From Richard Flint

Banks' horse001, originally uploaded by bucklesw1. John Herriott's recent recollections of pick out ponies and his commentary about the book recounting marvelous Jim Key's routine brings to mind one of the earliest circus acts that can be documented. The print shown here is from a small booklet published in1595, "Maroccus Extaticus. Or, Bankes Bay Horse" and a performance in a kind of pit surrounded by a fence against which several spectators lean while watching the horse count the pips on a pair of dice. Banks was a famous showman referred to by his contemporaries Shakespeare (in "All's Weel That Ends Well"), Ben Jonson, and Sir Walter Ralegh. His trained horse, Morocco, is known to have counted out the value of a coin, returned a glove to its proper owner, and even "discharge himself of his excrements whensoever he [Banks] had bade him." About 1600, the horse gained further fame by climbing the steps to the steeple of St. Paul's in London. According to Ben Jonson, Banks and Morocco were both burned in Rome as two magicians practicing witchcraft. The jester Richard Tarlton witnessed Banks and his horse sometime before Tarleton's 1588 death. Tarleton's encounter with Banks and his oat-eating trained pony (as well as a monkey on a chain) at a tavern known by its sign of a bell is described in the following poem of the period (here I have modernized the text). This was a time when newly Protestant England was a great rival of Catholic Spain and just before the intended invasion led by the Spanish naval armada (and supported by the Pope) was defeated by the English. And while oat-eater that does dwell, In stable small at sign of Bell: That lifts up hoof to show the prances Taught by magician, styled Banks; And ape, led captive still in chain, Till he renounces the Pope and Spain All these on hoof now trudge from town, To cheat poor turnip-eating clown. [i.e., Tarleton] --------------------------------------------------------------------------------