The title of Shakespeare's Jest Book has been given to two quite different early Tudor period collections of humorous anecdotes, published within a few years of each other. The first was The Hundred Merry Tales, the only surviving complete edition of which was published in 1526.An edition titled Shakespeare's Jest Book – a hundred mery talys was published in 1866, edited by Herman Oesterley The other, published about 1530, was titled Merry Tales and Quick Answers and originally contained 113 stories.This was originally published under the title Shakespeare's Jest Book in 1815 and was given the more misleading title The Hundred Merry Tales or Shakespeare's Jest Book in a reprint of 1831. An augmented edition of 1564 contained 140.
The explanation of the title comes from a reference to one or other collection in William Shakespeare's play Much Ado About Nothing in which the character Beatrice has been accused 'that I had my good wit out of the 100 Merry Tales' (II.sc.1). By that time it seems that the two works were being confounded with each other.A Hundred Merry Tales – the earliest English jest book, ed. W. C. Hazlitt, London 1887, p.xii
Contents The stories in the 1526 Hundred Merry Tales are largely set in England, mostly in London or the surrounding area, and contain the stock figures of stupid clergymen, unfaithful wives, and Welshmen, the butt of many jokes at the time. Most are followed by a comment on what can be learned from the story. The book's Victorian editors identified a few Italian and French sources from earlier centuries but it was mainly a depository for popular lore that was to figure in more focussed collections published later. In particular, one story there (, 24) features the proverbial villagers of Gotham. Another (, 40) concerns the raffish priest and poet John Skelton, of whom many more stories were to be told in the Merie Tales of Skelton (1566).
Merry Tales and Quick Answers has a wider and more literary range of reference. Among its contents are to be found two of Aesop's Fables dealing with human subjects, Of Thales the astronomer that fell in a ditch (25) and (89), and two popular tales that were credited to Aesop in later collections: (55) and (59). Three of these and yet one more, (10), were to figure later among La Fontaine's Fables. The story of the young widow is a close translation of a fable that had appeared in the Latin collection of Laurentius Abstemius only three decades earlier.
The anecdotes recorded in the work range from Classical history to near contemporary times across the cities of Europe. One scholar comments that the work is 'mostly drawn from Erasmus and Poggio Bracciolini, but acknowledges little of its inheritance beyond ascribing a handful of its jests to Plutarch'.Rory McKeown, "Brevity, Wit, and Prosperity: The Reception of Jesting" It certainly owes to Poggio a good deal of its scabrous and scatological content. The following is a list of the principal stories that are common to the English jest book and Poggio's Facetiae. 1. – Poggio tale 162Lisieux 4. _ Poggio's 227Lisieux 6. – Poggio 12 (Hurwood) 18. (later known as "The ring of Hans Carvel") – Poggio's 133Lisieux 28. – Poggio's 130Lisieux 31. – Poggio's 230Lisieux 36. – Poggio's 184Lisieux 39. – Poggio's 176Lisieux 57. – Poggio's 259Lisieux 66. – Poggio's 137Lisieux 73. , which takes place in Florence in Poggio's 147Lisieux 76. – Poggio 219Lisieux 87. – Poggio 56 (Hurwood) 90. – Poggio's 194Lisieux 98. – Poggio's 179Lisieux 99. – Poggio's 250Lisieux
References Hurwood, B.J. (translator), The Facetiae of Giovanni Francesco Poggio Braccioline, London 1968. Lisieux, I. (publisher), The Facetiae or Jocose Tales of Poggio, vol. 2, Paris 1879, archived online
External links Shakespeare Jest Books, (London 1864) at Google Books