Note 304 — GAMMER GURTON'S NEEDLE.
Reading edition
Jape is generally used in an obscene sense, as in the Prologue to "Grim the Collier of Croydon," and in Skelton's Song in Sir John Hawkins's "History of Music," vol. iii., p. 6. It here signifies a jest or joke. So in the Prologue to Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales," l. 705—
"Upon a day he gat him more moneie Than that the persone gat in monthes tweie. And thus with fained flattering and japes, He made the persone and the peple his apes."
And in "Batman upon Bartholome," 1535, as quoted by Sir John Hawkins, in his "History of Music," vol. ii., p. 125: "They kepe no counseyll, but they telle all that they here: sodeinly they laugh, and sodenly they wepe: alwaye they crye, jangle, and jape, uneth they ben stylle whyle they slepe."
"Nay, iape not with hym, he is no smal fole. It is a solemnpne syre and solayne." —Skelton's Works, [1843, vol. i., p. 17.]