Will Sommers, the court’s jester

Engraving of Will Sommers by Francis Delaram, 1615-1624

‘As ‘all men were fools before God, and the foolishness of God was wiser than men’s wisdom’, fools could be considered holy, possessors of an essential goodness and simplicity that meant they were incapable of sin and conduits of the divine.’

Lipscomb (citing Erasmus’s The Praise of Folly, 1511) in  All the King’s Fools, 2011

How big was his influence on the king?

Will Sommers (also spelt Somers or Summers), was the most famous jester of the Tudor England. He served the Crown from 1525 to 1559 therefore serving famous King Henry VIII and his son and daughters Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I.

During his years of service, historical archives (such as reports from the Royal Household and other witnesses at the time) showed that Sommers actually had an influence on the King.

Engraving of William Sommers, King Henry the Eighth’s Jester, from an ancient Picture in the Collection of Richard Aldworth Neville.

For instance, being one of the King’s favourites, he could eventually get rid of other member of staff he disliked. The famous anecdote reported by Robert Armin in Foole upon Foole shows an example of Will’s boldness: Sommers, being provocative as usual, interrupted the show of Thomas the juggler, milk and bread in his hands, asking the King for a spoon. As the King replied he did not have a spoon, Thomas told him to use his hands. After a quite spontaneous but well constructed verse, Will simply threw the milk at him. It is said that Thomas was never seen at Court again.

Antique engraving of a jester by Nicoolay, 2009.

In other words, despite being himself in the wrong, Will seemed to be under the King’s protection and in his favours.

Sommers could also use his influence to serve more serious goals. For example, he convinced the King to help his uncle who was about to be ruined because of his loss of land and money.

On an even more delicate note, he asked for an old friend of his, Robert Fermor, to be freed and forgiven for the crimes he committed (having been jailed for trying to help a monk after the birth of the Anglican Church).

Where does he come from?

Very little is known about his life before Court. All that we do know is that he was introduced to the King by the previously mentioned Robert Fermor who, before ending up in jail, was a very rich and important merchant. He apparently gave Will to the King in 1525, when Sommers was described as being in his twenties.

If so little is known about his previous life, it is because he is more likely to have been born in a poor family. His peasant origins are the only natural explanation as to why he became a Court jester. Naturally, peasants and poor people were less likely to figure on any registration at the time, and furthermore, no noble or clergy man could have ended up being the King’s buffoon.

How is he still around today?

Illustration of the King’s psalter, Jean Mallard, 1540-1541

As it was previously mentioned, Will Sommers seems to be the most famous Court Jester of Tudor England, and of England in general. The reason for this glory is probably that he served for quite a long time the same King (38 years), realising the exploit of avoiding decapitation by the tragically famous Henry VIII. The King’s wildly known reputation in addition to the break with Rome he orchestrated assured his universal impact on the people from the XVIth century onward.

Will was indeed very close to Henry VIII. He has been represented with him and his family more than once, in addition to his appearance in the King’s psalter.

The Children of Henry VIII, c.1650-1680. Copy of a lost original, c.1545-1550
From left to right: Henry VIII, Will Sommers, Edward VI, Mary I, Elizabeth I
The ‘Ideal Family’ previously attributed to Hans Holbein The Younger, 1545. Sommers can be seen on the right, a monkey on his shoulder.

As a consequence of having served one of the most fascinating Kings in History, Will’s stage career ironically started shortly after his death. Shakespeare, Armin, Rowley or Nashes wrote plays and books about the late King and inevitably, Sommers was portrayed in many of them.

As the central point of the plays and books from this period of time was his King and boss, and since not many historical facts could be gathered on the person of Will Sommers, these pieces of fiction sometimes biased the perception we now have of him as an individual.

A shift in his representation

Time surely passed since those Shakespearean adaptations, but Will’s character is far from being forgotten. It even seems like the XXth and XXIst centuries honour him through the Arts.

Indeed, nowadays, the persona of Henry VIII has been studied and adapted and documented numerous times. Authors and playwrights now seem to focus more on ‘secondary’ characters present during Henry’s reign, and Sommers appears like one of the most obvious choices: he served for decades, could speak his mind almost freely, and was close to the King but still part of the Royal servant staff. His ears and eyes were everywhere, and for quite a long time.

Some modern adaptations of Henry VIII and the legend of his reign include the newly used point of view of his jester Will Sommers. For example:

The Last of Days, Paul C. Doherty (2013) with a King on his death bed and a long-serving jester as the final witness of the King’s last moments. In this book, Sommers starts a diary about his King’s life and death.

Under These Restless Skies, Lissa Bryan (2014), is a fictional story with Sommers as the main character. In this story, he falls in love with a mythological creature from the sea and brings her in his world.

Sommers also appears on television, being portrayed in the world famous TV show The Tudors (starting in 2007), or The Six Wives of Henry VIII (directed by both Naomi Capon and John Glenister in 1970) or even in plays, most of them adapting Shakespeare’s own piece like Henry VIII (directed by Robert Richmond in 2010) or original works such as Will Sommers: Keeping Your Head (Pierre Brault, 2016).

Will Sommers the jester still fascinates today, if not more than in his own life time, five hundred years ago. In addition to being famous during his life and shortly after his death, great artists revived his character for centuries onward, to the point where he is again today an object of mystery, and a person inevitably linked to the Great History. Not bad for a fool.

OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
elisegruget (26 novembre 2019). Will Sommers, the court’s jester. Dynamiques et pluralités culturelles. Consulté le 3 novembre 2024 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/r9sb


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