The History of the Jester. An excerpt from. Fools Are Everywhere. The Court Jester Around the World. Beatrice K. Otto.
Read an interview with the author. Fooling Around the World: The History of the Jester(from Chapter 1: Facets of the Fool and Chapter 7: Stultorum Plena Sunt Omnia, or Fools Are Everywhere). B. C.), Rhapsody on the Shanglin Park. The jester is an elusive character. The European words used to denote him can now seem as nebulous as they are numerous, reflecting the mercurial man behind them: fool, buffoon, clown, jongleur, jogleor, joculator, sot, stultor, scurra, fou, fol, truhan, mimus, histrio, morio. He can be any of these, while the German word Narr is not so much a stem as the sturdy trunk of a tree efflorescent with fool vocabulary. The jester's quicksilver qualities are equally difficult to pin down, but nevertheless not beyond definition.
The Chinese terms used for . In Chinese the jester element often has to be singled out according to context, although the key character you does seem to have referred specifically to jesters, originally meaning somebody who would use humor to mock and joke, who could speak without causing offense, and who also had the ability to sing or dance: . All could include musical and other talents, chang suggesting music, ling, playing or fooling, and pai a humorous element to bring delight.
Several of these terms are too frequently translated as . Several Latin terms used in medieval references to jesters (including numerous church condemnations of them), such as scurrae,mimi, or histriones, originally referred either to amusing hangers- on or to the comic actors and entertainers of Rome. Just as there is now no clear distinction between the terms for . If there was no formal professional jester in Rome, the comic actors fulfilled his functions, sometimes even bearing a striking physical resemblance to what is usually considered a medieval and Renaissance archetype. With periodic imperial purges against actors for their outspokenness, many of them took to the road and fanned out across the empire in search of new audiences and greater freedom. Successive waves of such wandering comics may well have laid the foundations for medieval and Renaissance jesterdom, possibly contributing to the rising tide of folly worship that swept across the Continent from the late Middle Ages.
An individual court jester in Europe could emerge from a wide range of backgrounds: an erudite but nonconformist university dropout, a monk thrown out of a priory for nun frolics, a jongleur with exceptional verbal or physical dexterity, or the apprentice of a village blacksmith whose fooling amused a passing nobleman. Just as a modern- day television stand- up comedian might begin his career on the pub and club circuit, so a would- be jester could make it big time in court if he was lucky enough to be spotted. In addition, a poet, musician, or scholar could also become a court jester. The recruiting of jesters was tremendously informal and meritocratic, perhaps indicating greater mobility and fluidity in past society than is often supposed. A man with the right qualifications might be found anywhere: in Russia . The fool had the right to sit at table with his master, and say whatever came into his head.
The Iconographic Heritage of the Maya Jester God VIRGINIA M. FIELDS Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
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Ye know the Kinges grace hath one old fole: Sexten as good as myght be whiche because of aige is not like to cotinew. I haue spied one yong fole at Croland whiche in myne opinion shalbe muche mor pleasaunt than euer Sexten was . Here he was in the field, keeping his Father's Swine, when a Servant of Robert Earl of Leicester .
Little) at the court of King Mongkut of Siam (r. Anna Leonowens in Anna and the King of Siam, was similarly recruited: He was discovered by one of the King's half- brothers on a hunting trip into the north and brought to Bangkok to be trained in athletic and gymnastic tricks. When he had learned these, he was presented to the king as a comedian and a buffoon.
A German, Paul W. When Duke Eberhard the Bearded of W. The same story is attributed to Will Somers, who uses the joke to mock Henry's predilection for chalking up wives: His Majesty after some discourse growing into some good liking of him, said; fellow, wilt thou be my fool? The thirteenth- century French tale of Robert le Diable has him fleeing a populace baying for blood and forcing his way past the footmen to gain access to the emperor, who duly takes him under his wing as a jester, saying that nobody should be allowed to beat him. Alfred de Musset's play Fantasio (1. Scottish miscellany tells us how one of the most roguish historical jesters found his vocation: Archie Armstrong . Duke Johann Friedrich of Pomerania (d.
He was jester to four Saxon electors and one archbishop during the last quarter of the fifteenth century and first quarter of the sixteenth, and there are more than six hundred stories about him. One day when the first of his patrons, Elector Ernst (d. Ranstadt with a lot of horses and wagons, Claus became curious about all the commotion and went to see what was happening. Worried that his geese would be stolen, he secured the goslings by putting their necks through his belt while he carried the older geese under his arms. When Ernst saw him he laughed at his simplicity and decided he was a born jester.
He asked Claus's father's permission to take him to court: ! I'd be relieved of a great encumbrance thereby; the youth is no good to me—he makes nothing but trouble in my house and stirs up the whole village with his pranks. The story is an insight into the charitable element often involved in the recruiting of . Generally speaking there is little to suggest that this was not done in a humane and kindly manner, although in England there was a law allowing the estates of a natural to be handed over to a person offering to care for him, which could lead to their being recruited under false pretenses. A similar story is told of Jamie Fleeman (1.
Scottish jester to the laird of Udny. He complemented his jesting duties with those of a cowherd and goose guardian, and when he one day grew irritated by the geese wandering willy- nilly, he twisted some straw rope around their necks and started walking home, unaware that they were being throttled one by one. By the time he realized it was too late, and since it was a rare breed of geese, he would have been in big trouble. So he dragged the corpses into the poultry yard and stuffed their throats with food.
When asked whether the geese were safe and sound, he replied cheerfully, ! Ise warran' they're safe aneuch, if they hae nae choked themsells. Tenali Rama, one of the three superstar jesters of India, is said to have earned his position as jester by making King Krsnadevaraya laugh. According to one story, he contrived for the king's guru to carry him around on his shoulders within sight of the king.
Outraged at the humiliation of his holy man, the king sent some guards out to beat the man riding on the guru's shoulders. Tenali Rama, smelling impending danger, jumped down and begged forgiveness of the guru, insisting that to make amends he should carry him on his own shoulders. The guru agreed, and when the guards arrived the guru was duly beaten. The king found the trick amusing enough to appoint Tenali Rama his jester.
In China, despite the abundance of anecdotes about jesters once they enter royal service, there is very little background information available. Nevertheless the universal jester skills displayed by the Chinese jesters suggest that their appointment was as meritocratic as in Europe. A description of Rabelais's Panurge encompasses many of the jester's characteristics: . If we follow his family tree along its many branches we encounter musicians and actors, acrobats and poets, dwarfs, hunchbacks, tricksters, madmen, and mountebanks. A Cavalcade of Cavorting Fools. Foolery, sir, does walk about the orb like the sun, it shines everywhere.—William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night (3.
We have all seen how an appropriate and well- timed joke can sometimes influence even grim tyrants. The most violent tyrants put up with their clowns and fools, though these often made them the butt of open insults.—Desiderius Erasmus, Praise of Folly. The court jester is a universal phenomenon.
He crops up in every court worth its salt in medieval and Renaissance Europe, in China, India, Japan, Russia, America and Africa. A cavalcade of jesters tumble across centuries and continents, and one could circle the globe tracing their footsteps.
But to China the laurels. China has undoubtedly the longest, richest, and most thoroughly documented history of court jesters. From Twisty Pole and Baldy Chunyu to Moving Bucket and Newly Polished Mirror, it boasts perhaps more of the brightest stars in the jester firmament than any other country, spanning a far wider segment of time. The jester's decline began with the rise of the stage actor as the Chinese theater became fully established during the Yuan dynasty. In many respects actors seem to have taken up the jester's baton not only in entertaining their patrons, but also in offering criticism and advice no less clear for being couched in wit.
Perhaps only in ancient Rome did jesters and actors overlap so much. In comparison with those of China, the numerous jesters of Europe, although flourishing for some four hundred years, are something of a dazzling display of shooting stars. Perhaps because the European court jesters were so inextricably linked with the tradition of folly that straddled the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, their time was relatively short- lived, and they died out more or less as the fashion for folly faded. But for as long as they lasted, which was no mere blip, their influence permeated court life. It is a common belief that Europe was the center of the court jester's cosmos, providing the control against which other jesters, such as they are, may be measured.