Prop Culture: The Shakespearean Clown and His Marotte

Abstract

THE EARLY MODERN CLOWN IS ALWAYS ALREADY MULTIPLE, carrying into performance his own puppet double: the fool’s bauble. This short staff topped with a carved likeness of its carrier is a kind of rod puppet—a marotte—who mirrors, extends, and constructs the clown as such. A portrait of the Stuart/ Caroline court fools Tom Derry and Muckle John makes this multiplicity especially clear (see figure 1). The painting’s title, Wee Three Loggerheads, and its grotesque imagery (note the fools’ facial expressions and the extra finger on Derry’s hand) place it firmly in the broader cultural tradition of depicting Folly. Images in this “we three” genre generally feature one fewer fool (here “loggerhead”) than the number in the label, implying that the viewer is the final fool. Here, Muckle John’s marotte might also be seen as the third fool (especially with its log head). We can read the marotte as a character in the picture, and therefore one of the “three” fools, or we can read it as merely an object held by one of the characters that identifies him as a fool. The marotte oscillates between character and object, and in so doing figures the viewer alternately as an external observer and an integral part of the folly being depicted. As a prop, the marotte is a practical performance tool, and Wee Three Loggerheads offers a portrait of performers as much as an allegorical representation of Folly in the world. Scholars of early modern performance have long neglected