Dr. Doran

“ But still the jester shut his eyes and rolled his witty head;
And when they grew a little still, read half a yard of text;
And waving hand struck on the desk, then frowned, like one perplexed.
“‘Dear sinners all!’ the fool began, ‘man’s life is but a jest,
A dream, a shadow, bubbles, air, a vapour, at the best.
In a thousand pounds of law I find not a single ounce of love.
A blind man killed the parson’s cow, in shooting at the dove.
The fool that eats till he is sick must fast till he is well.
The wooer who can flatter most will bear away the bell. ”

“ The wit and the wisdom are all on the side of the gentlemen, and of Socrates in particular, who, to do him justice, is quite as merry as he is wise. His wit sparkles throughout the banquet, and perhaps a hecatomb of witty fools would never have bethought themselves of giving a description so graceful, so touching, and so true, of the rich uses and the vast abuses of wine, as Socrates does at this very party. Nor is stately Xenophon himself without his joke,—as though moved by the fact of his dealing here with jesters. ”

“ HISTORY OF COURT FOOLS. THE FOOL,—OF LEGEND AND ANTIQUITY. In the days of old, it happened that all Olympus was dull, and Zeus complained, yawning the while, that there was not a fool amongst the gods, with wit enough to keep the divine assembly alive, or to kill the members of it with laughter.
“Father,” said Mercury, “the sport that is lacking here, may be found for us all, on earth. ”

“ If kings could not be merry but by the aid of a jester, no monarch more needed a joculator than the once handsome Bolingbroke, whose face became so ugly by eruptions, that even a jester could hardly have looked at it with a smile. Henry, too, was one of those men who are satisfied in their own minds that success in an enterprise is warrant of the approbation of Heaven! He required some of the rough homilies of the court fool to drive him out of a belief which he did not surrender till he ceased to enjoy his usual triumphs. ”

“ They dared not speak without thinking, which, time out of mind, has been the privilege of your fool; and if their wit offended against good manners, they ran good chance of a whipping. It was probably to hold the freedom of the sprightly corporation in check that Philander von Sittewald invented and described the Hell of Fools, which he is supposed to have visited. The locality, we are told, was like the cellar of a palace, which was crowded with Zanies, condemned to hear for ever, and to burst with envy at, each other’s jokes. The retribution and the sarcasm are equally severe. ”

“ There is a story of a fool at a continental Court, in early days, who stirred up all the wrath that could be contained in the heart of the Lord Chamberlain, by so exact an imitation of his voice, and so sarcastic a description of his character, as to excite roars of laughter in every soul in the banqueting room, from the sovereign beneath the daïs to the scullion at the door, waiting for the dirty plates. ”

“ The poor fool loved his patron; “I followed him near for a long while,” said he, “and I will follow him closely now.” And so it was! Konrad followed Maximilian, when Germany, too busy to think of him, was talking of Charles V., Luther, and the Diet of Worms.
The last-named Emperor, however, was himself no illiberal patron of official fools and dwarfs. Both figured, like living caricatures, amid the splendours of his Imperial court. ”

“ Then we hear of a Cephisodorus,—neither the tragic poet nor the historian,—whose stock joke consisted in his running breathless, either from or towards the city honoured by his residence, and with an air of frantic terror, informing all whom he passed or encountered, of some awful calamity. It is hardly possible to imagine that people laughed more than once, if once, at a sorry fool like this. ”

“ At night, as all Olympus looked down into the court of the prince, near whom, at the banquet, the wise fool lay, pouring out witty truths as fast as his lips could utter them, the gods both envied the fun and admired the wisdom. “That fellow,” cried Jupiter, “shall be the founder of a race. Henceforward each court shall have its fool; and fools shall be, for many a long day, the preachers and admonishers of kings. ”

“ While Miesko was making Pomeranian princes glad by his imbecility and the fun drawn out of it, Frederick Taubman was keeping the Saxon court in merry humour by his conceits. But Taubman, though as lowly born as Miesko, was a scholar, and was not officially a fool. He was something of a poet, something of a philosopher, was well-read, was a collegiate professor; but therewith he was poor, yet was fond of luxurious living, and therefore he was glad to take his eccentricities to court, where their exhibition was paid for in ducats, rich viands, costly wines, and endless jollification. ”

“ Norris having been thus rewarded, the downfallen but hopeful dignitary looked around for a fitting messenger to convey the expressions of his thankfulness to Henry,—“To that good master whom I have loved more than myself, and whom I have well served. And to say that I have no one now to convey to him the expression of my gratitude!” At this moment, his eye fell upon poor faithful Motley, and the Cardinal immediately exclaimed, “But Patch, my fool, who is with me, will be my interpreter to his Majesty, with you, my good Norris. I give him to his Majesty: Patch is worth a thousand pounds.” ”

“ But the Baron was a pedantic fool, inflated with the most absurd pride, and addicted to hard drinking and filthiness, like any Silenus. The King loaded him with ridiculous titles, and he walked about in a dress that must have made him look like our burlesque King Arthur, in ‘Tom Thumb,’ or Justice Midas, in O’Hara’s operetta. It must have been pitiable to see a man of learning submit to any indignity at the hands of King and nobles. ”

“ Nasur, indeed, ranks among the most useful, as well as the most witty, of his ancient vocation. On one occasion, Bajazet had condemned many scores of his officers to death, for some trifling offence, in time of war. “Ay, indeed,” exclaimed the fool, “hang the knaves! hang them! what use are they? kill them for small offences, and rogues will fear to commit greater! excellent wisdom! Timour is at hand; away with them before he comes! The army can do without leaders. You take the standard; I will beat the drum; and we will thus meet that troublesome individual at the head of the forces. ”

“ It is the great merit of Chicot, if Dumas has painted him faithfully, that he was not merely the “plaisant” of the King, but his protector. He could be, and ordinarily was, indifferent and sarcastic in look, speech, and general demeanour; but this gentleman-jester, with a sword on his thigh, and a duty to perform to Henri, could also be as eloquent, and put on an air as noble as any great man with countless quarterings on his shield. ”

“ With all, there was laughter excited by liberty of speech, which must have occasionally fallen like refreshing dew upon the ear of despot or noble, unaccustomed to listen to aught from others save his own exceeding glorification. The despot still retained the power of punishing the fool; and in this particular, the household jester, who was often a menial servant, the drudge of the family, very closely resembled the Roman slave, with whom his master would graciously exchange jokes one day, and whom he would scourge the next. ”

“ The fool, says Lodge, “dances about the house, leaps over tables, outskips men’s heads, trips up his companions’ heels, burns sack with a candle, and hath all the feats of a lord of misrule in the country; feed him in his humour, you shall have his heart; in mere kindness, he will hug you in his arms, kiss you on the cheek, and, rapping out a horrible oath, cry, ‘God’s soul, Tom, I love you; you know my poor heart; come to my chamber for a pipe of tobacco; there lives not a man in this world that I more honour.’ In the ceremonies, you shall know his courting ”

“ In the days of those merry fellows, it may be observed, that the cleverest of them had to exercise their vocation on melancholy occasions. When Petronius Arbiter was committing slow suicide by alternately opening and closing his veins, nothing excited him to more laughter than the sharply comic epigrams uttered by the jokers who stood around him.
Under the cloak of folly, good service has been rendered by wise men. By feigning want of wit, the elder Brutus saved himself to save his country; revenged a wrong, and converted regal Rome into a republic. ”

“ The jester was sobered by his terror, and begged piteously to be liberated. When ready to die with fear, indigestion, and other fatal influences, the frolicsome gentlemen exacted from him a solemn oath, that he would never again cut a joke or make a sarcasm at their expense; and the fool kept his word, if not out of a sense of honour, certainly out of a sense of terror. ”

“ At Courts where several fools were retained, the master of his company felt as much above his followers as an old Drury tragedian above a Dunstable actor. He strutted like a peacock, and thought himself an elephant, when he was only an ass. There was great diversity, however, among them. Ordinarily, a clever lord preferred a clever fool, and the dull lord, who could neither read nor write, found the same sort of retainer a necessity. ”

“ The tongue of the bridge was the little finger; and the gallows of the shield of Odin, was the arm on which the warrior’s shield was wont to be suspended!
They were mighty fellows, those Scalds, in the days of heathenism, but as Christianity dawned and rose, their power decreased. They became court poets, which, according to Ménage, was the same as court fool, and they sank into ordinary minstrels, who sang, as their historians say, with more truth than refinement, simply to “fill their bellies.”
Like the Italian fools, the Scandinavian jesters seem to have been mere practical jokers. ”

“ Not another individual prepared to avoid the tempest. Each man waited to see the fools drenched, and every man there was, in two minutes, wet to the very skin.
When the sun re-appeared, the philosopher walked out into the market-place. The thoroughly-soaked idiots, observing his comfortable condition, hailed the good man with the epithet of “fool.” They pelted him with sticks and stones, tore his gown, plucked his beard, and loaded him with foul terms that would have twisted the jaw of Aristophanes. ”

“ It is a pity that the Norman could not take a joke as readily as he could reward a jester. We all know how, by resenting the sarcasm of the French King Philip, on his obesity, he lost his own life.
We hear of no fool of merit at the bachelor and uproarious Court of William Rufus. That King, indeed, hardly needed one, for he was accustomed not only to make his own jokes, but to laugh louder at them than any other person. ”

“ I believe that a volume might be very respectably filled with illustrations of the identity of philosopher, or poet, and fool,—in the sense of licensed court wit. My readers will probably be satisfied with a few rather than with a volume-full of proofs. Thus, it will be remembered that it was rather a perilous matter to joke with or to convey rough truths to the mind of the great Alexander. But his favourite philosopher, the light-hearted Anaxarchus, was able to do both, with impunity. ”

“ If the Triboulet of Victor Hugo be full of brilliant inconsistencies and glittering contradictions, he is in many things what tradition represents him to have been. He flings smart sayings at marriage, laughs at the King’s pretensions to write verses, pushes or draws him into vice, and shoots a fool’s bolt at woman, by styling her, “a highly perfected devil.” ”