Fool’s Paradise portrays several historical events and figures; Elizabeth I, the Babington Plot, Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Francis Walsingham, Lady Mary Sidney, Dr. John Dee, the Earl of Leicester, and a most uncommon commonerRichard Tarleton, the Queen’s favorite fool.
Tarleton was as famous for his wit in his day as Robin Williams and Bill Cosby are in ours. Pubs were named for him, and he is reputed to have written several plays, now lost, as well as a number of jestbooks. He was the leading actor of The Queen’s Men, a theatrical company founded under royal patronage in 1583. His physical description is none too romantic: curly haired, squint-eyed and flat nosed-the latter being the result of an injury sustained when Tarleton quelled a maddened bear at the bear-baiting pits in London. Tarleton, son of a pig farmer, was born in or near Condover, Shropshire, though the year of his birth is not known. As a teenager, he was discovered “feeding his Father’s swine… when a servant of Robert Earl of Leicester passed by. He was so highly pleased by Tarleton’s happy unhappy answers, that he brought him to court where he became the most famous jester to Queen Elizabeth.” Tarleton was the master of extemporaneous ballads and improvisations, and he is credited with popularizing the jig. Above all, Tarleton is remembered as the creator of the comic rustic yokel, a character who appears in many of Shakespeare’s comedies. He was also the fight choreographer for The Queen’s Men. Tarleton eventually fell out of favor with the Queen when his jokes about Sir Walter Raleigh and the Earl of Leicester overstepped the bounds. He is said to have died on September 3,1588 in Shoreditch near his beloved Theatre and Curtain Playhouses where he had once trod a merry measure upon the stage.