tarlton’s jests

How Tarleton adopted Armin to be his successor:

(You can look at the entire jest book here).

Tarlton keeping a tavern in Gracious Street [1] he let it
to another, who was indebted to Armin’s[2] master, a gold
smith in Lombard Street[3]: yet he himself had a chamber
in the same house. And this Armin being then a wag came
often to demand [4] his master’s money, which he
sometimes had and sometimes had not: in the end the man
growing poor, told the boy he had no money for his master,
and he must bear with him. The man’s name being Char-
les, Armin made this verse, writing it with chalk on a
wainscot.

ARMIN, ROBERT (fl. 1610), actor and dramatist, was living in 1610. From a chapter in ‘Tarlton’s Jests and News out of Purgatory,’ 1611, headed ‘How Tarlton made Armin his adopted son to succeed him,’ we learn that Armin was apprenticed to a goldsmith in Lombard Street; that he became acquainted with Richard Tarlton, the famous performer of clowns and jesters in Queen Elizabeth’s time; that Tarlton prophesied that Armin should be his successor in clown’s parts; and that Armin, from his regard for Tarlton, frequented the plays in which he acted and perhaps acquired something of his humour. Afterwards Armin was able to display his own abilities as an actor at the Globe Theatre on the Bankside. Tarlton died in 1588. If his pupil Armin was then seventeen or so, he was born about 1570, and must have been an actor of some position when, in 1603, James I. granted his patent to the players, wherein the name of Armin comes last but one. He is supposed to be the Robert Armin who was the author of ‘A Brief Resolution of the Right Religion,’ printed in 1590, and of other publications, and who was described in ‘Pierce’s Supererogation,’ 1593, as one of ‘the common pamphleteers of London.’ The name of Robert Armin is also attached to a publication in 1604, entitled ‘A True Discourse of the practices of Elizabeth Caldwell and others to poison her husband.’ Armin was probably a member of the company of actors performing under the patronage of Lord Chandos. He is believed to have joined the Lord Chamberlain’s players in 1598, and to have accompanied them, to Scotland in the following year. In 1608 he published a work called ‘A Nest of Ninnies’ (reprinted by the Shakspeare Society), and in 1609, styling himself ‘servant to the King’s most excellent Majesty,’ he printed a play: ‘The Two Maids of More Clacke, with the Life and simple manner of John in the Hospital,’ as it was acted by ‘the children of the King’s Majesty’s Revels.’ Armin is enumerated as one of the original representatives of Ben Jonson’s ‘Alchemist’ in 1610. From a passage in Armin’s next tract, ‘The Italian Tailor and his Boy,’ 1609, it has been concluded that Armin had played the part of Dogberry, succeeding to that duty upon the death or the departure from the Lord Chamberlain’s players of William Kemp, the original Dogberry. About 1611 John Davies of Hereford published his ‘Scourge of Folly,’ in which a long ‘epigram’ was devoted to ‘honest gamesome Kobin Armin,’ and testimony was borne to the worth of his private character, and the excellence of his public performances. In 1615 was published a play, the ‘Valiant Welshman,’ purporting to have been written by R. A.: the publisher may have wished the public to infer that Robert Armin was the author. The date of his death is not known. The London parish registers have been vainly searched for evidence of his burial. Apparently he left no will, nor were there issued any letters of administration of his estate.
[Memoirs of the Principal Actors in the Plays of Shakespeare, by J. Payne Collier, 1846; Langbaine’s Account of the English Dramatic Poets, 1691.]

(and the poem that got him the part:

O world how wilt thou lie,
is this Charles the great that I deny:
Indeed Charles the great before,
But now Charles the less, being poor.

Glossary

Let: A letting for hire or rent. Oxford English Dictionary
Wag: A mischievous boy; a habitual joker. Oxford English Dictionary
Wainscot: trans. To line (a wall, roof, etc.) with panel-work of wood.[5] Oxford English Dictionary
Goldsmith: A worker in gold; one who fashions gold into jewels, ornaments, articles of plate, etc. Oxford English Dictionary

Notes

? Also known as Gracechurch Street, it was the part of Bishopsgate Street south of Cornhill which contain two of the main inn-playhouses: the Bell and the Cross keys.
? Robert Armin was a boy whom Richard Tarlton takes as his adopted son in this jest. He ends up becoming the next clown of the Queen’s Men after Tarlton’s death.
? Lombard Street is a street named after the bankers that originally occupied it. It intersects Gracious Street a little south of the inn in which this takes place.
? ed. Originally “often thither to demand…”
? This panel-work would reach about waist high and would be on all the walls in many inns.