The History of Court Fools. Dr. Doran

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СКАЧАТЬ 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, СКАЧАТЬ