Jester

A jester, court jester, fool or joker was a member of the household of a nobleman or a monarch employed to entertain guests during royal court. Jesters were also traveling performers who entertained common folk at fairs and town markets, and the discipline continues into the modern day, where jesters perform at historical-themed events.

During the post-classical and Renaissance eras, jesters are often thought to have worn brightly coloured clothes and eccentric hats in a motley pattern. Their modern counterparts usually mimic this costume.

Jesters entertained with a wide variety of skills: principal among them were song, music, and storytelling, but many also employed acrobatics, juggling, telling jokes (such as puns, stereotypes, and imitation), and performing magic tricks. Much of the entertainment was performed in a comic style. Many jesters made contemporary jokes in word or song about people or events well known to their audiences.

Etymology

The modern use of the English word jester did not come into use until the mid-16th century, during Tudor times.^[1] This modern term derives from the older form gestour, or jestour, originally from Anglo-Norman (French) meaning 'storyteller' or 'minstrel'. Other earlier terms included fol, disour, buffoon, and bourder. These terms described entertainers who differed in their skills and performances but who all shared many similarities in their role as comedic performers for their audiences.^[1][2][3]

History

Balatrones

In ancient Rome, a balatro (/ˈbɑːlɑːtroʊ/ BAH-lah-troh) was a professional jester or buffoon.^[4] Balatrones were paid for their jests, and the tables of the wealthy were generally open to them for the sake of the amusement they afforded.^[5]

There are various theories about the origin of the term. In Horace, Balatro is used as a proper name: Servilius Balatro.^[6] An old scholiast derives the common word balatro from the proper name, suggesting that buffoons were called balatrones because Servilius Balatro was a buffoon, though others have since objected to this account. Festus derives the word from blatea, and supposes buffoons to have been called balatrones because they were dirty fellows, covered with spots of mud (blateae) from walking.^[7] Another writer suggests a derivation from barathrum, because they, so to speak, carried their jesting to market, even into the very depth (barathrum) of the shambles (barathrum macelli)^[8] Balatro may be connected with balare, "to bleat like a sheep", and hence, to speak sillily. Others have suggested a connection with blatero, a busy-body.^[9]

In ancient times, other cultures, such as the Aztecs and the Chinese, also employed cultural equivalents to the jester.^[10][11]

English royal court jesters

Many

Jesters were also occasionally used as psychological warfare. Jesters would ride in front of their troops, provoke or mock the enemy, and even serve as messengers. They played an important part in raising their own army's spirits by singing songs and reciting stories.^[13][14]

Henry VIII of England employed a jester named Will Sommers. His daughter Mary was entertained by Jane Foole.^[15]

During the reigns of

Jester's privilege is the ability and right of a jester to talk and mock freely without being punished. As an acknowledgement of this right, the court jester had symbols denoting their status and protection under the law. The crown (cap and bells) and sceptre (marotte) mirrored the royal crown and sceptre wielded by a monarch.^[18][19]

Martin Luther used jest in many of his criticisms against the Catholic Church.^[20] In the introduction to his To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, he calls himself a court jester, and, later in the text, he explicitly invokes the jester's privilege when saying that monks should break their chastity vows.^[20]

Natural vs artificial fools

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There are two major groups when it comes to defining fools: artificial fools and natural fools. Natural fools consisted of people who were deemed "mentally defective," or as having a "deficiency in their education, experience or innate capacity for understanding," and stood as someone for the rest of society to laugh at.^{[21][full citation needed]} This policy was not generally criticised during its time. Groups of people even saw this act as a positive one, as these "natural" comedians were not typically able to have a job or earn any sort of living on their own. The second group, artificial fools, is what most people in modern times imagine when they hear the word "jester": someone who comes up with witty and original jokes in order to entertain a royal court. The main difference between the two groups is that a natural fool's comedy is not done intentionally while an artificial fool's is.

Political significance

Scholar David Carlyon has cast doubt on the "daring political jester", calling historical tales "apocryphal", and concluding that "popular culture embraces a sentimental image of the clown; writers reproduce that sentimentality in the jester, and academics in the Trickster", but it "falters as analysis".^[22]

Jesters could also give bad news to the King that no one else would dare deliver. In 1340, when the French fleet was destroyed at the

After the Restoration, Charles II did not reinstate the tradition of the court jester, but he did greatly patronise the theatre and proto-music hall entertainments, especially favouring the work of Thomas Killigrew. Though Killigrew was not officially a jester, Samuel Pepys in his famous diary does call Killigrew "The King's fool and jester, with the power to mock and revile even the most prominent without penalty" (12 February 1668).

In the 18th century, jesters had died out except in Russia, Spain, and Germany. In France and Italy, travelling groups of jesters performed plays featuring stylised characters in a form of theatre called the commedia dell'arte. A version of this passed into British folk tradition in the form of a puppet show, Punch and Judy. In France the tradition of the court jester ended with the abolition of the monarchy in the French Revolution.

In 2015, the town of Conwy in North Wales appointed Russel Erwood (aka Erwyd le Fol) as the official resident jester of the town and its people, a post that had been vacant since 1295.^[23][24]

Other countries

Poland's most famous court jester was Stańczyk, whose jokes were usually related to political matters, and who later became a historical symbol for Poles.^[25][26]

In 2004 English Heritage appointed Nigel Roder ("Kester the Jester") as the State Jester for England, the first since Muckle John 355 years previously.^[27] However, following an objection by the National Guild of Jesters, English Heritage accepted they were not authorised to grant such a title.^[28] Roder was succeeded as "Heritage Jester" by Pete Cooper ("Peterkin the Fool").^[29]

In

During the Renaissance Papacy, the Papal court in Rome had a court jester, similar to the secular courts of the time. Pope Pius V dismissed the court Jester, and no later Pope employed one.

In

The root of the word "fool" is from the Latin follis, which means "bag of wind" or bellows or that which contains air or breath.[32]

In Tarot

In

In literature, the jester is symbolic of common sense and of honesty, notably in King Lear, where the court jester is a character used for insight and advice on the part of the monarch, taking advantage of his licence to mock and speak freely to dispense frank observations and highlight the folly of his monarch. This presents a clashing irony as a greater man could dispense the same advice and find himself being detained in the dungeons or even executed. Only as the lowliest member of the court can the jester be the monarch's most useful adviser.

In Shakespeare

The

In a similar vein, a buffoon is someone who provides amusement through inappropriate appearance or behaviour. Originally the term was used to describe a ridiculous but amusing person. The term is now frequently used in a derogatory sense to describe someone considered foolish, or someone displaying inappropriately vulgar, bumbling or ridiculous behaviour which is a source of general amusement. The term originates from the old Italian "buffare", meaning to puff out one's cheeks^[35] that also applies to bouffon. Having swelled their cheeks they would slap them to expel the air and produce a noise which amused the spectators.^[36]

Carnival and medieval reenactment

Today, the jester is portrayed in different formats of

Historical

• Triboulet (1479–1536), court jester of Kings Louis XII and Francis I of France
• Stańczyk (c. 1480–1560), Polish jester
• João de Sá Panasco (fl. 1524–1567), African court jester of King John III of Portugal, eventually elevated to gentleman courtier of the Royal Household and Knight of St. James
• Jane Foole (c. 1543–1558), natural fool of Catherine Parr and Mary I of England
• Henry VIII of England
• Chicot (c. 1540–1591), court jester of King Henry III of France
• Mathurine de Vallois (fl. 1589 – fl. 1627), court jester of Henry III of France and Henry IV of France
• James I of England
• Jeffrey Hudson (1619–c. 1682), "court dwarf" of Henrietta Maria of France
• Jamie Fleeman (1713–1778), the Laird of Udny's Fool
• Perkeo of Heidelberg, 18th century, jester of Prince Charles III Philip, Elector Palatine
• Sebastian de Morra, (died 1649) court dwarf and jester to King Philip IV of Spain
• Don Diego de Acedo, court dwarf and jester to Philip IV of Spain
• Roulandus le Fartere, a medieval flatulist who lived in twelfth-century England

Modern-day jesters

• Jesse Bogdonoff (b. 1955), court jester and financial advisor to King Taufa'ahau Tupou IV of Tonga^[38][39]
• Russel Erwood (b. 1981), known as Erwyd le Fol, is the 2nd official resident jester of Conwy in North Wales replacing the jester of 1295^[40][41]

Fictional jesters

• Rigoletto – eponymous jester to the Duke of Mantua in Giuseppe Verdi's 1851 opera Rigoletto
• Yorick – dead court jester in William Shakespeare's play Hamlet
• Puck – court jester to the king of the fairies, Oberon in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream
• Jack Point – a 'strolling jester' in
  Savoy Opera, The Yeomen of the Guard
• Pomni – the main protagonist in the animated series The Amazing Digital Circus

Gallery

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• 
  John Dawson Watson – Friends in Council
• 
  Hinric Hasenberger, the Court Jester by David Klöcker Ehrenstrahl, 1652
• 
  "Family of Henry VIII with Will Sommers on the far right and probably Jane Foole on the far left
• 
  17th-century engraving of Will Sommers, Henry VIII's jester
• 
  Queen Henrietta Maria with Sir Jeffrey Hudson by

  Van Dyck
• 
  A court jester, carrying a marotte, selected for the Pageant of Empire in 1909
• 
  Portrait of the Ferrara Court Jester Gonella by Jean Fouquet 1445
• 
  Laughing jester, unknown Early Netherlandish artist (possibly Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen), circa 1500
• 
  Susuhunan jester participating in the "Garebeg Moeloed" procession (circa 1920s), Java, Indonesia
• 
  Russians have captured Smolensk

  .
• 
  Jester in Weingarten, Germany, in 2015
• 
  Masquerade by Golovin – Jester with hunch (1917, Bakhrushin museum)
• 
  Portrait of the Jester Balakirev (1699–1763)
• 
  The Court Jester of Tabbyland
• 
  Шут. Фрагмент миниатюры "Gaharié recevant le chapel" из "Романа о Ланселоте" (Français 112 (1), fol. 45), ок. 1470
• 
  Jester-doll made by Olina Ventsel (1938–2007)
• 
  Illustration p. 284 from "Queen of the Jesters" [Caption: Brought it down with a Crash upon the Head of Henri de Villefort.] Illustrator unknown; text by Max Pemberton.
• 
  Venne Woman and a jester
• 
  Man dressed as a jester, with a fool's cap, motley and white tights.
• 
  Statue of a jester depicted in the book Letters from England by Karel Čapek
• 
  Oil on panel, signed with monogram, bears inscribed label for the Dundee Fine Art Exhibition, 1877, attached opt the reverse, 23.7 × 15.5 cm.
• 
  Private collection, oil on canvas. Jacob Jordaens (1641–1645).
• 
  Jester Resting on a chair by William Merritt Chase, 1875, the work is one of several trial poses William Merritt Chase painted as preparation for his Keying Up- The Court Jester
• 
  P. B. Abery (1877?–1948) & Wallace Jones
• 
  The Court Jester by John Watson Nicol, 1895, oil on canvas, 41 × 57 cm. (16.1 × 22.4 in.)
• 
  Rahere, Bouffon de Henry I et de la Reine Matilda, début 1100.
• 
  Chase William Merrit
• 
  "Keying Up" – The Court Jester by William Merritt Chase 1875. (Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.)
• 
  Caricature of a court jester of Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, in the 16th century Recueil d'Arras, a collection of portraits copied by Jacques de Boucq
• 
  William Burges, English architect
• 
  Self Portrait in a Jester's Costume
• 
  The Jester Barbarossa by Francisco Goya
• 
  Royal Jester Stańczyk
• 
  Jester Knight Christoph by Hans Wertinger (1515, Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid)
• 
  Akram Mutlak Ménage À Trois Öl auf Leinwand
• 
  Bouffon
• 
  A jester with ass's ears
• 
  Anonymous German engraving, 16th century

• Billington, Sandra A Social History of the Fool, The Harvester Press, 1984.
  ISBN 0-7108-0610-8
• Doran, John A History of Court Fools, 1858
• ISBN 1-56000-218-2
• Otto, Beatrice K., "Fools Are Everywhere: The Court Jester Around the World," Chicago University Press, 2001
• Southworth, John, Fools and Jesters at the English Court, Sutton Publishing, 1998.
  ISBN 0-7509-1773-3
• Swain, Barbara. "Fools and Folly During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance" Columbia University Press, 1932.
• ISBN 1-299-14274-5
• Janik, Vicki K. (ed.) (1998). Fools and Jesters in Literature, Art, and History: A Bio-bibliographical Sourcebook. Greenwood Publishing Group, USA.
  ISBN 0-313-29785-1
  .
•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the
  Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities
  . London: John Murray. p. 183.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Jesters.

Look up jester or buffoon in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article "Fool".

• Fooling Around the World (A history of the court jester)
• Foolish Clothing: Depictions of Jesters and Fools in the Middle Ages and Renaissance What 14th-16th century jesters wore and carried, as seen in illustrations and museum collections.
• Costume (Jester Hat), ca. 1890-1920, in the Staten Island Historical Society Online Collection Database