Bankes's Horse

Marocco (c. 1586 – c. 1606), widely known as Bankes's Horse (after his trainer William Bankes), was the name of a late 16th- and early 17th-century English performing horse. He is sometimes referred to as the "Dancing Horse", the "Thinking Horse", or the "Politic Horse".

Origin

William Bankes (also spelled Banks or Banckes, and sometimes called Richard Bankes) was born in Staffordshire, probably in the early 1560s, In the 1580s he became a retainer of Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex; his job may have been working in the stables.

The horse that would be named Marocco was born around 1586; most sources agree he was bay, but some record him as white. Soon thereafter he was obtained by Bankes, who named him after the morocco leather from which contemporary saddles were made, and jocularly addressed him as "seignior" (señor). According to modern English physician and writer Jan Bondeson, "Marocco was a small, muscular horse with remarkable litheness and agility; he also proved particularly intelligent and easy to educate."

London

Bankes sold his possessions and used the money to purchase silver horseshoes for Marocco, then moved to London to work at inn-yard theatres. According to Thomas Nashe, Bankes had Marocco's tail bobbed: "Wiser was our Brother Bankes of these latter daies, who made his iugling horse a Cut, for feare if at anie time hee should foyst [defecate], the stinke sticking in his thicke bushie taile might be noysome to his Auditors." Bankes lived at the Cross Keys Inn on Gracechurch Street, where their act performed. A passage from Tarlton's Jests (1611) says:

The[re] was one Banks, in the time of Tarlton, who served the Erle of Essex, and had a horse of strange qualities, and being at the Crosse-keyes, in Gracious streete, getting mony with him, as he was mightily resorted to. Tarlton then, with his fellowes, playing at the Bel by, came into the Cross-keyes, amongst many people, to see fashions, which Banks perceiving, to make the people laugh, saies; seignior, to his horse, go fetch me the veryest foole in the company. The jade comes immediately, and with his mouth drawes Tarlton forth.