With nord in mode this might be a good thread - whether Willy- challenged or not. Allowing Brits areas for Hysteria Week  and assorted Danes to have a fling. I suppose we should search for Historical wit - would 10 years back qualify?

When a Dr friend unwrapped my newly born grandson to check him out, his 4yr old brother was alarmed. 

"Why?" he yelled, alarming the ward, "Why  has HE got two willies and I've only got one?"

Gasp in ward followed by laughter when the Dr said. "It's a cord piece that will drop off."

Horrified  grandson then screams to further delight everywhere, "Your willy drops off? When?"

"If you ever scream any louder, " says me - not a life damaging attitude.... I hope.

Aaaagh! This thread title brought back memories of a comedy (sic) radio series starring Ted Ray entitled Ray's a Laugh which I recently encountered on BBC Radio 4 Extra.

That, and similar "classic comedies" like ITMA convinced me that comedy, as opposed to wit, has a season, and then, like W.s.'s "comedies" all traces of risibility evaporate.

Those old Radio shows were important in their day- ITMA was not hugely funny but how they managed to use the popular catch phrases each week was what people listened for - and used themselves as part of a shared bond. The later spate of peace time radio shows were likewise enjoyed. Some of those I thought funny - and clever in part my favourite being one called, 'Much Binding in the Marsh,' that in turn spawned 'Round the Bend' and 'Up the Horn,' along with 'Take it from Here,' the stars, had, or so I believe been in the forces and produced  troop entertainment.  Eventually, the Goon Show' evolved and little thereafter made the same impact. As you say, amusing perhaps in their day but jaded now. They were, at the time important however to morale. Writing this I realise what fun my teen years were. In our Grammar, there was much laughter and fun - with the staff - men and women - also and no angst or teen problems. How lucky we were. A later headmistress, however, did not have any of this and found me a real trial...…. especially when she suspected I was the editor of a clandestine school paper; even the staff who contributed did not  tell on me though.  An official school paper was launched and soon fizzled  It was the humour from Radio shows that had inspired us.

I forgot to address GG's remark about the relevance of Shakespeare's  comedies - mainly because I am ill qualified to make scholarly remark. When Temps is feeling better I hope she will. They remain popular - perhaps because  human confusion is on going. What may have set the pits to laughter passes us by but with skillful acting the foibles of the characters still can amuse.- and appreciating humour does not always call for laughter. The nature of humour and its importance in the human round is less mentioned than the the ills of trauma yet it is an important part of the human experience

Priscilla wrote:

I forgot to address GG's remark about the relevance of Shakespeare's  comedies - mainly because I am ill qualified to make scholarly remark. When Temps is feeling better I hope she will. They remain popular - perhaps because  human confusion is on going. What may have set the pits to laughter passes us by but with skillful acting the foibles of the characters still can amuse.- and appreciating humour does not always call for laughter. The nature of humour and its importance in the human round is less mentioned than the the ills of trauma yet it is an important part of the human experience

Priscilla, a bit of a "philosopher" you are. And yes the good "stuff" I guess is timeless.

Kind regards from Paul.

On second thoughts, it's probable the histories and tragedies suffer more. The "light relief" of the porter in Macbeth, or the gravediggers in Hamlet is predominantly verbal (as is the crowd scene in Julius Caesar) and is pretty much lost on modern audiences unless they have been told they are funny.

GG,

"unless they have been told they are funny"

Paul.

We went recently to a pop-up globe production (not that it was very pop-up, being in the beautiful Regent Theatre in Dunedin, worth a look on google) of Measure for Measure, a play I didn't know though I whipped through it quickly before we went. It was definitely played for laughs and got gallons of them from the audience. They stressed the bawdiness with one character holding a stick in front of as if it were a very extended penis, and I wondered what on earth the children in the audience (not that there were many) and our very Christian friends there made of it. 

To be honest I think the comedy outweighed some very serious soliloquies on impending death and its effect on people. But there is no doubt the audience appreciated the comedy.

If Priscilla's hope was that this thread would yield some historic jokes then here's one from the London stage in the reign of Charles II and is attributed to Thomas Betterton, a famous actor who was known to lace his scripted dialogue with topical asides, often having no relevance to the play he was in but which to many in his audience were worth the admission price in their own right:

Betterton: "You ask me if I can distinguish between an apothecary's tube and De Ruyter? Of course, sir! One, as you know, is a hollow cylinder whereas the other is a silly Hollander!"

Yup, they don't tell 'em like that anymore. Or in the words of Edmund Blackadder:



But as always with such clever word-play, I wonder just how long Betterton had been working on that particular 'joke', and then had to wait so much more until he finally found a suitable opening for his 'spontaneous' witty remark. Nevertheless I do admit it is a very witty comment.

I said it was historical, not hysterical ...

Betterton married a famous actress, Mary Saunderson, and they were something of a Taylor/Burton phenomenon of their day. He found limitless opportunity in exploiting this for comic effect - being sure to add an occasional "Last night I was feeling Merry" or "You have all felt Merry on occasion, curse you!" whenever he felt a play might be flagging. Saunderson, the poor woman, then found her own dramatic productions being interrupted by bawdy theatre-goers shouting these "witticisms" at her while she performed. So fed up did she become that she issued a pamphlet announcing her husband had "forsaken wit for raillery" and could "forsake our bed for his cot" if he continued. She also announced that she was henceforth hiring guys with cudgels to "patrol" theatre auditoriums when she was on stage and who would "deal with" anyone else who felt so inclined to "quote" her good husband again.

In what is surely a telling clue to the actual cultural standing of the thespian arts during the Restoration period, Betterton and Saunderson were by all accounts deemed "respectable" practitioners of their trade, which begs a question regarding the prevalent standards to which they were being compared.

Considering nordmann's mentioning of actors of the past inserting jokes into plays that were "drying" I think the British popular culture phenomenon of "panto" relies on topical jokes to some extent.  A pantomime staged in a smaller place will sometimes mention matters that wouldn't be known outside its own locality though I guess one staged in a bigger town or city will limit itself to jokes that would be understood nationally.

This thread is under a "health" heading so I hope it won't be deemed inappropriate to mention that the medical condition mentioned in the first post of this thread of being twice blessed isn't actually unknown.  It's called diphallia. It's very rare though.  
https://www.healthline.com › health › diphallia

Caro wrote:

We went recently to a pop-up globe production (not that it was very pop-up, being in the beautiful Regent Theatre in Dunedin, worth a look on google) of Measure for Measure, a play I didn't know though I whipped through it quickly before we went. It was definitely played for laughs and got gallons of them from the audience. They stressed the bawdiness with one character holding a stick in front of as if it were a very extended penis, and I wondered what on earth the children in the audience (not that there were many) and our very Christian friends there made of it. 

To be honest I think the comedy outweighed some very serious soliloquies on impending death and its effect on people. But there is no doubt the audience appreciated the comedy.

Caro,

excuses, just entered the board. (the whole evening research on the French Passion Histoire for the German Hans Oster a resistant to the Hitler regime).
And again excuses for ignoring as a European continental about  "Measure for measure" from Shakespeare.
And I see now that it seems to be a "dark comedy"
http://englishliterature24.blogspot.com/2018/02/measure-for-measure-as-dark-comedy.html

My question: Did the actors by their body language, language intonation, in one word the  general climate, context, environment (Dutch atmosfeer) that the actors created, were able to change "deadly serious events" into acts that start laughs and get gallons of them from the audience.
And was it that that you wanted to explain?

Kind regards from Paul.

It's not just panto, of course. Gilbert & Sullivan lyrics - particularly the "List" song - are usually updated by serious Savoyards (if that isn't an oxymoron)

Not really, Paul. I was just rebutting Gil's assertion that comedy has a season. Of course you could argue that SS deals with wit rather than comedy, but I think this play was definitely played as comedic rather than particularly witty. And certainly sexual innuendo hasn't dated, though some of the words for it may have, but this company stressed more the actions rather than the words. 
Of course some comedy dates (Benny Hill eg, though Mrs Brown's Boys seems to be very popular now and I don't understand why, though that may be because I only watch the ads for it and that puts both me and my husband off, so we have never watched it at all). 

For my though the production of M for M rather too much stressed the comedy and some of the serious points were lost. The actor saying them was also played more for comic laughs than the commentator on events that I found him to be in the play when I was reading it. Here is one of his speeches. Also, one of the actors, possibly this one was played for laughs as a Trump-like character with  an American accent, which I found out of place. 

Duke.  Be absolute for death; either death or life Shall thereby be the sweeter. Reason thus with life: If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing That none but fools would keep: a breath thou art, [size=undefined]        10[/size] Servile to all the skyey influences, That dost this habitation, where thou keep’st, Hourly afflict. Merely, thou art death’s fool; For him thou labour’st by thy flight to shun, And yet run’st toward him still. Thou art not noble: [size=undefined]        15[/size] For all th’ accommodations that thou bear’st Are nurs’d by baseness. Thou art by no means valiant; For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork Of a poor worm. Thy best of rest is sleep, And that thou oft provok’st; yet grossly fear’st [size=undefined]        20[/size] Thy death, which is no more. Thou art not thyself; For thou exist’st on many a thousand grains That issue out of dust. Happy thou art not; For what thou hast not, still thou striv’st to get, And what thou hast, forget’st. Thou art not certain; [size=undefined]        25[/size] For thy complexion shifts to strange effects, After the moon. If thou art rich, thou’rt poor; For, like an ass whose back with ingots bows, Thou bear’st thy heavy riches but a journey, And death unloads thee. Friend hast thou none; [size=undefined]        30[/size] For thine own bowels, which do call thee sire, The mere effusion of thy proper loins, Do curse the gout, serpigo, and the rheum, For ending thee no sooner. Thou hast nor youth nor age; But, as it were, an after-dinner’s sleep, [size=undefined]        35[/size] Dreaming on both; for all thy blessed youth Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms Of palsied eld; and when thou art old and rich, Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty, To make thy riches pleasant. What’s yet in this [size=undefined]        40[/size] That bears the name of life? Yet in this life Lie hid moe thousand deaths: yet death we fear, That makes these odds all even.   Claud.        I humbly thank you. To sue to live, I find I seek to die, [size=undefined]        45[/size] And, seeking death, find life: let it come on.

Sorry about the extra bits: I just copied this from some site on the internet.

Caro and MM,


Caro, I hope you will not blame me if I don't immediately understand the finesses of what you say.

I can understand your comment about Gil that real wit, comedy, humour have no season. But then you speak about "SS"?
And yes you can be right about Benny Hill dated. And when looking to the wiki about Mrs Brown's boys I can understand why you, your husband and I would have a horror to look to it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mrs._Brown%27s_Boys
"Mrs. Brown's Boys is recorded at the BBC Pacific Quay studios in Glasgow, Scotland^[22] and is recorded in front of a live audience, which is seen at the beginning and the end of each show. While a fictional storyline is the basis of each episode, the programme uses a laissez-faire style in which areas beyond the set, including equipment and crew, are sometimes seen and aspects of the show's production are lampooned within the fictional dialogue. The show takes a more irregular concept as bloopers such as characters getting lines wrong or corpsing; and set, camera, and prop faults are not edited out of the episodes.
At the beginning of each episode Agnes Brown breaks the fourth wall, with an introductory monologue. Each episode ends with Agnes again breaking the fourth wall to say goodbye. As the credits roll, the camera pulls out to see the audience and the cast of the entire episode lining up to take a bow. The finale of every series so far has ended with a music performance by the cast. "Who's a Pretty Mammy" ended with a performance of Auld Lang Syne, complete with bagpipes."
I hope it is this series that you mentioned


And Caro, the text that you mentioned, is that the Shakespeare text?
And then if so, am I right then that you explain now, what I mentioned?:
"My question: Did the actors by their body language, language intonation, in one word the  general climate, context, environment (Dutch atmosfeer) that the actors created, were able to change "deadly serious events" into acts that start laughs and get gallons of them from the audience.
And was it that that you wanted to explain?"

MM, as you know already since years Belgian and French dummies and their understanding of the English speech and are accustomed to their European continental thinking, can you help Caro to explain it all to me.

Kind regards from Paul.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

Considering nordmann's mentioning of actors of the past inserting jokes into plays that were "drying" I think the British popular culture phenomenon of "panto" relies on topical jokes to some extent.  A pantomime staged in a smaller place will sometimes mention matters that wouldn't be known outside its own locality though I guess one staged in a bigger town or city will limit itself to jokes that would be understood nationally.

This thread is under a "health" heading so I hope it won't be deemed inappropriate to mention that the medical condition mentioned in the first post of this thread of being twice blessed isn't actually unknown.  It's called diphallia. It's very rare though.  
https://www.healthline.com › health › diphallia

Lady,

I looked to diphalia and yes that what the doctors said the granddaughter had. Thus she got a golden retriever. We have many photos of the grandchildren with "him". But the guy passed away and the girl was broken hearted. But then she asked for a cat, despite the presumed diphalia. And a cat there came. A top cat. And we had to go to the veterinary to take his "balls" and the cat got berserk and climbed in the curtains at the veterenary room and he had a lot of trouble to give him the "narcose" needle stick...but the girl had no negative effect from the cat...but after some short years that cat too passed away from a heart disease...and that was the end of the animals in the family...

And while we are on the health forum. I read yesterday in the paper a "study" that optimists live really longer than pessimists. Optimism and pessimism would alter the composition of the blood. By way of the digestion? Bringing better stuff in the blood circulation or not?
In any case I try to be always an optimist. You never know...in case of...

Kind regards from Paul.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

Considering nordmann's mentioning of actors of the past inserting jokes into plays that were "drying" I think the British popular culture phenomenon of "panto" relies on topical jokes to some extent.  A pantomime staged in a smaller place will sometimes mention matters that wouldn't be known outside its own locality though I guess one staged in a bigger town or city will limit itself to jokes that would be understood nationally.

This thread is under a "health" heading so I hope it won't be deemed inappropriate to mention that the medical condition mentioned in the first post of this thread of being twice blessed isn't actually unknown.  It's called diphallia. It's very rare though.  
https://www.healthline.com › health › diphallia

Lady,

I looked to diphalia and yes that what the doctors said the granddaughter had. Thus she got a golden retriever. We have many photos of the grandchildren with "him". But the guy passed away and the girl was broken hearted. But then she asked for a cat, despite the presumed diphalia. And a cat there came. A top cat. And we had to go to the veterinary to take his "balls" and the cat got berserk and climbed in the curtains at the veterenary room and he had a lot of trouble to give him the "narcose" needle stick...but the girl had no negative effect from the cat...but after some short years that cat too passed away from a heart disease...and that was the end of the animals in the family...

And while we are on the health forum. I read yesterday in the paper a "study" that optimists live really longer than pessimists. Optimism and pessimism would alter the composition of the blood. By way of the digestion? Bringing better stuff in the blood circulation or not?
In any case I try to be always an optimist. You never know...in case of...

Kind regards from Paul.

Mmmm - my father was an optimist but on the other hand he died laughing - and that after having made a somewhat salacious jest to my mother as she tried to undress him to get some rest, having just sent for the Dr.

Paul, I imagine your granddaughter had the female equivalent of the condition [url=https://en.wikipedia.org %E2%80%BA wiki %E2%80%BA Uterus_didelphys]https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Uterus_didelphys[/url]  Again, it's not a common condition but not unknown either.  I knew of a couple of ladies (one about my age and one much younger) who were pregnant without showing one of the main signs of being pregnant if you catch my drift, so I wonder if they might have had that condition.  I never asked.  One of those lady had a number of miscarriages in between the birth of her elder child and her younger child, but then, even though she was a good friend I didn't want to be too nosey with possibly cheeky questions.  I did read something about a lady with two wombs being pregnant with a foetus in each womb but I would imagine that was unusual.

In one of my jobs when working full-time my line manager was American and I said something in lighter vein which he didn't get and so I said I thought English and American humour were different.  "I love Monty Python" he said (though he did put the emphasis on the 'thon' syllable.  Monty Python was somewhat quirky yet it seems to have been popular overseas and not just in the USA.

I agree entirely with what you say about Measure For Measure, Caro: it's not a comedy at all. It's one of the "problem" plays, dealing with the darker and more disturbing aspects of sex and politics, topics we usually don't want to think too much about. And, as you say, the play also deals with that ultimate no-speak subject: the terrors of death - decay and corruption in private bodies and in the body politic. Any humour to be milked is black humour (as in Porter scene in Macbeth and the Gravedigger in Hamlet).  That works for the play, but making it a priapic farce does not.


But where to start with all this? Aristotle on comedy in his Poetics? How Shakespeare flouted all the Aristotelian "rules"? How the great French playwrights were rather embarrassed by the English writers, and thought Wobbleweapon  in particular a complete barbarian for apparently not understanding how to write a "pure" tragedy: he couldn't do anything without adding a typically English "silly bit" somewhere? Plautus on tragicomedy?


But I'm thinking satire at the moment, having just been chortling over Private Eye. Is satire the best of silliness and intelligence combined? Chaucer, Jonson, Marston, Rochester,  Swift, Addison - and all the others too numerous to mention - are  they writers who were following the tradition of the Roman satirists, who were following the Greeks? Can the contributors to Private Eye - and journalist such as John Crace (whom MM has just mentioned on the Brexit thread) - compare, or is even satire a sadly dumbed-down business these days? Some of the images produced on social media are brilliantly witty - as good as anything in the old Punch. Satire can be dangerous, though, and can destroy people, then as now.


Archilochus, an lonian, introduced satire as an instrument of private hate and spite and made it a terrible weapon of attack. Browning says of him that " he had the art of writing verse that bit into live man's flesh like parchment and sent him wandering branded and forever shamed about his native streets and fields." This was so far true that three of his victims hanged themselves, unable to endure his taunts. 


PS Will try to find YouTube of Stephen Fry as Malvolio - WW not funny any more???!!

PPS And  then there is Oscar - our beloved Oscar...

Typed in haste, what a ramble.

Ah, but then wasn't the theatrical style of WS's time to always have a variety of interludes into the main narrative of the play, whether it be ostensibly a tragedy, comedy, history etc?

Romeo and Juliet (basically a tragedy) has several comedic - even slap-stick if that's how the troupe choose to play it - interludes; while Richard III (a serious history, at least as it was being presented to Tudor audiences) has Richard making casual, topical jokes and even self-mocking soliloques. As per the times, there's also in most/all of WS's plays a philosophical reference or two to the fragility of life (ever fragile in the 16/17th century, especially for infants) and to the bittersweet taste of unrequited love (so fequently cut off by one's social standing or simply by untimely death) ... plus of course throw in a few good songs, a background love story, a simple clown or a foolish official, the obigatory dig at the French, and few further jokes at the expense of the Catholic Church.

MM wrote:

...a dig at the French...

Agreed, MM, but the French were very snooty about English theatrical style - thought plays and audiences equally vulgar. They probably had a point, especially (as noted above) about English productions after the Restoration. I remember reading how, at one performance of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, the King and his brother James themselves  being in the audience, one "wit" shouted out, as Cleopatra applied the papier-mâché asp to her (naked) bosom: "Odd's fish, I've seen this six times now: that viper should be weaned by now!" Everyone fell about laughing, including, apparently, the royal brothers.

Not quite like a performance of  Racine's Phèdre before Louis IV, I'm afraid.  

PS Imagine the jokes Shakespeare and his contemporaries would have made about Brexit! (Better not - we'll get into trouble...)

The French might have been snooty ... but, there again have you ever read, or indeed ever seen performed, any Molière?  No me neither ... I didn't have the staying power. Mon Dieu, compared to Shakespeare, Molière is dire, turgid, moralistic stuff. They've nothing to be snooty about. I once walked out of a performance of 'Tartuffe' after just 20 mins ... it was so serious, turgid, and set on its fixed satirical message that it was becoming tedious and frankly boring. And not one joke, merry quip, or song to lighten it at all.

Yes, Shakespeare's audiences did enjoy a merry quip or two - not to mention a jig whenever possible. I think there was even a Gravediggers' Dance in one early production of Hamlet. 

I blame that Aristotle for the French being such theatre snobs. The French couldn't grasp that the classical rules were made to be broken - well, most of the time. Shakespeare understood the rules well enough: his genius was in the breaking of them. He even made a joke about it in Hamlet, usually considered the greatest tragedy ever written. WW has Polonius say that that the arriving actors are "the best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable or poem unlimited. Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light. For the law of writ and liberty, these are the only men."

Priscilla wrote:

Mmmm - my father was an optimist but on the other hand he died laughing - and that after having made a somewhat salacious jest to my mother as she tried to undress him to get some rest, having just sent for the Dr.

Yes Priscilla, even an optimist dies once, even in your case laughing.

Kind regards from Paul.

Priscilla wrote:

Mmmm - my father was an optimist but on the other hand he died laughing - and that after having made a somewhat salacious jest to my mother as she tried to undress him to get some rest, having just sent for the Dr.

Yes Priscilla, even an optimist dies once, even in your case laughing.

Kind regards from Paul.

Temperance, I know I can search it immediately on Google, but what do you see as the connotation of "priapic"? Never met the word in "my" reading.

Kind regards from Paul.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

Paul, I imagine your granddaughter had the female equivalent of the condition [url=https://en.wikipedia.org %E2%80%BA wiki %E2%80%BA Uterus_didelphys]https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Uterus_didelphys[/url]  Again, it's not a common condition but not unknown either.  I knew of a couple of ladies (one about my age and one much younger) who were pregnant without showing one of the main signs of being pregnant if you catch my drift, so I wonder if they might have had that condition.  I never asked.  One of those lady had a number of miscarriages in between the birth of her elder child and her younger child, but then, even though she was a good friend I didn't want to be too nosey with possibly cheeky questions.  I did read something about a lady with two wombs being pregnant with a foetus in each womb but I would imagine that was unusual.

In one of my jobs when working full-time my line manager was American and I said something in lighter vein which he didn't get and so I said I thought English and American humour were different.  "I love Monty Python" he said (though he did put the emphasis on the 'thon' syllable.  Monty Python was somewhat quirky yet it seems to have been popular overseas and not just in the USA.

Lady,

OOPS   now I see what happened:
"I looked to diphalia and yes that what the doctors said the granddaughter had. Thus she got a golden retriever. We have many photos of the grandchildren with "him". But the guy passed away and the girl was broken hearted. But then she asked for a cat, despite the presumed diphalia. And a cat there came. A top cat. And we had to go to the veterinary to take his "balls" and the cat got berserk and climbed in the curtains at the veterenary room and he had a lot of trouble to give him the "narcose" needle stick...but the girl had no negative effect from the cat...but after some short years that cat too passed away from a heart disease...and that was the end of the animals in the family..."


I didn't look to "diphalia" on
https://www.healthline.com

I looked to the first item appearing on that site...on that date...
And it was about "allergic reactions ot cat hair or something like that...had I mentioned that, you would have understood...

And even more trouble  ...I tried to correct your wiki as it didn't appear right in the text...and found it...but when trying to enter in Google it said everytime: you can't reach this page or perhaps this page is not available...several times...perhaps "they" follow my profile and they think I am an old...although I honestly have no "history" on the web...tried at least with other subjects in wiki and there it all "worked". At the end I found a non wiki, which said
https://www.nationwidechildrens.org/conditions/uterine-didelphys


And that American was perhaps from near the Mexican border, as in Spanish and French and Dutch they put the emphasis on the last syllable of "python"...

Again excuses for the starting of the misunderstandment...

Kind regards from Paul.

Chaucer's work has endured and the humour in his satire must have been clear in its day - did it have impact at the time? Observation of social mores engender humour one can relate to. Raised and now back in the same small community where relationships are more closely observed brings to mind another timeless piece of social record with humour, Under Milk Wood. I once read every female part in a Son et Lumiere production and it was a joy to do especially Mrs Pritchard. Every character could be identified with people I knew in my growing years and the humour remains delicious.

Chaucer's tales - even though not in French - were hugely popular at Court. He had to be careful, but it seems everyone enjoyed the sly digs at the Church; and, of course, everyone could feel vastly superior laughing at the idiocies and vulgarities of the lower orders - and of the lower middle-classes. Nothing changes, does it? 

But I've been thinking about the so-called "clown" (not circus) tradition. I was going to post something about Robert Armin and the man he replaced at the Globe - William Kempe. For some reason thinking about Kempe brought Charlie Chaplin to mind, especially that work of genius, The Great Dictator. I've watched it this morning and found myself laughing and weeping. Did ever comedy - utter absurdity and "silliness" - do so much to counter the violence, racism and stupidity of evil men? Just the names - Herr Herring, Herr Garbitsch and, of course, Adenoid Hynkel, make me laugh.

The brilliantly ridiculous comedy, followed by the passion and sincerity of the famous Great Speech delivered by Chaplin's little  Jewish barber, must have done more for morale than all the Anglo-American propaganda films put together. Comedy may have changed the course of history.
 

Temperance, yes the Great Dictator. That's my utmost favourite. 
I made once a whole thread about it on a French forum or was it overhere too.
And I agree completely with you for once 

Kind regards from Paul.

Deleted. Too silly even for a Larf thread.

The part of the fool in Lear was not to amuse the audience alone, was it? I ought look it up  but not sure what the Court Jester role was all about - or if indeed it was an ongoing role. I doubt Ivan the Terrible had one - well not for long any way. Seems to me to be an unsafe career option unless allowed licence but then it would be a bit of a problem if they got got enough say, to become Prime Minister.

Priscilla wrote:

The part of the fool in Lear was not to amuse the audience alone, was it? I ought look it up  but not sure what the Court Jester role was all about - or if indeed it was an ongoing role. I doubt Ivan the Terrible had one - well not for long any way. Seems to me to be an unsafe career option unless allowed licence but then it would be a bit of a problem if they got got enough say, to become Prime Minister.

Henry VIII once nearly killed his Fool - he'd made an extremely unwise joke about the Queen being a  "ribald" (a whore) and her child, the Princess Elizabeth, being a bastard.

The Fool in Lear is one of Shakespeare's triumphs, but he is hardly the theatrical fool or clown who had come down from the Morality plays, the "jester" who was the favourite of the rowdy groundlings. This traditional clown was a sore trial to the cultured poet and spectator: Jonson and Massinger exclude him from their plays, and his part in the drama diminishes markedly towards the end of the 16th century. But then Shakespeare gives us the Fool - how that must have confounded Jonson! -  a Fool who is an amazing blend of bitter wisdom and witty terror. Paradox is the key to understanding him. Shakespeare uses the Fool in many ways, but I remember being struck by Harold Bloom's comment that one of them clearly involves Erasmus's preference for folly over "knowing". And Blake may have been thinking of Lear's Fool in the Proverb of Hell: "If the Fool would persist in his folly, he would become wise." Who is the wise man and who is the fool in this world? Lear's tragedy shows us we are all "fools" in the Shakespearean sense, except for those among us who are outright villains.

I wonder what Henry VIII would have made of this exchange:

Fool: If thou wert my Fool, Nuncle, I'd have thee beaten for being old before thy time.

Lear: How's that?

Fool: Thou should'st not have been old till thou hadst been wise.

I think what I am trying to say, Priscilla, is that the Fool in Lear ain't funny - he is the voice of wisdom. He tells Lear the truth the aged King does not want to face. He is Lear's Shadow, if you like. Interestingly, in the recent production at the National directed by Sam Mendes and starring Simon Russell Beale, the problem of the "disappearance" of the Fool is addressed in a brilliant way: Lear beats him to death. Shades of Henry VIII?

I was wondering who, and when, was the last royal court jester. - at least in England and outside Parliament. Good old Google revealed all:



John Southworth's book 'Fools and Jesters at the English Court' regards the dwarf Jeffery Hudson as the last jester. Born in 1619, Hudson was taken into the household of the Duke of Buckingham as a boy and later presented to Charles I's queen Henrietta-Maria, probably in the late 1620s. He remained at Charles I's court till the outbreak of the Civil War. He accompanied the queen into exile in France but was banished from court for duelling in 1644. After a period in slavery in Turkey, he returned to England somehow, but little is known of his life till 1679, when he was imprisoned on suspicion of involvement in Roman Catholic plots. He died in 1682.

In Pepys's diary for February 13, 1668, Pepys says 'Mr Brisband ... tells me ... that Tom Killigrew hath a fee out of the Wardrobe for cap and bells, under the title of the King's Fool or Jester, and may with privilege jeer or revile anybody ... without offence, by the privilege of his place.' Southworth thinks that this 'appointment' was probably a joke. Killigrew, like others of Charles II's courtiers, had a sharp wit and insulted people freely, but he can't be regarded as an official jester.

There were female fools too, the most famous being Jane the Fool who was the servant of Katherine Parr and Mary Tudor - possibly of Anne Boleyn too.

Catherine de Medici kept a troupe of fools, usually dwarfs. One of her female fools specialised in mocking Elizabeth of England. I believe Mary, Queen of Scots, when she returned to Scotland, took one of her mother-in-law's fools with her. I can't for the life of me remember her name now, although I know there was a Lucretia the Tumbler. She may have been at the English court, though. Will try and look it up.



EDIT: The French fool at Holyrood was La Jardinière, but there was also Nichola La Folle. Interestingly - and typical of the deep attachment that sometimes developed between a royal master or mistress and his or her "Fool" - Nichola stayed with Mary through thick and thin, remaining loyal to her unfortunate (and foolish) mistress even when the queen was imprisoned. Nichola did eventually return to France.

I didn't know there were female fools (in that sense), Temperance.  I had assumed that the tendency for stage actors to be male in Master Wobbleweapon's time extended to fools/comedians also. Though I guess the royal court was a law unto itself.

I don't know much about female entertainers in medieval and Tudor and Stewart times.  I know that there were female dancers "tombesteres" - though I won't vouch for my spelling of the word here -Chaucer's The Pardoner's Tale.  I remember from my long ago classes for O level English Literature that "ster" as a suffix to a noun could indicate it applied to the female of the species at that time.

Temperance, I read a historical whodunnit by Edward Marston with a background in Elizabethan Theatre called The Counterfeit Crank. In that book (admittedly a work of fiction) one of the members of the troop of players has a flare for comedy so the playwright to the company (not named Wobbleweapon or a name that Wobbleweapon is a parody of) has to work an opportunity for that actor to show his comic flare into any plays he writes. It is possible that the characteristics of the members of a troop of actors may have impacted on the inclusion of a "fool" or not in a dramatic work.

Didn't all the very best learned Tudor gentlemen keep fools? Thomas Moore had one, whose name escapes me for the moment ... was it Pagett or something like that? In Moore's case it was certainly not just for his idle amusement but for deliberate philisophical reasons; to act as a foil to accustomed learning, or as an attempt to discover hidden wisdom (out of the 'mouths of babes and innocents' etc.) ... in much the same manner as Feste the Fool in 'Twelfth Night' is described as "wise enough to play the fool", or as Feste himself says, "better a witty fool than a foolish wit".

PS - You mentioned Queen Henrietta-Maria's loyal fool, the dwarf Jeffrey Hudson ... and here he is next to Henrietta-Maria in a painting by Van Dyke:

A general search on fools and jesters brought this page up https://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/640914.html
referring to a book "Fooling Around the World" by Beatrice K Otto.  I might see if my local library has a copy.  Not everyone wants to click on links so I'll mention that Ms Otto avers that the practice of keeping a jester prevailed longer in some households less elevated than a king's.  (So looks as though you are right MM about having a fool in the household was a common occurrence in wealthier households).  The extract from Ms Otto's book linked mentions that figures something akin to jesters were known in other cultures besides European ones and that the book Anna and the King of Siam on which The King and I musical was based refers to a dwarf-jester at the Siamese kingly court.

PaulRyckier wrote:

Priscilla wrote:

Mmmm - my father was an optimist but on the other hand he died laughing - and that after having made a somewhat salacious jest to my mother as she tried to undress him to get some rest, having just sent for the Dr.

Yes Priscilla, even an optimist dies once, even in your case laughing.

Whether an optimist or an optometrist but dying from laughter was also the fate of an audiologist in 1988 while viewing the film A Fish Called Wanda. I had never seen the film until the other week and have to say that the unfortunate audiologist really needed to have his hearing checked because there wasn’t a single point in the film which called for a belly laugh. There were a couple of chuckles maybe but that was about it. Perhaps the film was of its time and hasn’t aged well.

I had forgotten this thread. Pity Temps is not back to speed here - her contributions were always so interesting. But  as she is not perhaps it is safe for me to write about a theory I had and have hung on to - after seeing a very good Lear at Stratford was that he had a split personality and was actually the fool also - until the fool half of him took over wholly as king.  

Glad I wrote that as I doubt anyone is likely to contest it............ chicken post.....mmm.

Surely part of the playwright's skill is to create a work which allows the audience to interpret the characters in their own imagination? Bit like the truism that the pctures are better on radio?