fool

fool or court jester, a person who entertains with buffoonery and an often caustic wit. In all countries from ancient times and extending into the 18th cent., mental and physical deformity provided amusement. Attached to noble and royal courts were dwarfs, cripples, idiots, albinos, and freaks. The medieval court fool was seldom mentally deficient. For the freedom to indulge in satire, tricks, and repartee, many men of keen insight and caustic wit obtained powerful patronage by assuming the role of fool. This role was played in the courts of the East, in ancient Greece and Rome, and in the court of Montezuma. The clown or jester was common in Elizabethan drama (e.g., the Fool in King Lear ), and by donning the fool's garb the actor gained the freedom of the fool. His costume, which was hung with bells, usually consisted of a varicolored coat, tight breeches with legs of different colors—occasionally a long petticoat was worn—and a bauble (mock scepter) and a cap which fitted close to the head or fell over the shoulders in the form of asses' ears. Till Eulenspiegel and Robin Goodfellow are mythical fools.

Bibliography: See B. Swain, Fools and Folly (1932); E. Welsford, The Fool (1936, repr. 1961); S. Billington, A Social History of the Fool (1984).

fool, the, a character appearing in various forms in English drama, most notably among Shakespeare and his contemporaries. The character has a variety of origins, from the medieval court jester to the licensed clown of the Feast of Fools. He appears in numerous incarnations in Shakespeare as the simpleton (the clown in The Winter's Tale), the rogue (Autolycus), and the wise court jester (Touchstone in As You Like It). He is also related to the Arlecchino of the commedia dell'arte.

Ri Tarlton played the main comic parts in the Queen's Company of players until his death in 1588. In Shakespeare's company the part of the fool was played by W. Kemp until his retirement c.1599, when he was replaced by Robert Armin, a somewhat more subtle actor for whom Shakespeare probably wrote the more complex parts of the fool in King Lear and Feste in Twelfth Night.

fool1
A. one deficient in judgement or sense XIII; professional jester, clown XIV;

B. adj. foolish XIII; now only (exc. dial.) as attrib. use of the sb. ME. fōl sb. and adj. — OF. fol (mod. fou mad) :- L. follis bellows, inflated ball, (later fig.) ‘windbag’, empty-headed person.
Hence fool vb. play the fool, make a fool of XVI. foolery XVI. foolhardy XIII. — OF. folhardi ‘foolish-bold’. foolscap (fool's cap) cap of a professional fool; folio paper of a kind that orig. bore a watermark representing a fool's cap. XVII.