E-text prepared by deaurider, Charlie Howard, and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made
available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org)
Note: Images of the original pages are available through
Internet Archive. See
https://archive.org/details/historyofcourtfo00doraiala
THE HISTORY OF COURT FOOLS.
by
DR. DORAN,
Author of ‘Table Traits,’ ‘Habits and Men,’ ‘Life of Young, the Poet,’
‘Queens of the House of Hanover,’ ‘Knights and Their Days,’
‘Monarchs Retired from Business,’ etc.
[Illustration]
London:
Richard Bentley, New Burlington Street,
Publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty.
1858.
Printed by
John Edward Taylor, Little Queen Street,
Lincoln’S Inn Fields.
TO
HEPWORTH DIXON,
THIS FRIENDLY HOMAGE
FROM
THE AUTHOR.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
THE FOOL,--OF LEGEND AND ANTIQUITY 1
THE FOOL BY RIGHT OF OFFICE 41
THE FEMALE FOOLS 62
THE ORIENTAL “NOODLE” 68
ENGLISH MINSTREL AND JESTER 84
ENGLISH COURT FOOLS, FROM THE REIGN OF EDMUND IRONSIDE 99
THE COURT FOOLS OF FRANCE 239
JESTERS IN THE NORTHERN COURTS OF EUROPE 300
THE SPANISH JESTERS 316
THE FOOLS OF THE IMPERIAL AND MINOR COURTS OF GERMANY 322
THE JESTERS OF ITALY 352
JESTERS IN PRIESTS’ HOUSES 368
PRINCES WHO HAVE BEEN THEIR OWN FOOLS 380
THE
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. Look at that broad tract of land between the
Peneus and Aliacmon. It is all alive with folks in their holiday gear,
enjoying the sunshine, eating sweet melons, singing till they are
hoarse, and dancing till they are weary.”
“What then?” asked Jupiter.
“It would be rare sport, oh king of gods and men, to scatter all these
gaily-robed revellers, and by a shower, spoil their finery.”
“Thou hast lived to little purpose in witty companionship, complacent
son of Maia,” observed the Olympian, “if _that_ be thy idea of sport.
But thy thought is susceptible of improvement. Let that serene priest,
who is fast asleep by the deserted shrine below, announce that a shower
is indeed about to descend, but that it shall wet none but fools.”
A slight sound of thunder was heard, and the aroused servant of the
gods stood in front of the altar, and made the requisite announcement
to the people. There was a philosopher close by, leaning against
the door-post of his modest habitation. He no sooner heard that the
impending storm was to wet only the fools, than he first hastily
covered his head, and next hurriedly entered his dwelling-place and
shut himself up in his study. 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.
Bruised, battered, deafened, staggering, the philosopher nevertheless
contrived to keep his wits. “Oh, sagacious asses!” said he to the
roaring crowd, who at once sank into silence at the compliment paid to
their wisdom, “have patience but for a single minute, and I will prove
to you that I am not such a fool as I look.” Bending back his head, and
turning the palms of his hands upwards to the sky, “Oh wise father,” he
exclaimed, “of the witty and the witless, vouchsafe to send down upon
me a deluge for my peculiar and individual use. Wet me to the skin even
as these fools are wet. Constitute me, thereby, as great a fool as my
neighbours; and enable me, in consequence, a fool, to live at peace
among fools.”
At these words, the two assemblies,--of idiots below, and of Olympians
above, shook with laughter, at once loud and inextinguishable. Down
came the shower prayed for, upon the person of the philosopher, but
peculiar influences were sent down with it, and the dripping sage rose
from his knees ten times wittier than he was before.
Jupiter’s beard was yet wagging with laughter, and merry tears fell
from the eyelids of Juno, whose head lay in frolicsome helplessness
upon the bosom of her hilarious lord,--when the latter exclaimed,
“We have spoiled that good fellow’s robe, but we will also make his
fortune.”
“That is already accomplished,” remarked Juno. “I have just breathed
into the ear of the chief of the district, and _he_ is now taking the
philosopher home with him, to be at once his diverter and instructor.”
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.
Children,” he added, to the gods and goddesses, “let us drink his
health!”
The brilliant society thus addressed could neither drink nor speak,
for laughing. “Dear master,” said Hebe, as she took her place behind
the monarch of divinities, who looked at her inquiringly, “they laugh,
because you did not say fools, _such as he_, should henceforward
furnish kings with funny counsel and comic sermons.”
“Let their majesties look to it,” answered Jove, “here’s a health to
the first of fools!”
In the legend of the original jester, we cannot well pass over,
without some brief illustration, the old, yet ever-young and especial
mirth-maker of the court of Olympus itself, where Momus reigned, the
joker of the gods. Perhaps I should rather say there he was tolerated,
than that there he reigned. For there was this difference between the
sublime immortals and weaker mortals,--that the former could never take
a joke from their court fool without wincing, while the latter laughed
the louder as the wit was sharper; for they wisely chose to applaud in
such jesting,
“the sportive wit,
Which healed the folly that it deigned to hit.”
Not so, the irritable gods, with regard to Momus, who was,
significantly enough, the Son of Night. Momus however cared nothing for
the irritability of his august masters and mistresses. His ready wit
pierced them all in turn; and the shafts of his ridicule excited many
an absurd roar of anguish. When Minerva had built the house of which
she was so proud, the Olympian fool at once detected the error made by
the Goddess of Wisdom, and remarked, “Had _I_ turned house-builder, I
would have had a movable mansion.”
“Why so, you intellectual ass?” asked the lady, who was somewhat
rough-tongued, and loved antithesis.
“Because,” answered the son of Nox, “I could then get away from bad
neighbourhoods, and the vicinity of foolish women who consort with
owls!”
Venus, clad in her usual attire, and proud in the conviction of her
faultlessness, passed by Sir Momus, and turning gracefully in his
presence, like Mademoiselle Rosati before a box-full of her admirers,
defied him to detect a flaw in her unequalled and dazzling form.
Momus clapped his hands to his eyes, half-blinded by the lustre, and
said, “It is true enough, Ourania,--you are not to be looked at without
blinking; but before you executed that charming pirouette, I heard your
foot-fall on the clouds. Now, a heavy-heeled beauty is not a vessel
without a flaw.”
Save Venus herself, there was not a goddess within hearing, who did not
laugh more or less loudly, at the fool’s censure. Vulcan, to draw off
attention from the queen of love, and to gain a compliment for himself,
directed the notice of Momus to the clay figure of a man which he had
just executed. The critic looked at it for a moment, and turned away
with a curl on his lip. “My man,” said he, “should have had a window
in his chest. Through such a lattice, I could have looked in, not only
upon his ailments, but his thoughts.”
“My bull here,” said Neptune, touching Momus with his trident, which at
will he could extend from his own watery plain to the topmost point of
Olympus,--“My bull here, of which _I_ am the artist, is more perfect
than our limping brother’s man.”
“The beast would have been more perfect still,” cried Momus, from his
cradle in the clouds, “if he had had eyes nearer his horns. He would
strike more surely than he can now. Leave making bulls, oh son of Ops,
to your children in Ierne,--though, even _their_ bulls shall be as
laughable as your own.”
In this way the Fool of the Olympian Court treated without reserve
the illustrious company, whom he fearlessly mocked and censured. They
never bore the censure well; and, ultimately, they rose and ejected him
from Heaven. With a mask in one hand, and a small carved figure in the
other, he lightly fell to Earth. “You see I come from the skies,” said
the crafty fellow to the staring crowds that gathered round him, “and
therefore am worthy of welcome and worship.”
How could the poor people know that he had been kicked out from
Olympus? They raised an altar, hoisted the celestial exile above it,
danced round it like fools, and went home shouting, “_Vive la Folie!_”
To pretend to show the moral of my story, would be to insult the good
sense of my readers.
It is singular that the successor of Momus, as brewer of laughter to
the gods, was Vulcan, and that _he_ also was kicked out from Olympus.
On the ninth day of his descent he came in sight of Lemnos, where the
people, without stopping to think whether they were about to receive a
precious gift or a rejected waif from Heaven, stretched out their arms
to catch him. It is not everything that seems to come from above, that
is divine.
And mark!--Since Momus fell, Folly has never left the Earth. But Vulcan
taught men to labour; and the founder of industry, the great doer of
a good work, was reconciled with Heaven. And Olympus did not continue
without its fools, near or afar. The dances of Silenus, the lumbering
grace of Polyphemus, and the coarse jokes of Pan, were provocatives
of the empty laughter of the gods; and roystering dances, lumbering
graces, and coarse jokes became the stock in trade of fools of later
years and of more mortal mould.
They who will take the trouble to recall the incidents in the personal
history of many of the philosophers of old, will not fail to perceive
that, in many cases, they fulfilled the duties which were performed,
much less efficiently, perhaps, by the official fools at modern courts.
They appear to have exercised, generally with impunity, a marvellous
license of speech, and to have communicated disagreeable truths to
tyrants who would not have accepted an unpleasant inuendo from an
ordinary courtier, without rewarding it with torture or death. This
very rudeness of speech, on the part of many philosophers, to princes
who were their patrons, was the distinguishing feature of the modern
jester. In this respect they were sometimes imitated by the poets, who
occasionally indulged in the criminal folly of making execrable puns;
so early do we find an illustration of the remark of Ménage, that in
all times the court poet was accounted as being also the court fool.
Indeed, we shall see, under the head of French Jesters, a whole flock
of royal poets vying with each other to receive the patent of King’s
Fool, on the death of the official who had just departed full of
honours and “_doubles entendres_.”
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. What a necessary but disagreeable truth did he
impress on his royal master, when the latter was bleeding from a
recently received wound. “Ah!” exclaimed the philosopher, pointing to
the place, “that shows that, after all, you are only a man, and not a
god, as people call you, and as you would like to believe.”
Alexander only smiled at this very sufficient little sermon, and
did not resent what perhaps he considered as amusing ignorance. It
is remarkable, however, that as in less remote days we meet with
potentates who could not tolerate the free-spoken court fool, so in
those earlier times we find “tyranni,” who were utterly unable to
digest a joke or a reproach. Now the speech of Anaxarchus was utterly
disgusting to the mind and feelings of Nicocreon of Salamis, who
happened to be present when it was uttered. What the philosopher’s
especial patron chose to take without discerning offence in it, it
was not for Nicocreon to resent; but he never forgot or forgave it.
Alexander was hardly dead when Nicocreon contrived to get Anaxarchus
into his power, and he ordered that the philosopher should be pounded
to death in a mortar, “Pound away! pound away!” exclaimed the heroic
fellow, as the iron hammers were reducing him to pulp, “it’s only my
body! you cannot pound my soul!” Nicocreon told him that if he were not
more silent and less saucy, his tongue should be cut out. To show how
little Anaxarchus cared for the threat, he bit his tongue in two, and
spat the mangled piece into the face of the tyrant.
There, indeed, his wit may be said to have failed him, and he acted
with less presence of mind than the philosopher Zeno, when the latter
was in a precisely similar situation. When the inventor of dialectics
lay nearly bruised to death under the pestles of the executioners
employed by Nearchus, he called the latter to him as if he had
something of importance to communicate. Nearchus bent over the lip of
the mortar to listen, and Zeno, availing himself of his opportunity and
his excellent teeth, bit off the ear of the tyrant close to his head.
Hence “a biting remark, like that of Zeno,” passed into a proverb.
In a later page, it will be seen how the famous jester, Gonella, had
the boldness of speech, but lacked the boldness of soul, of Anaxarchus
and Zeno. There was a saying of Gonella’s that very nearly resembles
one of Hippias, a free-spoken philosopher of Elis, who pleasantly
made virtue consist in the entire freedom of man from all and every
sort of dependence upon his fellow-men. Again, in Anaximenes,--not
that philosopher who maintained that the stars were the heads of
bright nails driven into the solid concave of the sky, but the pupil
of Diogenes,--we find a parallel with Chicot, the celebrated jester
of the French Kings Henry III., the last Valois, and Henry IV., the
first Bourbon. Both were occasionally engaged in affairs of political
importance, and Anaximenes, on one of these occasions, did capital
service to his employers. Lampsacus was being besieged by Alexander. It
had nobly resisted; but, unable to hold out any longer, the authorities
deputed the philosopher to make terms with the besieger. As soon as
the latter beheld Anaximenes, guessing his errand, he exclaimed, in a
burst of foolish rage, “I entirely refuse, beforehand, to grant what
you are about to ask.” Chicot used to call Henry III. a “simpleton,”
but Anaximenes only laughed pleasantly in the face of Alexander, as he
said, “May it please your irresistible godship, the favour then which
I have to ask is, that you will destroy the city of Lampsacus, enslave
the citizens, and ruin their delegate who stands before you.” The
conqueror laughed in his turn, and well rewarded the ready wit of a man
who was for some years attached to his person.
The poets were not less free than the philosophers. When King Antigonus
once caught his favourite Rhodian poet, Antagoras, cooking fish, he
asked the bard whether Homer condescended to dress meals while he
aspired to register the deeds of Agamemnon. “I cannot say,” answered
the Rhodian, “but I very strongly believe this, that the king did not
trouble himself as to whether any man in his army boiled fish or left
it alone!”
The boldness of some of the old poets was quite on a par with their
wit. Their absolute freedom of speech, like that of their official
successors, the fools, was as useful and fearless as the modern freedom
of the press. There were very few of the parasites and jesters of
Dionysius who would venture to tell that disagreeable person beneficial
truths. Antiphon, his poet, was an exception. The monarch once asked
him, “What brass was the best?” and Antiphon answered, “That of which
the statues of Aristogiton and Harmodius were made.” Considering that
these were two patriots who rescued Athens from the tyranny of the
Pisistratidæ, the answer was as daring as it was witty. Dionysius
disregarded the wit, and resented the audacity;--in a sneaking way,
however, for he put Antiphon to death because he refused to praise the
writings of the despot. In one respect, Dionysius was like Cardinal
Richelieu, he looked with spiteful feelings on every man who ventured
to doubt his ability for writing tragedies. But in another sense, the
“tyrannus” was superior to the cardinal, for he at least wrote his
own tragedies, whereas those of Richelieu were written for him by his
buffoon, Boisrobert, who might well afford to praise them. For a better
reason than that which induced Richelieu to patronize Boisrobert (who,
buffoon as he was, founded the French Academy), Philadelphus patronized
the comic poet Aristonymus, whom the king made Keeper of the Library
at Alexandria, and who kept the king in good humour by his joyous
conversation. Aristonymus did not forget that he held a double office;
and as the Bards censured as well as commended the behaviour of the
people, so he scattered eulogy or blame on the conduct of his patron,
according to the latter’s deserts.
We shall find, in subsequent pages, instances of kings going into
mourning on the death of their fools, and of the royal patrons raising
tombs to them. In ancient times we also have instances of a whole
people cherishing their poets quite as fondly as some monarchs did
their jesters. I will only cite the case of Eupolis, that comic poet
of Athens, whose unlicensed wit was so very little to the taste of
Alcibiades, and who ultimately perished in a naval engagement between
the Athenians and the Lacedemonians. His countrymen were so afflicted
at losing a man whose wit and poetry were as new life to them, that
they passed a decree whereby it was ordered that no poet should ever
afterwards go to war. Artaxerxes did not mourn more truly for his witty
but then deceased slave Tiridates, than the Athenians mourned for
Eupolis. But Artaxerxes did not mourn half so long. He sat weeping,
indeed, for three days, but he found consolation when Aspasia offered
her ivory shoulder to support his aching head. So Henry II., of France,
mourned for his dead jester Thony, even commissioning Ronsard to write
his epitaph, but forgetting poet, fool, and epitaph in contemplating
the mature beauty of Diana of Poictiers.
Less forgetful of a favourite dead wit was the patron of the comic
poet, Timocreon of Rhodes; famous alike for his sharp appetite and
verses, and for his power of pouring out wit and pouring in wine.
It was a brother wit who would not venture to praise him, but who
contrived to make the dead jester censure, by celebrating, himself in
the apparently autograph lines,
“Multa bibens, et multa vorans, mala denique dicens
Multis, hîc jaceo Timocreon Rhodius.”
“Having drunk much, eaten much, and spoken much evil, here I lie,
Timocreon of Rhodes.” This heathen jester lived nearly five centuries
before the Christian era; I might perhaps, had I a right to act
“Censor,” suggest that his epitaph would not be unsuitable over many a
serious but defunct gentleman, born since that era commenced.
Let me rather do justice to the wit and independence of the old poets,
generally. While doing so, I cannot but add my conviction that the
philosophers were, on the whole, more independent in their jests than
the poets. When Apollonius repaired from Chalcis to Rome, to become
the tutor of Marcus Antoninus, he refused to go to the palace at all,
saying that it was fitter for the pupil to come to the house of the
instructor than for the latter to go to the dwelling of the pupil. The
imperial hint, good-humouredly conveyed, that he had himself commenced
this latter process by repairing from Chalcis to Rome, could not move
him.
It has been usual, and Flögel[A] has done it, among others, to rank
the elder Aristippus among the ancient court wits. Inasmuch as that he
was the chief flatterer of Dionysius of Sicily, and loved Epicurean
voluptuousness, the founder of the Cyrenaic sect may be allowed to pass
under that title, but he had little in common with the court jester
of more modern times. He was as different from the latter in some
respects, as he was from Crassus, the grandfather of Crassus the Rich,
who according to Pliny was never known to laugh,--not even when his
best friend broke his thigh.
It is certain that Dionysius treated his flatterers as later sovereigns
did their official jesters,--allowing for the difference of manners,
morals, and customs. The poor jester whose head was placed on the
executioner’s block by the sportive order of the ducal sovereign of
Ferrara, proved indeed to be even worse off than the parasite Damocles,
when Dionysius seated him on his throne, beneath an unsheathed sword
suspended from a horse-hair.
Again, the freedom which the court fool subsequently held by right of
office, we find fearlessly exercised by the philosophic Demochares,
the Athenian ambassador, who being asked, by King Philip of Macedonia,
to whom he was sent, what the king could do to most gratify the
Athenians, replied, “The most gratifying thing you could do would be
to hang yourself.” The courtiers murmured with indignation, but Philip
dismissed the envoy, with the remark, that he hoped the Athenians
would perceive he had more wit than their representative, seeing that
he could take with indifference such a joke as that flung at him by
Demochares.
There are two philosophers whose names now occur to me, and of
whom some erroneous notions appear to be entertained by their
posterity;--Heraclitus and Democritus. We picture them as “Jean qui
pleure” and “Jean qui rit,” looking on the first as made up of groans,
and the latter of gaiety. The fact however is, that Heraclitus, though
given, as any man might be, at any period, who thought of the matter,
to weep over the wickedness of the world, made that world laugh
heartily by his rough answers to the polite invitations of Darius, who
would fain have had him at the Persian court. Heraclitus and Darius
remind me of Brusquet and Charles V. Democritus, too, was a different
man from what he is generally thought to have been. He laughed, indeed,
but it was at the follies of mankind; and he did not disdain, like
the weeping Ephesian, to figure at the court of Darius. There is one
sample of his wit there, which is better than anything ever uttered by
Bertholdo, the philosophic buffoon at the court of Alboin, King of the
Lombards. Darius was inconsolable for the loss of his wife, declaring
that he was the only man who had ever known real adversity. “And I
will raise the queen from the dead in a few minutes,” said Democritus,
“if I only----” “If you only, _what_?” impatiently exclaimed Darius,
interrupting him. “If I only can find three individuals who have passed
through life without adversity of some sort, and whose names I will
engrave on the queen’s monument.” Darius knew the case was hopeless,
and mournfully smiled. If he had given a small estate to the witty
philosopher, the latter would have deserved it quite as well as the
Joculatores of our first William and John, whose wit or wisdom was
rewarded by raising them to the very pleasant condition of holders of
land.
It is said of some of the German jesters that they occasionally lived
on the people of the town, with the lord of which they resided in
exercise of their office. A parallel to this may be met with in the
annals of the philosophers, in the person of Demonax, who, leaving
to his patrons to clothe and lodge him, boarded himself in a very
facetious and economical way, by entering the first house, after he
felt himself hungry, and there fully satisfying his appetite. But
Demonax belonged to a lower class of the order of philosophers, as
some later fools did to that of the general order of their profession.
There was as much difference between Demonax and Socrates, as there
was between Sibilot, as described by Huguenot authors, and our own
light and noble-hearted Will Sommers. The happiest idea one can
have of Socrates is that of seeing him in the studio of his father
Sophroniscus, carving that group of the three Graces, the simplicity
and elegance of which excited universal admiration. He was ever the
same,--a rough labourer patiently and certainly creating beauty. In
him we fail to discern anything of the mere unlicensed jester. The
Platonic and the Xenophontic Socrates may be said equally, though
in different ways and measures, to challenge admiration. Leaving
the philosopher, to encounter him again presently, let us look over
antiquity for traces of the fool in people as in individuals.
Among the ancients, perhaps the Tirynthians had the reputation of being
the very merriest of fools. Theophrastus is cited by Athenæus in proof
of this. Those people of Argolis were so continually merry that they at
last got tired of it, and applied to the oracle at Delphos to save them
from being any longer such joyous simpletons.
“You shall be cured,” said the oracular authority, “if after
sacrificing an ox to Neptune, you can throw the carcase into the sea,
without laughing.”
“That will be easy enough,” said the Tirynthians, laughing all the
while, “if we can only keep children away from the sacred fire.”
Of course, however, an _enfant terrible_ managed to be present at the
show. He was no sooner discovered than the now solemn Tirynthians began
to drive him away, lest he should laugh or raise laughter during the
ceremony, by some childish remark or question.
“What are you afraid of?” asked the sprightly lad,--“that I should
upset the dish” (and he pointed to the sea) “that is to hold your beef?”
Poor as the joke was, it so tickled the fancy of the Tirynthians, that
they laughed till their sides ached; and so they remained merry fools
for ever. No jester, at a royal table, was ever so highly esteemed as
an uproariously gay buffoon from this old city of Hercules--roystering
Tirynthia.
The Tirynthians were never excelled, except by the people of Phæstum,
who, by all other Cretans, were reckoned as the first jesters in the
world. 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.
We have another notable instance in the case of Solon, who, when the
Athenian law forbade mention of the subject of Salamis, that island
which gave Athens such an infinite world of trouble, assumed the
bearing of one out of his wits, and, in better verse than a fool could
have indited, told truths that led to great consequences, and exhibited
the patriotic courage and humour of the celebrated sage. Assuredly
Solon was no fool, for he refused to be a king, and he invented
taxation. I will revert for a moment to Aristippus, the lover of Laïs,
and the flatterer of Dionysius,--the rosy philosopher who only cared
for the present moment, but who had of the jester only his liberty of
speech. When thrust into an inferior seat at table, and being asked, if
he liked it as well as his higher place of the day before: “Ay, truly,”
said he to Dionysius; “for the place I held yesterday, I despise today,
since I hold it no longer. I honoured the seat, the seat did not honour
me. So, today’s seat, which, yesterday, was without dignity, because I
was not in it, is now dignified by holding me.” The court laughed; but
the wit and the wisdom of the speech seem to be of the very mildest
nature.
That the ancients carried their idea of “fooling” too far, may be
seen in the fact that, as Sir Thomas Brown observes, “some drew
provocatives of mirth from anatomies, and jugglers showed tricks with
skeletons.” It was not any reverend gentleman or philosopher who
improved the occasion of Egyptian feasts, by showing a model mummy, but
a light-hearted slave who exhibited the ivory effigy to the garlanded
guests with, “Behold what we must all come to!” Antiquity went further
than this in its patronage of the fool. In the funeral train, followed
the arch-mime lately retained by the deceased patrician; and it was
this good fellow’s business to keep the mourners merry, by imitations
of the speech, gesture, and manners of the deceased himself. Of this
custom, the author last-named rightly says, that “it was too light for
such solemnities, contradicting their funeral orations and doleful
rites of the grave.” The mourners must have been sadly in want of
the extract of _Cachunde_ or Liberans, which was once a famous and
highly magnified composition, used in the East Indies, to drive away
melancholy.
How highly mirth was accounted of, even in grave sport, is proved by
one fact,--that Lycurgus raised an image of Laughter, and caused it
to be worshipped as a God. He loved, he said, to see people merry at
feasts and assemblies.
Of the professional wit, we find a trace in a curious custom of Roman
gentlemen. When these discovered that learning and wit began to be
in more general estimation than arms or wealth, the clever fellows
among them got on well enough, and setting their minds to discipline,
became the favoured guests at the most brilliant parties. The dull
millionaires were rather nettled at this, but they fell upon an
exquisite plan to be on an equality with their sparkling rivals. They
had neither wit nor learning themselves, but they purchased slaves,
and especially Greek slaves, who possessed both. Had they to attend
an assembly where philosophy was most in fashion, they took with
them their more learned bondsmen; but was the evening expected to
be mirthful, then the stolid owners ordered the slaves with comic
dispositions and merry turns of thought and expression, to accompany
them. These delightful fellows were ever welcome, and when their
sallies produced explosions of laughter and applause, their masters
stroked their beards complacently, and assumed a modest composure, as
if _they_ had said all the good things uttered by their serfs.
Like the fools of later ages, these jesters were the more acceptable,
because they helped mortal man to kill Time. When society was without
books, it learned what it could, and amused itself as it might, by the
help of philosophers, minstrels, or jesters. Printing, indeed, killed
neither mirth, music, nor philosophy; but the decline of the profession
of the hired fool certainly began at the period of the discovery of
printing.
I might find opportunity here of saying something touching the office
of the parasite, as a jester; but I have treated that subject at such
length, in my “Table Traits,” that I will rather refer my readers to
that little volume than repeat what is said in it, here. I may notice,
however, in addition, that the old classical, professional jesters, in
Athens, had the privilege of entering any company, without invitation.
Plautus, therefore, calls them “_Flies_.” The parasite was of this
profession, and there was not much civility vouchsafed towards him, if
he was of the class that did not wait to be invited. The host would
rudely order him to play the fool for the amusement of the company; to
whom he narrated all the jokes he could remember, and when his memory
ran dry, he would ignobly descend to read them from manuscripts. Maître
Guillaume, a fool at the court of Henri IV., did much the same. The
parasite was interested personally, as well as pecuniarily, in amusing
his hearers, for if he failed to do so, they had no hesitation in
rising, kicking his seat from under him, raining blows upon his body,
breaking the dishes upon his head, and, fixing a rope, or collar, round
his neck, flinging him headlong into the street.
Xenophon, in his account of the banquet at the marine villa of
Callias, affords us an excellent idea of the person and merits of the
professional buffoon. The name of the latter is Philip. This fool by
vocation, when all the gentlemen are at supper, knocks at the door,
and with a rollicking sort of impudence, says to the servant who opens
it, “Here we are! the gentlemen need not deliberate about letting
me in to supper. I am provided with everything necessary for doing
so, for nothing. My bay horse is tired with carrying nothing in his
stomach, and I am quite as weary with running about to see how I can
best fill my own.” And then forcing his way in, he raises a laugh, by
exclaiming--“Gentlemen, you all know me and my professional privilege.
But I have come uninvited, chiefly because I have an aversion from
ceremony, and a disinclination to put you to the trouble of a formal
invitation.”
Callias remarks, “We must not refuse him his dish;” and the host
then welcomes the jester, by bidding him take place; for serious
conversation has made the guests dull, and they will be glad of an
opportunity to indulge in laughter.
Philip cut a thousand jokes without being able to tickle his hearers
into laughter; and it was only when he affected to be broken-hearted
and about to die with shame at his ill-success or their dulness, that
they promised to try and find something risible in his professional
mirth. And this must have been a very sorry joke indeed.
The best, perhaps the only tolerable scintillation of wit struck out
by the “laughter-maker,” is to be found, after the circus-girl who
accompanies the Syracusan showman has leaped through the hoop in
which knives are planted with every point towards the passing leaper.
Philip has then a fling at an Athenian alderman who belonged to the
Peace-party of his day:--“Ah!” he exclaims, “what pleasure should I
enjoy to see Pisander, that grave counsellor, taking lessons from this
girl; he that is ready to swoon away at the sight of a lance, and
says it is a barbarous cruel custom to go to war and kill men!” This
is not extremely lively, but it is at least as good a joke as when he
says to Socrates, on the assertion of the philosopher that he intended
to dance: “Well, I believe your thighs and shoulders are of the same
weight; and that if you put the one into one scale, and the other into
another, just as the constable weighs bread in the market-place, you
will not be in danger of being forfeited, so justly poised will be the
respective weights.” And, therewith, the buffoon expresses a desire
to dance with Socrates, and begins awkwardly imitating the previous
graceful dancing of the girl, raising peals of mirth from the little
company of nobles and sages, and ending, heated and panting, with a sly
look towards the slaves standing in grim repose before the board on
which was placed the wine. With a sly remark, he wishes they were like
coachmen, who are the more prized for being quick in their driving and
dexterous in turning. This remark, of course, sets the wine-bearers
rapidly moving towards Philip and among the company generally.
This professional fool, it is to be observed, is proud of his
profession. “I suppose you value yourself,” says Lycon, “on your power
to make men laugh?”
“Ay, truly,” answers Philip;--“and have I not better reason for being
proud of this, than the finical Callipides of piquing himself at making
men weep at his tragic verses in the theatre?--Proud of my trade!”
he subsequently exclaims, “oh, oh, I should think so; for see you,
when people are in the way of good fortune, they invite me to their
houses; but when misfortune or misery falls upon them, they carefully
avoid meeting me.” Nicerates is struck by the remark, for he is one of
those men whose friends, ruined by their extravagance, expect him to
extricate them from their difficulties. He sighs, when he compares his
own condition with that of the fool, whose vocation at this renowned
banquet terminates by a taste of his craft, when he approvingly winks
to the Syracusan, and, after his fashion, says _Amen_ to that lucky
showman’s prayer, soliciting the gods to send plenty of everything,
wherever he came, save of judgment and good sense.
This is his last joke, for Socrates grows weary of him and of his
chattering. “But it is not proper,” says Philip, a little nettled,
“that we should be silent at a feast.”
“Very true,” replies the philosophic son of a statuary and a midwife,
“but it is also true that it is better to be silent than say what
it were more profitable to leave unsaid.” And this very strong hint
extinguishes the jester.
It is impossible to read the graphic sketch by Xenophon, taking it as
a faithful account of an actual scene, without feeling wonder that
an intellectual party, like the one depicted, should need, or should
tolerate, such aids to enjoyment as those professed to be afforded by
the buffoon and the mountebank with his pretty dancing-girl and ballet
company. 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. “When the little
ballet of ‘Bacchus and Ariadne’ was played out,” says the author,
“the company found it so natural in its pantomime, that they became
convinced of what had not previously entered their minds, namely that
the youth and girl who had represented the chief characters were
actually in love with one another. This,” adds Xenophon, “caused
the guests who were married, and some who were not, to mount their
horses forthwith, and ride full speed to Athens, with the briskest
resolutions imaginable.” But while the husbands went home to greet
their spouses, and lovers to pay homage to their respective Lalages,
some stayed behind--Socrates was of the number--and these “went
a-walking with Lycon, Autolicus, and Callias.” But the fool went not
with the philosopher, the nobles, and the young Autolicus, who had won
a prize at the Olympic Games,--and, consequently, we must keep in the
company with which we are bound to journey.
This species of company was not equally pleasant to all men. Athenæus
tells us that the Scythian Anacharsis was once present at a banquet,
at which a number of professional fools did their office so drolly,
that every one laughed,--save the Scythian. Presently, a monkey
was introduced, and at this animal’s singular tricks, Anacharsis
laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks. As some surprise was
expressed at this, by the company, the Scythian justified himself by
remarking,--“The monkey is comic and risible by nature, and without
effort; but man is so only by art and affectation.” In a similar
sense, Athenæus quotes a passage from Euripides, in which the poet
says:--“There are numerous people who study the art of raising laughter
by witty speeches and sparkling repartees. For my part, I hate these
elaborate buffoons, whose unrestrained tongue spares not the wise, and
whom, indeed, I do not reckon worthy of being accounted among ‘men.’”
In the days of King Philip, the Macedonian, whenever a man told an
extremely witty story, he was pretty sure to be met with the remark,
“Ah, that comes from the Sixty.” It was as much as doubting the
originality of the wit. “The Sixty” was, in fact, a club of wits. They
met in Athens, not at a tavern, but in the temple of Hercules. We
should as soon expect to hear of a convivial body of wits assembling
every Saturday night in “Rowland Hill’s Chapel.” They were fellows
who had the very highest opinion of their own abilities, for they
regularly entered in a book all the witticisms of the evening. This
was, probably, the very first jest-book ever put together. To listen
to it, when the Secretary took it with him to private parties, must
have been an antepast of ‘_Punch_.’ The precious book has perished,
but Athenæus has preserved the names of a few of the members, which,
however, are not worth repeating, though it may be stated, that the
owners had also nicknames; and one tall, clever, nimble fellow,
Callimedes, was familiarly hailed by his fellow-clubbists as “the
Grasshopper.” Philip heard of this merry, social, witty company, and
longing to know more of them, their sayings and doings, he did not
indeed invite them to his distant court, but he sent them a talent
(nearly £200 sterling), and requested the loan of the last volume of
the transactions of the “Sixty Club.” The book was duly despatched;
and perhaps the loan of a volume was never paid for at so high a rate:
the authors thus played the part of court fools by deputy. Their jokes
were stereotyped, and had a long and merry life of it. It was useless
for any man to fire one off as his own, for the source was instantly
discovered, and the company would derisively call out, “An Old Sixty!”
just as dull retailers of faded jests are suppressed, in our own day,
by the cry of, “An Old Joe!”
Philip is said to have possessed his own court fool in Clisophus.
Flögel says, that the latter excited shouts of laughter by his
imitations of his royal master’s style, voice, manner, and even
infirmities. But, according to Athenæus, Clisophus seems to have been
a parasite, who imitated his patron out of flattery, and did not mimic
him in order to excite risibility. At other courts there were mimics
who played the fool before their sovereign lords, by caricatured
imitations of fencers, singers, and even orators,--especially of their
defects. The most celebrated, perhaps, was Herodotus, a burly namesake
of the father of history, who kept the court of Antiochus ever merry by
his mimicry, and who was named, _par excellence_, Logomimus.
The fools and the philosophers were not always identical, and they
often came in contact, as was to be expected. We have an instance in
the buffoon Satyrion, named by Lucian, and the grave Alcidamas, who
wrote a treatise on death. The sage could not tolerate the fun and the
Egyptian accent of the ugly and close-cropped fool; and when the latter
called the man of wisdom a “lap-dog,” the philosopher challenged him to
single combat. Some of the guests were ashamed, and some laughed, to
see sciolist and sage heartily belabouring each other; but the laughter
was universal when the philosopher, beaten to a mummy, confessed
himself vanquished, and afterwards stood as mute as a courtesan in a
Greek play.
Socrates (as I have previously remarked) is said, by more than
one writer, ancient and modern, to have united in his own person
the philosopher and the fool. His ugliness, deformity, and
uncouthness,--his childish play, his extravagant dancing, his
inclination to laugh at everything,--all these and more have been cited
as foundations for reckoning him among the jesters. Zeno, according
to Cicero, especially styled him the “Athenian buffoon,” which was
probably meant for a compliment. The best description of him is that of
Alcibiades, in Plato, who says that Socrates resembled the large images
of Silenus, which were filled with little statuettes of the gods.
Flögel rejects the picture of Socrates, represented by Aristophanes in
the ‘Clouds,’ as “suspicious.” But Socrates has nothing of the fool
in him in that play, except that he is represented as proprietor of
the Thinking-Shop, and deriving powers of humbug and circumlocution,
from the clouds. In this play, the recognized freedom of the fool, as
regards liberty of speech at the expense of the audience, is exercised
by the characters “Just Cause” and “Unjust Cause,” as the following
sample will show:--
“_Unj._ Now, then, tell me: from what class do the lawyers come?
“_Just._ From the blackguards.
“_Unj._ Very good! And the public speakers?
“_Just._ Oh, from the blackguards, also.
“_Unj._ ----And now look; which class most abounds among the audience?
“_Just._ I am looking.
“_Unj._ But what do you see?
“_Just._ By all the gods, I see more blackguards than anything else.
That fellow, I particularly know; and him yonder; and that blackguard
with the long hair.”
The above was the true license of the fool, in the professional use of
the term; and the Athenian blackguards only laughed to hear themselves
thus distinguished.