The Wunderkammer of the Mild Colonial Boy, Esq., a Reactionary Tory Gentleman, who armed only with a Steampowered Babbage Engine and Pure Intentions, wanders the Time Streams and Aetheric Plane gathering an Eccentric Hodgepodge of Curiousities, Frivolities, Whimsicalities and Nonsense.
Q. Why is your Tumblelog called "My Ear-Trumpet Has Been Struck by Lightning"?
A. Because "My Grandmother's Ear-Trumpet Has Been Struck by Lightning" wouldn't fit in the available space.
Pretty medieval manuscript of the day is a juggler! Look at this chap, and how high he throws the golden plate! It is from a fourteenth century French manuscript which also has scenes of jousting and medieval sport.
Image source: Walters Manuscript MS W 104. Image declared as public domain on Wikimedia Commons.
know your fools
one of the 14 reasons i was so heavily into the king’s speech last year was that it reintroduced modern audiences to the fool trope of mediæval literature. only after the monarch (george vi) listens to the seemingly non-sensical advice of his social inferior and then participates in his foolish exercises, is he able to become a tru-sovereign™.
i maintain that fools are all around us. but what’s the difference between the fool and the jester? is a buffoon or natural still a fool? it turns out that the taxonomy of fools is as complex as the taxonomy of lizards. here is francis douce’s early nineteenth century attempt to classify all the types of fools in just the works of shakespeare alone:
I. The general domestic fool, often, but as it should seem improperly, termed a clown. He was 1. A mere natural, or idiot; 2. Silly by nature, yet cunning and sarcastical; 3. Artificial. All these officiated occasionally as menial servants.
II. The clown, who was 1. A mere country booby; 2. A witty rustic; 3. Any servant of a shrewd and witty disposition, and who, like a similar character in our modern plays, was made to treat his master with great familiarity in order to produce stage effect.
III. The female fool, who was generally an idiot.
IV. The city or corporation fool, whose office was to assist at public entertainments and in pageants. To this class belong perhaps the Lord Mayor’s state fool, and those employed by the companies of trades, &c.
V. Tavern fools. These seem to have been retained to amuse the customers…They were sometimes qualified to sing after the Italian manners. Fools were also employed in the common brothels.
VI. The fool of the ancient theatrical mysteries and moralities. He was, more properly speaking, the Vice…Being generally dressed in a fool’s habit, he appears to have been gradually and undistinguishably blended with the domestic fool; yet he was certainly a buffoon of a different sort. He was always a bitter enemy to the Devil, and a part of his employment consisted in teazing and tormenting the poor fiend on every occasion. He ceased to be in fashion at the end of the sixteenth century.
VII. The fool in the old dumb shows exhibited at fairs and perhaps at inns, in which he was generally engaged in a struggle with Death…It is possible that some casual vestiges’ of this species of entertainment might have suggested the modern English pantomimes.
VIII. The fool in the Whitsun ales and Morris dance.
IX. The mountebank’s fool, or merry Andrew.
were you to take the cosmo “what fool are you quiz” where would you land? as for me, i could see myself pretty easily as a class ii, subtype 1 fool.
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source: “a dissertation on the clowns and fools of shakespeare,” in illustrations of shakespeare, and of ancient manners, by francis douce (1807).
(Source: ragbag)
