17th century, court accounts, Europe, France, French, historical figure, primary source, quotes
An account of the French court’s expenses for 1622 gives the sum of 1,800 livres for the jester Maître Guillaume, and 1,200 for his female counterpart, Mathurine la Folle. There is no explanation for this disparity, and we can only hope it isn’t an early...
17th century, Europe, historical figure, primary source, quotes, Spain, Spanish
The 17th century Spanish writer and jurist Cristóbal Suárez de Figueroa lashes out at jesters. A rare example of such strong antipathy, even at the tail-end of the great age of European jesterdom. Regrettably, he doesn’t really tell us why they irk him so. ...
16th century, 17th century, bibliography, book chapter, engraving, Europe, fooleum, Germany, Netherlands, painting, print, research, woodcut
Kenneth Craig’s excellent paper takes a sweeping look at examples of fool-peeping-through-fingers paintings and prints, as presented in our Five Guys Named Moe series. Like Cavalli-Björkman’s earlier paper, but more comprehensively, it discusses the...
17th century, Europe, fooleum, Germany
It is unlikely that historical jesters wore the stock costume of ‘cap and bells’ so visible in medieval and some later iconography, and so prevalent in the Western conception of the court jester. So I was delighted and intrigued to spot this 17th century...
17th century, 18th century, bibliography, book, canon, China, Chinese, dramatic character, East Asia, historical figure, play, primary source
There are several plays featuring Dongfang Shuo 東方朔 (c. 160 – c. 93 BCE) as a jester. Apart from an anonymous and non-extant Ming dynasty variety play called simply Dongfang Shuo, there is a twenty act chuanqi play by Wu Dexiu 吾德修 (fl.c. 1692) entitled The...
17th century, court accounts, England, English, Europe, historical figure, primary source, quotes, Stuart
In Europe, court account books are a mine of information concerning payments, in cash and kind, made to jesters. This gives us some insight into the extent to which they could be cared for, if not downright cossetted, and some indication of their clothing, which was...
17th century, dramatic character, England, Europe, primary source, quotes
A marvelous line from As You Like It demonstrating the power of the fool to see and expose the folly of the allegedly wise with even just a passing glance. The wiseman’s folly is anatomiz’d / Even by the squand’ring glances of the fool. Source:...
17th century, Europe, France, French, historical figure, primary source, quotes, stories
This account of the French jester Marais interceding, on behalf of two court musicians, is strikingly similar to an anecdote told about a Chinese jester some 500 years before at the court of Song Huizong 宋徽宗 (r. 1100-26). In both cases, it was a question of half-pay,...
