ABSTRACT
Bartholomew Fair was an annual event in West Smithfield between 1120 and 1855, opening on the feast of St Bartholomew, 24 August, and lasting from three days to a week or more. According to the fair's historian, Henry Morley, the fair's founder was Rayer, or Rahere, once Henry l's jester, who during a visit to Rome had a sickbed vision of St Bartholomew ordering him to establish a church in Smithfield to help the poor. The result was the Priory (later, the Hospital) of St Bartholomew, whose churchyard housed the fair. This fair is particularly appropriate for Jonson's play because of its tradition of cheating and sleight of hand. Rayer, himself a juggler, was denounced as an impostor for creating 'miracles' to improve fair attendance and profits; he may have cared for the poor, but he apparently fleeced everyone else. The symbols on the Priory rent-rolls suggest the guile for which the fair and its founder were known: a pike swallowing a gudgeon (the latter a small fish, easily caught, and thus a type of the dupe), and a fox-preacher giving a pastoral kiss to the goose he has grasped by the neck (emblematic of self-serving hypocrisy taking advantage of the silly) (Morley 1880; rpt 1968: pp. 20, 21). Even the saint was associated with greed: one popular legend tells how the spirit of St Bartholomew pursued thieves and extortionists of the parish in order to demand his share of the take.
