The History of Court Fools. Dr. Doran

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СКАЧАТЬ be driven away who are well-nigh glutted, there will come a new, hungry set, ten times more greedy and devouring.” Another sample we have in the case of Sertorius, who showed how much wit was better than strength, by citing the case of two men who were set to see who could get off the tail of a horse in the shortest time. One pulled at the whole tail, and pulled in vain. The other easily conquered by taking the tail of his horse and plucking out the hairs, one at a time. There was very much of this sort of instruction imparted by “fools” to princes, and by enlightened men to people, when prince and people equally objected to have their prejudices bruised by the bitter balsam of advice.

      In the courts of princes and the houses of wealthy men were to be found fools of various sorts, according to the taste of the lord. Some were coarse, rude, licentious fellows. Others were refined of speech, acute of observation, quick at repartee, of much learning, and of great memory. Others again were monstrous deformities, or beasts of stupendous appetite, to contemplate whom was very good mirth to melancholy lords of evil digestions and twisted minds.

      Some princes chose not to be in the fashion at all, and to keep no retained fool at their Court. Charles Louis, Electoral Prince of the Rhine, was one of these. “How is it,” asked a friend, “that your serene greatness does not keep a court fool?” “Well, it’s easily accounted for,” answered the Prince; “when I am inclined to laugh, I send for a couple of professors from college, set them at an argument, and laugh at their folly.”

      More than one German prince either feared or despised the “learned fool.” Flögel tells us of one, near whose castle lived a reverend pastor who, because he knew a little of the Hebrew grammar, of which no one in the vicinity knew Aleph from Gimmel, thought himself a prodigy, and all the rest of the world, asses. He never preached a sermon without impressing on the bumpkins the advantages of being acquainted with the Hebrew grammar; and half the lords in the country went to hear him as fool-general of the district. It happened that, on one occasion, the chief lord went to the church, to stand godfather to the schoolmaster’s child; and as the noble gentleman was a bachelor, it became the duty of the pastor, according to custom, to examine him as to his religious principles. We have all heard of the too-polite English vicar, who, churching a countess, said, “Lord, save this lady, thy servant;” and of his equally civil clerk, who, not to be outdone in politeness, responded, “Who putteth her ladyship’s trust in thee!” It was some such courtesy that was paid by the pastor to his lord. He would not, as with common peasants, try him in the Catechism, but inquired, with a sort of dignified familiarity, “Young Sir, may I ask you, what you are?”

      “Certainly,” said the noble godfather; “I am a fool!”

      “Oh fie!” whispered the pastor; adding aloud, “I mean, what is your belief?”

      “Well, my belief is that you are as great a fool as I am.”

      “Oh, nonsense!” exclaimed the pastor, who remembered his knowledge of the Hebrew grammar; “that cannot be.”

      “Ay, but it is so,” said the noble catechumen. “The biggest fools are always the last to acknowledge the fact.”

      And thereat, all the grand and the common people present burst into a loud laugh; and the courteous godfather shook them again by the observation, that no fool at Court was ever half so pleasant a fool, as a fool in a cassock!

      The Court, however, would seem to have had the advantage, for there, it was popularly said, were always to be found two fools—of whom, the Prince treated one just as he pleased; and the other treated the Prince just as it pleased him.

      Some writer, since Epictetus, who was among the first to call man the solitary laughing animal, has remarked that “brutes never make themselves ridiculous; that is the peculiar prerogative of man. The former, in their strangest vagaries, act according to nature; while the latter, in trying to go beyond her, render themselves contemptible in the eyes of others, just in proportion as they excel in their own.” Notwithstanding this, the practice of Wit and Jesting was once no unprofitable profession. The profession changed, and the practice was modified. Professor Miller, in his ‘Historical View of the English Government,’ comes to the conclusion that jesters and the ludicrous pastimes of former ages were exploded “by the higher advances of civilization and refinement,” which contributed also, he thinks, “to weaken the propensity to every species of humorous exhibition.” But, he adds, “though the circumstances and manners of a polished nation are adverse to the cultivation of humour, they are peculiarly calculated to promote the circulation and improvement of wit.” The full passage may be found quoted in Sydney Smith’s ‘Lectures on Moral Philosophy,’ in one of which he combats the Professor’s assertion, by maintaining that as civilization improves the mind, true humour is better appreciated under a high than under a low degree of civilization. Idle and illiterate nobles under the latter, could enjoy the coarse jokes and tumbles of the professional jester, but idle people who are also intellectual people “must either be amused or expire with gaping.” The humour that will be acceptable to these civilized yawners must be, we are told, “of a different complexion from what would pass current in more barbarous times; it must be the humour of the mind, not the humour of the body. It must be devoid of every shade of buffoonery and grimace, and managed with a great degree of delicacy and skill. Civilization improves the humour, but I can hardly allow that it diminishes it. I am strongly inclined to think there will be more humour, more agreeable raillery, and more facetious remark displayed between seven and ten o’clock this evening, in the innumerable dinners which are to be eaten by civilized people in this vast city, than ten months could have produced in the reigns of Queen Elizabeth or Henry VII.” This is very high authority, and even to express a doubt of it may seem justly to expose him who entertains the doubt, to a charge of presumption. Let the great men of the respective periods be reckoned, and it could hardly be proved that the “Table Talk” of the age of Elizabeth was not as brilliant as that of her cherished successor, Victoria. Take, for instance, the reign of Queen Elizabeth, when “Fools” had not yet disappeared from Court, and I think it will be conceded that at the Cabinet or general dinners of such Prime Ministers as Bacon, Burleigh, or Sackville, the company was likely to be as good, the wit as genial, and the humour as genuine, as at any of the banquets—Cabinet, general, or “fish dinner” at Greenwich—which have been presided over by the Victoria Premiers, Melbourne, Peel, or Russell, Derby, Aberdeen, or Palmerston. Then, as for the better taste of our higher civilization, it is not favourably illustrated in the national love for Christmas pantomimes, the Fool’s portion of which has neither wit nor decency, but is dull, dreary, and disgusting; but which seems, nevertheless, to be as generally venerated by this highly polished nation, as the horrid Bel and the hideous Dragon were by the elegant Babylonians.

      About the middle of the sixteenth century, the favour which official jesters enjoyed at Court and in noble houses—far beyond that granted to more worthy men—excited the disapprobation of many observant commentators. There was then no better way of amusing an aristocratic company on a dull evening, in a dreary castle, than by having the fool into the hall, and allowing him full license to attack old and young, married and single, lovers and enemies. Sir Cockscomb delighted in scandal, and he sometimes, nay very often, told stories which made the matrons look down at the keys hanging from their girdles, the maidens hide their faces as best they could, and the noble gentlemen laugh loudly and fling commendations at the jester.

      Some of this gentry, on whom their uncultivated betters depended for amusement, appear to have been a species of mountebanks, often performing tricks which are only now accomplished by parti-coloured “artists” in equestrian circles. The fool who could most wonderfully distort his body, squint most horribly, turn his face to his back, and bend himself as if he were made of nothing but one wonderful series of joints—such a fool was accounted next in merit to his witty cousin.

      And, if the fool pleased everybody—on the other hand, it was necessary that everybody should please the fool, at least if he had business that he wished should prosper СКАЧАТЬ