The Fool: His Social & Literary History - book review

First published in 1935, The Fool is a rich, extensively researched, and one of the few existing studies of the character of the buffoon in history across cultures, literature, the stage, and finally the screen. From his first recorded appearance in ancient Greece all the way to Charlie Chaplin as the latest successor of the characters' traditions at the time of writing. Enid Welsford tells the wild stories of witty parasites, laughter-makers (and/or laughed at), hunchbacks, dwarves, dimwits, jokers, and mischief makers - first through historical accounts, then imagined, and sometimes both.

Fun fact: the paperback re-edition from 1968 I managed to find boasts a sticker saying the original price of the book was ￡1.10. I paid about 30 times that amount!

The Fool, Court-fool, Court-jester, Buffoon, Harlequin, and Clown are all related characters, sometimes one and the same, even. Though the author splits the book between recorded history and fantasy, it seems challenging to be clear cut about exactly where reality ends (often for lack of clear records beyond royal accounting books) and mythical traits begin.

I'd never read anything quite like this, nearly everything I was reading was completely new, or new perspectives on knowledge I took for granted. Research is also in original language: whole passages of the book are in French and German. 

On the topic of myth, the chapter about the Fool as Poet and Clairvoyant, talks about Merlin, the Arthurian legend character - who typically makes me think of a classic high wizard or mage. In fact, the character is correctly named Myrddin, and in the 1932 The Growth of Literature, a Professor Chadwick apparently makes a credible argument for the character to appear as a naked, hairy madman and bard, in two different documents and poems from Wales and Scotland. 

The book doesn't feature many actual examples of witty jests, though I enjoyed this story, apparently from the 14th century, in La Nef des fols du monde:

 "It happened one day in Paris that a quarrel broke out between a street porter having sat down to eat his dinner near the shop-door, in order that his fare of plain bread might be made more savoury by the smell of the roasted meat, was annoyed to find the shopkeeper avaricious enough to charge him for this privilege. A fight ensued and the court-fool 'Seigni Johan', who was called in to conciliate the brawlers, pronounced the solemn judgement that the porter should for the smell of the roast with the sound of his money." 

I wanted to read this because I found the character of the Fool and Joker quite fascinating, and close to my interests about studying play. I was also curious about the historical relationship between this figure, comedy, and power. This comedian figure had a place next to kings in the middle ages (admittedly it was also a tragic figure at times), then in some cases was pitted against religious authorities, and finally seems to have ended up as an entertainer - separate from power. Comedy and humour, even though important and human, don't seem to have much dedicated space and time in the modern corporate world, which I think is kind of interesting, and I might have a book idea about it. I also figure that reading books few others have these days may lead to thinking and ideas few others have too.

To paraphrase a point made by the author at the end of the book, if one imagines wisdom on a spectrum, you might find a rational intellectual, learned wisdom on one end, and something opposite on the other end, perhaps a kind of natural, instinctual wisdom, so obvious it's silly - that is where the Fool lives, and thrives.

"So perhaps we may add a fourth order of fools; there are those who get slapped, there are those who are none the worse for their slapping, there are those who adroitly change places with the slappers, and occasionally there are those who enquire, 'What do slaps matter to the man whose body is made of indiarubber, and whose mind is of quicksilver, and who can even - greatest triumph of all - persuade you for the moment that such indeed is your case?' For the Fool is a great untrusser of our slaveries, and comedy is the expression of the spirit of the Fool." - Enid Welsford