Jest-books are of two kinds: collections of witty sayings and practical jokes which go under the names of certain men who were celebrated in their day as 'merry fellows,' and collections of facetiæ, gathered from many sources, ancient and modern. Of the first class Tarlton's Jests may be considered as a fair type among English books of facetiæ. Here all the jests and practical jokes are ascribed to that popular Elizabethan comedian, or rather buffoon; but probably not a single one of them is genuine or authentic. This book, in fact, is simply a catchpenny collection of jests taken out of older books, and fathered on Tarlton after his death in order to stimulate its sale and popularity.
A notable example is found in Tarlton's device to reach London without expense, at a time when he was in the country and with an empty purse: he contrived to have himself arrested as a 'seminary priest' and taken up to the metropolis, where he was at once recognised and set at liberty. This is a variant of the well-known story of Rabalais, with his three packets of harmless wood-ashes, labelled, 'Poison for the King,' 'Poison for the Queen,' 'Poison for the Dauphin.' And it reappears in another jest-book of the same class, in the composition of which the learned man under whose name it goes had no more share than he had in that of the Talmud, namely, The Witty and Entertaining Exploits of George Buchanan, commonly called the King's Fool. Another old English book of this kind is the Jests of Scogin, which the enterprising printer foisted on the public—as was also done in the case of the Tales of the Mad Men of Gotham (see GOTHAM)—as having been compiled by 'A. B. of Phisicke Doctour,' meaning the facetious Andrew Borde. In this book Scogin, or Scogan, 'a scholler of Oxford,' is represented as playing all sorts of tricks, most of which are found in earlier collections, and all are traceable to French, Italian, and Asiatic sources. For example, with the help of his 'chamber-fellow,' he cheats a simple rustic out of half his flock of sheep by persuading him that they are really hogs—a trick which not only occurs in medieval Latin collections and all the jest-books of Europe, but has its probable original in an old Indian work entitled Hitopadesa (a Sanskrit form of the Fables of Pilpay, or Bidpai), where, in like manner, three sharpeners cheat a Brahman of a goat he is carrying to sacrifice, by making him believe it is a dog. Of other jest-books the Pleasant Conceits of Old Hobson, the Merry Londoner, is a good example, albeit, as usual, containing little that is not found elsewhere. Old Hobson is a confirmed practical joker, and many of his best conceits turn on merely verbal quibbles. Two more books of this class are the Jests of George Peele, the player, and Archy Armstrong's Banquet of Jests; and it is hardly necessary to say that their names are all that is theirs in the collections.
The oldest known English jest-book is A Hundred Merry Talys (about 1525), to which the lively Beatrice refers when she says to Benedick, in Much Ado about Nothing (Act II. scene i.), 'Will you tell me who told you that I was disdainful, and that I had all my good wit out of the Hundred Merry Tales?' Next in order of date—and of interest also—is Mery Tales, Wittie Questions, and Quicke Answers, very Mery and Pleasant to be Redde (about 1535). From these two the compilers of subsequent jest-books in the early years of the 17th century drew very freely, with one notable exception, Taylor's Wit and Mirth (i.e. John Taylor, the Water-poet), which, he tells us in the lengthy title-page, he 'chargeably collected out of Taverns, Ordinaries, Innes, Bowling-greenes and Alleys, Ale-houses, Tobacco-shops, Highways and Water-passages,' and which is 'made up and fashioned into Clinches, Bulls, Quirkes, Yerkes, Quips and Jerkes: apothegmatically bundled up at the request of John Garrett's Ghost' (1635). This is by far the most original of all our English jest-books—by which we mean that it contains very few of the tales found in the earlier collections. And if we seek for the reason of this, it is probably to be found in the superior advantages which Taylor possessed over mere literary hacks—who were able only 'to make new books as apothecaries make new mixtures, by pouring out of one vessel into another'—in his profession of a Thames waterman, which must have brought him into contact with all sorts and conditions of men, from whom, more especially sea-captains, he probably learned a goodly portion of the jests he tells so quaintly.
The earliest collections are largely derived from classical and monkish sources, and some of the tales are exceedingly coarse, even obscene. Many are at the expense of the monks and friars, whose greed and licentiousness are the subjects of unsparring ridicule. Not a few exhibit women in no very favourable light, whether maids or matrons, and these we may be sure are the invention of misogynist churchmen. Such tales show that women were held in almost as low estimation in Europe during the middle ages, and long after, as they seem ever to have been in Asiatic countries; and there can be little doubt that this was due mainly to the monks and friars, for whom our own Chaucer had seldom a good word to say. There is, however, considerable humour in some of these tales at the expense of women; and, after all, human nature is very much the same in every age and place: as, for example, in the story of the young woman who grieved for the death of her husband, and her father tried in vain to console her by saying that he had got her another husband, but she declared she would have him not; however, when they were all seated at dinner, she whispered to him, amidst her sobs, 'Father, where is this same young man that is to be my husband?' To which the story-teller adds the 'moral' that 'by this ye may see that it is no more wonder for a woman to weep than for a goose to go barefoot.'
The best known of English collections of facetiae is Joe Miller's Jest-Book, or the Wit's Vade Mecum, which, even in its original form (1739), is a mere compilation of witticisms, drawn by the versatile John Mottley mainly from 16th and 17th century jest-books, the best joke in it being the name of Joseph Miller (1684-1738) on the title-page; for, though a comedian by profession, it is said that he was never known to make a joke in his life. Those who are well acquainted with the humorous literature of other countries as well as that of our own must confess that if our jest-books, both ancient and modern, were stripped of all that is borrowed, the number of jokes that we can fairly claim would be exceedingly few indeed. But, for the matter of that, no other country is better. The late Mr Ralston has justly remarked that 'an unfamiliar jest is rarely met with in the lower strata of fiction.' The best jokes have been for ages known alike to the Russian or Norwegian peasant, the vine-dresser of France or Spain, the Italian rustic, the Argylshire crofter, the wandering Arab, the luxurious Persian, the peaceful Hindu, and the crafty Chinese. We pass over the species of mountebank jest which has of late years come into vogue in the corners of many American newspapers, as it is likely soon to perish of its own infirmities. Most of the early English jest-books mentioned in this article are now, in their original forms, of extreme rarity, although there must have been many and large editions of them. Mr W. C. Hazlitt—who has reprinted a considerable number of them in his Shakespeare Jest-Books (3 vols. 1864), with valuable prefaces and notes—thinks that they were literally 'thumbed out of existence;' but this can hardly account for their exceeding rarity, and we are rather disposed to believe that vast numbers of copies were destroyed during the Puritanical times along with much more valuable books; and, when the reaction set in with the Restoration, they would be considered as old-fashioned, and the wits would begin afresh, though they did not disdain to make a very liberal use of the antiquated jest-books.
Besides the books already incidentally mentioned, most collections of folklore and of chap-books contain jests.
Again, many books of this class are roughly grouped as 'Facetiae' in booksellers' lists, especially if more or less grivoises in character. Good English jest-books of the Cavalier period are the Westminster Drollery, Choice Drollery, and Merry Drollery, reprinted by Mr R. Roberts of Boston (3 vols.). See articles BIDPAI, CHAP-BOOKS, FOLKLORE, and GOTHAM.