FOOL, a stupid person; a buffoon or jester.
Professional fools or jesters appear to have existed in all times and countries. Not only have there always been individuals naturally inclined and endowed to amuse others; there has been in most communities a definite class, the members of which have used their powers or weaknesses in this direction as a regular means of livelihood. Scurrae and moriones were Roman parallels of the mediaeval witty fool; and during the empire the manufacture of human monstrosities was a regular practice, slaves of this kind being much in request to relieve the languid hours. After the con quest of Mexico court fools and deformed human creatures of all kinds were found at the court of Montezuma.
The dress of the court fool of the middle ages was not alto gether a rigid uniform. To judge from the prints and illuminations which are the sources of our knowledge on this matter, it seems to have changed considerably from time to time. The head was shaved, the coat was motley, and the breeches tight, with generally one leg different in colour from the other. The head was covered with a garment resembling a monk's cowl, which fell over the breast and shoulders, and often bore asses' ears, and was crested with a cockscomb, while bells hung from various parts of the attire. The fool's bauble was a short staff bearing a ridiculous head, to which was sometimes attached an inflated bladder, by means of which sham castigations were effected. A long petticoat was also occasionally worn, but seems to have belonged rather to the idiots than to the wits.
The fool's business was to amuse his master, to excite him to laughter by sharp contrast, to prevent the over-oppression of State affairs, and, in harmony with a well-known physiological pre cept, by his liveliness at meals to assist his lord's digestion. The names and witticisms of many of the official jesters at the courts of Europe have been preserved by popular or State records. In England the list is long between Hitard, the fool of Edmund Iron side, and Muckle John, the fool of Charles I., and probably the last official royal fool of England. Many are remembered from some connection with general or literary history.
Richard Tarleton, famous as a comic actor, cannot be omitted from any list of jesters. A book of Tarleton's Jests was published in 1611, and, together with his News out of Purgatory, was re printed by Halliwell Phillips for the Shakespeare Society in Archie Armstrong, for a too free use of wit and tongue against Laud, lost his office and was banished from the court. In French history, too, the figure of the court-jester flits across the gay or sombre scene at times with fantastic effect. In Germany, Rudolph of Habsburg had his Pfaff Cappadox, Maximilian I. his Kunz von der Rosen.
Late in the 16th century appeared Le Sottilissime Astuzie di Bertoldo, which is one of the most remarkable books ever written about a jester. It is by Giulio Cesare Croce, a street musician of Bologna, and is a comic romance giving an account of the ap pearance at the court of Alboin, king of the Lombards, of a peasant wonderful in ugliness, good sense and wit. The book was for a time the most popular in Italy.
That the private fool existed as late as the 18th century is proved by Swift's epitaph on Dicky Pearce, the earl of Suffolk's jester, but the professional fool died out soon after his day of glory in the Elizabethan period. The principle of his existence has lasted to the present day; he disappeared in name only. In the circus and the rodeo, he is the clown; in the motion picture, he is the slap-stick comedian; in the ventriloquist act, he is the clever repartee—the "dummy" ; in the opera, the comedy-drama, the musical comedy, he appears under various names.
See Flogel, Geschichte der Hofnarren (Leipzig, 1789) ; Doran, The History of Court Fools (i858) ; Olive M. Busby, Studies in the Devel opment of the Fool in the Elizabethan Drama (1923).