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Beatrice K. Otto finds court jesters across the world and in every age.
DURING EGYPT'S SIXTH DYNASTY (c. 2323-2150BC), an official wrote to the Pharaoh Neferkere to let him know he'd found a dancing dwarf. The Pharaoh's response is the first instance known to us of a monarch delighting in a jester:
Come northward to the court immediately; thou shalt bring this dwarf with thee ... to rejoice and gladden the heart of the king of Upper and Lower Egypt, Neferkere, who lives forever.
About four millennia later another dwarf was talent-spotted in Thailand. He was taken to Bangkok, trained in acrobatic wizardry and presented to the king as a jester.
Frederick Millingen, a Victorian writer, visited the Maghreb, where: the Bey of Tunis ... had fools to amuse him in the evening, who insulted and diverted him by the contrast between their permitted insolence and his real power.
To most people in the West the court jester is a European phenomenon. They picture him vividly, capering in cap and bells, cracking jokes and speaking his mind. Even without formal study, this idea of the jester's role is astonishingly accurate. Yet the general perception that he was a product of medieval and Renaissance Europe is less accurate.
In fact the arena of the jester is breathtakingly broad, stretching across place and time. He is a universal character who appears in all the major civilisations and many less well-known ones. In spite of the diversity of cultures in which he has flourished, the similarities between court jesters around the world far outweigh the cultural differences of their surroundings.
In addition to humorously couched counsel, jesters around the world offered physical as well as verbal entertainment. They could play musical instruments or compose verse on the spot, set or solve riddles, juggle soup bowls or eat fire. They often emerged from a general pool of court entertainers, including comic actors, minstrels, storytellers, bards and acrobats. They could be talent-spotted by a passing nobleman, or they could just catch the eye of the king - their appointment tended to be informal, spontaneous and meritocratic.
The qualities that made a jester and distinguished him from an ordinary entertainer tended to be more concerned with inherent disposition than with...