Background
He was born in Shropshire, the date of the birth is unknown.
He was born in Shropshire, the date of the birth is unknown.
Court fool of Henry VIII, is said to have been brought to the king at Greenwich by Richard Fermor, about 1525. He was soon in high favour with Henry, whose liberality to Sommers is attested by the accounts of the royal household. The jester possessed a shrewd wit, which he exercised even on Cardinal Wolsey. He is said to have warned his master of the wasteful methods of the exchequer and to have made himself the advocate of the poor. His portrait is shown in a painting of Henry VIII and his family at Hampton Court, and he again appears with Henry VIII in a psalter which belonged to the king and is now in the British Museum. He was probably the William Sommers whose death is recorded in the parish of St Leonard's, Shoreditch, on the 15th of June 1560.
William Sommers made a number of appearances in sixteenth and seventeenth century drama and literature: for example, Thomas Nashe's Pleesant Comedie called Summers last Will and Testament (play first performed in 1592, published in 1600), Samuel Rowlands's Good Newes and Bad Newes (1622), and a popular account, A Pleasant Historie of the Life and Death of William Sommers (reprinted 1794).
David Bradley played Will Sommers in Episode Five of the third season of the Showtime series, The Tudors (2009). The real William Sommers was younger than King Henry VIII.
In Margaret George's 1986 fictional The Autobiography of Henry VIII, Will Somers protects the manuscript from Queen Mary, who would destroy it. "Somers" adds observations in his own hand that throw light on the old king's hypocrisies and failings.
In April 2016, Ottawa actor and playwright Pierre Brault premiered his solo show entitled Will Somers: Keeping Your Head, speculating on Somer's life and the role of comedy has in speaking to power.
Will Somers is the main character in the historical novel "The Last of Days" by Paul C. Doherty.
Quotations: In Thomas Wilson's Arte of Rhetorique (1553–60), Will is quoted telling the financially hard-up king: "You have so many Frauditors, so many Conveighers, and so many Deceivers that they get all to themselves. "
