Can’t hold it in
The Persian Safavid king Shāh ʿAbbās I (r. 1588-1629) seems to have had several jesters, including, unusually, a woman. Another jester was Kal...
Double trouble
This outstanding illumination has a double dose of fools. The first is the fool who would presume to menace Christ, perhaps unique among fools for...
Holding the fort
Gianni Izzo's excellent article on jesters of the Persian Safavid and Zand courts shines a light on additional Persian jesters (that is, perhaps...
Follow the fool on Instagram
Dear Friends of Fools, Happy to announce you can now also follow the fool on our recently launched Instagram account. See you there (and here, of...
How to pay for a funeral
The 10th century Chinese jester Li Jiaming 李家明 (Adding Clarity Li) needed some money to pay his mother's funeral expenses. When the emperor had some time off from affairs of...
An equation of survival
Rubinstein was the astonishing, funny and heart-rending fool of the Warsaw Ghetto, bracingly witty, and perhaps as mad as he was brilliant, or just superb at feigning insanity. Here he...
Family first
During the reign of Emperor Xuanzong (r. 713-56), his beloved consort (and one of the most famous in Chinese history), Yang Guifei, showed great favouritism towards her `adopted' son, An...
Dwarf-jesters at the Aztec court
The Aztec king Montezuma II (1466-1520) had jesters and every mention we have of them points to their having been deformed in some way. Bernal Diaz de Castillo (1492-1591) who...
The nature of the buffone
Writing during the latter part of the European jester's heyday, Giulio Landi (1498-1579) defined the buffone as one without limits to their laughter. It is an interesting definition of fools,...
Jest to rein in a queen
Clod was jester to Elizabeth I (r. 1558-1603), and he puns on his own name as part of an elaborate wheeze to talk the queen out of riding in the...
My horse, my horse
Jester Meng 優孟 is one of the Chinese jesters immortalized in what may be the world's first historical study of jesters, by China's Herodotus Sima Qian 司馬遷 (c. 145-86 BC). ...
The wise would do well
This German proverb begs the question as to what exactly the wise should learn from fools. Perhaps, for starters, how not to appear too wise, thereby alienating or annoying those...
Sobering up the king
Riddles are one technique in the rag-bag of fools' tools and can prove a playful, indirect way of bringing someone round to another view. First they focus the person on...
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