankfurt a. M. 1995. 26 See Kaiser 1983, pp. 194–275, esp. p. 256. 27 Hammerstein 1980, pp. 184–186, mentions restorations in 1568, 1616, 1658 and 1703, of which two precede Merian’s engravings. The fact that Merian’s engravings illustrate a later, altered state of the Grossbasler mural is not taken into account in the discussion of the dates of the two Basel murals in Eckhardt 1995, pp. 88–89 and n. 245. 28 According to Georges Fréchet in Sébastien Brant, 500e anniversaire de La nef des folz: 1494–1994 = Das Narren Schyff, zum 500jährigen Jubiläum des Buches von Sebastian Brandt, Ausst. Kat. Basel 1994, Basel 1994, pp. 169–170, it was Holbein’s woodcut that inspired Death’s altered appearance during the restoration by the painter Hans Hug Klauber in the sixteenth century. 29 Hammerstein 1980, pp. 188–189 and fig. 93; Hans Ferdinand Massmann, Die Baseler Todtentänze. Nebst geschichtlicher Untersuchung, sowie Vergleichung mit den übrigen deutschen Todtentänzen, ihrer Bilderfolge und ihren gemeinsamen Reimtexten, Stuttgart 1847, text: fold-out X verso, ill. no. XXX. 30 Perhaps the artist intended to illustrate Death’s promise that the monk will die merrily, for Von Zimmern based his text on that of Heinrich Knoblochtzer’s Der doten dantz mit figuren, in which Death tells the ‘gude monich’: “Nü küm 32 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 | Narren du salt frolich sterben”. However, Von Zimmern depicted Death with a tabor and fife, but without motley. See Christian Kiening, Wilhelm Werner von Zimmern. Totentanz, Bibliotheca Suevica 9, Konstanz 2004, pp. 19, 72–73, 195ff, and Kaiser 1983, p. 168. Hammerstein 1980, pp. 156–159, figs. 35–38 and 250; Peter Walther, Der Berliner Totentanz zu St. Marien, Berlin 1997, p. 83, for a transcription and translation of the fool’s stanzas. Timothy Sodmann (ed.), Dodendantz Lübeck 1520. Faksimileausgabe mit Textabdruck, Glossar und einem Nachwort, Vreden/Bredevoort 2001, with a transcription on pp. 15–16; Hammerstein 1980, p. 159 and fig. 252. See also Lutz S. Malke (ed.), Narren. Porträts, Feste, Sinnbilder, Schwankbücher und Spielkarten aus dem 15. bis 17. Jahrhundert, Ausst. Kat. Berlin 2001, Leipzig 2001, cat. 31, with a free translation into modern German. All other characters in the 1520 edition are depicted full-length in front of a brick wall in woodcuts belonging to the 1489 version. See also Eckhardt 1995, pp. 61–75 and fig. 78. Johannes Tripps, ,Den Würmern wirst Du Wildbret sein‘. Der Berner Totentanz des Niklaus Manuel Deutsch in den Aquarellkopien von Albrecht Kauw (1649), Schriften des Bernischen Historischen Museums 6, Bern 2005, pp. 94–97. The donor’s coat of arms above the fool has been tentatively identified as that of Peter Steinhofer, known as ‘Gutschenkel’, who was apparently some kind of town jester. Tripps 2005, p. 94. For the child in the danse macabre see Sophie Oosterwijk, ‘Muoz ich tanzen und kan nit gân?’ Death and the infant in the medieval danse macabre, in: Word & Image, 22:2 (2006), pp. 146–164. Hammerstein 1980, pp. 220–222 and fig. 217. Eckhardt 1995, pp. 66–67, suggests that it was the occurrence of the stultus in the Vado Mori poem that inspired the inclusion of the fool in the danse. The lines “bien vous aduient / De y danser comme plus sage” offer a contrasting comparison between sot and sage; they do not imply that the sot himself is the wisest figure in the danse. The version in Paris BnF ms. fr. 25434 edited by Luise Götz, Martial d’Auvergne. La Dance des Femmes, in: Zeitschrift für französische Sprache und Literatur 58 (1934), pp. 318–334, includes neither bigotte nor sotte: the author of these verses is unknown. For the sotte in the luxury manuscript version BnF ms. fr. 995 of the early sixteenth century, see Harrison 1994, esp. pp. 122–23. Patrick Layet, La Danse macabre des Femmes, in: Ihr müsst alle nach meiner Pfeife tanzen 2000, pp. 35–41, discusses yet another variant published by Jehan II Trepperel in Paris c.1525–1532. This is the assumption in Joël Saugnieux, Les danses macabres de France et d’Espagne et leurs prolongements littéraires, Lyons 1972, p. 22; Everdien Hoek, De vrouwendodendans, in: Louis P. Grijp, Annemies Tamboer and Everdien Hoek (eds.), De dodendans in de kunsten, Utrecht 1989, p. 58; and in Suzanne F. Wemple and Denise A. Kaiser, Death’s Dance of Women, in: Journal of Medieval History 12 (1986), pp. 333–343, where the sotte is moreover misinterpreted as an actress. The date of 1482 for BnF ms. fr. 1196 is given in Harrison 1994, p. 1. Stephanie Buck, The Images of Death and the Triumph of Life, in: Hans Holbein the Younger. The Basel Years 1515–1532, exhibition catalogue Basel 2006, Munich 2006, pp. 117–123, at p. 118. Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Cod. Donaueschingen A III 54, fol. 120v, illustrated in: Kiening, Von Zimmern, 2004, p. 114. In Merian’s engraving and in a surviving fragment of the Grossbasler Totentanz, the Edelfrau sees the reflection of Death capering behind her back. See Egger, 1990, pp. 64–65. Compare Beham’s startlingly explicit engraving Death and the Lascivious Couple in John H. Astington, Three Shakespearean Prints, in: Shakespeare Quarterly 47:2 (1996), pp. 178–189, fig. 3. The Fool and Woman theme is found in prints by artists such as Master E. S., Lucas van Leyden, Hans Brosamer and Peter Flötner, and on a carved and polychromed towel holder of c.1540 by Arnt von Tricht (Cleves, Städtisches Museum Haus Koekkoek). See Grössinger 2002, figs 44, 120, 124, 140–142, 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 144. Compare also Ambrosius Holbein’s pendant frescoes of Death and a Maiden and The Fool and a Maiden at Stein am Rhein in Mezger 1991, figs 244a–b. Variations of this motto can be found in medieval depictions of the Three Living and the Three Dead and also often on cadaver or transi monuments; see, for example, Fein 2002; Sophie Oosterwijk, Food for Worms – Food for Thought. The Appearance and Interpretation of the ‘Verminous’ Cadaver in Britain and Europe, in: Church Monuments 20 (2005), pp. 40–80, 133–140, esp. p. 48. Hammerstein 1980, fig. 251. Malke 2001, pp. 31–33 and pl. 35, cat. 32. Because I interpret Holbein’s woodcut differently I do not agree with Malke’s claim about a crucial difference in interpretation between it and the 1557 version of this scene published in Cologne (pl. 36, cat. 33). It is in an earlier scene that Touchstone accuses the shepherd Corin of getting his living by the copulation of cattle (As You Like It, III, ii, 76–83) – a rather cynical take on the pastoral idyll. Touchstone’s folly is also evident in his habit of living just for today without sparing much thought for the future either in this life or (probably) the next: Jacques parting words “for thy loving voyage / is but for two months victualled” (V, iv, 190–191) may even be an allusion to Brant’s Ship of Fools. MS Ellesmere version, ll, 513–514, in: Florence Warren (ed.), with introduction and notes by Beatrice White, The Dance of Death, edited from MSS. Ellesmere 26/A.13 and B. M. Lansdowne 699, collated with the other extant MSS., Early English Text Society, original series 181 (London 1931, repr. 2000). Hubertus Schulte Herbrüggen, Ein anglikanischer Beitrag zur Geschichte des englischen Totentanzes. John Days Christian Prayers and Meditations, 1569, in: Heinz-Joachim Müllenbrock and Alfons Klein (eds.), Motive und Themen in englischsprachiger Literatur als Indikatoren literaturgeschichtlicher Prozesse. Festschrift zum 65. Geburtstag von Theodor Wolpers, Tübingen 1990, pp. 73–93. The copy in Lambeth Palace Library London (1569.6) is known as ‘the Queen’s own copy’ because it is believed to have belonged to Elizabeth I. Francis Douce also discusses the Dance of Death cycle in Day’s edition but his list of characters (including a female fool) does not match those in the 1569 edition. See The Dance of Death in a series of Engravings on wood from designs attributed to Hans Holbein with a treatise on the subject by Francis Douce; also Holbein’s Bible cuts consisting of ninety engravings on wood with an introduction by Thomas Frognall Dibdin, London 1902, pp. 130–131. The word “fond” here means foolish or silly, as in Lear’s description of himself as “a very foolish fond old man” (Lear, IV, vii, 60). This broadsheet is also discussed in the context of the graveyard scene in Hamlet by Astington 1996, pp. 185–189 and fig. 4. Hans Holbein the Younger (2006), pp. 146–147; Christian Müller (ed.), Katalog der Zeichnungen des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts, part 2A, Die Zeichnungen von Hans Holbein dem Jüngeren und Ambrosius Holbein, Öffentliche Kunstsammlung Basel, Basel 1996, pp. 50–66, esp. p. 57, no. 38 (pl. 13). Compare also Lucas van Leyden’s 1520 engraving of a fool and a woman in Grössinger 2002, fig. 124. These three medallions occur on fols 179v, 180r and 180v. The use of Salisbury, the inclusion of Edward IV’s coat of arms and a historiated initial showing the martyrdom of St Thomas Becket suggest that the manuscript was intended for an English patron. See Maurits Smeyers and Jan Van der Stock (eds.), Flemish Illuminated Manuscripts 1475-1550, Ghent 1996, cat. 7. I owe this information to Mr Patrick Valvekens, who is preparing a monograph on this manuscript. Neill 1997, p. 235, 243. Neill, pp. 85–87, 237, also interprets the clownish gravedigger as another Death figure. In England the ubi sunt theme was a favourite among such medieval and renaissance poets as John Lydgate, William Dunbar and John Skelton. Rosemary Woolf, The English Religious Lyric in the Middle Ages, Oxford 1968, chapters III and IX, esp. pp. 71, 93–97, 321, 325, 335.