Perhaps the truest likeness of Shakespeare’s fools to the actual Motleys, is the Clown in _Twelfth Night_. He preaches and quotes Latin with the facility of Chicot, and as if he had been much with the parson. The threat to hang him or turn him away, may show that loss of service was held to be a disaster; while the way in which (upon permission) he shows his mistress to be a fool, is an excellent illustration of the liberty arrogated by the professor of wit. Malvolio saw him put down in contention with an ordinary fool. These trials of wit were not uncommon when the household buffoon was common also; but it was all in jest. Nothing the jester uttered, however he meant it, was ever taken for serious. “There is no slander,” says Olivia, “in an allowed fool.” This shows the worth attached to Motley’s sayings; the clown, too, very accurately defines his own standing, when he says, “I am not her fool, but her corruptor of words;” and Viola exquisitely and perfectly portrays all that the fool should be, in the words:-- “This fellow’s wise enough to play the fool; And to do that well craves a kind of wit: He must observe their mood on whom he jests, The quality of persons and the time; And, like the haggard, check at ev’ry feather That comes before his eye. This is a practice, As full of labour as a wise man’s art: For folly, that he wisely shows, is fit; But wise men, folly fallen, taint their wit.” It is impossible that any pen could better describe the requirements of the jester, his qualifications, the duty to be performed, and the way to perform it. No court fool of Shakespeare’s time or memory could have sat for the portrait. Neither Patch, nor Pace, nor Chester, nor Clod could have done so; perhaps Heywood comes nearest to it, but he was probably not in Shakespeare’s mind, when he imagined a more brilliant fool than ever sat at the hearth of a prince and railed at his patron. Beaumont and Fletcher, in the _Mad Lover_, cannot be said to be nearly so successful in their description of the fool and his quality, though there is allusion in it to the would-be professors, worth noticing. “Every idle knave that shows his teeth, Wants and would live, can juggle, tumble, fiddle, Make a dog-face, or can abuse his fellow, Is not a fool at first dash. You shall find, Sir, Strange turnings in this trade.”