Basochiens
Society of Parisian law clerks devoted to comic performance. In 1442 the Basochiens entered into a cooperative arrangement with the Confrérie de la Passion that continued to the end of ...
Christian Weise
(1642–1702),German dramatist, headmaster of a school at Zittau, where he wrote and produced a number of long plays which were purely academic. The chronicle plays and tragedies of his ...
clown
In Elizabethan days a composite comic character, who might be a simpleton, a knave, or a Court Jester. Shakespeare provides examples of all three with Costard in Love's Labour's Lost ...
Court Fool
Member of the Royal Household, also known as the King's Jester, not to be confused with the humbler Fool of the folk festivals. His origin has been variously traced to ...
Do Dera
The fool of Lugaid mac Con who put on the crown to impersonate him during the Battle of Cenn Abrat. Lugaid escaped, but Do Dera was killed by Eógan (3), of Munster.
English Comedians
Itinerant English theatre companies which toured Germany from the late sixteenth to early seventeenth centuries. In many ways similar to the commedia dell'arte troupes, the Englische Komödianten ...
ethnic jokes
The English are not alone in having an active repertoire of jokes which rely for their point on negative ethnic stereotypes, as all European countries have their joke cycles about particular groups. ...
Feast of Fools
Generic name for the New Year revels in European cathedrals and collegiate churches, when the minor clergy usurped the functions of their superiors and burlesqued the services of the Church. ...
Fortune
Chance or luck as a power in human affairs, often personified (Fortune) as a goddess; the word comes (in Middle English, via Old French) from Latin Fortuna, the name of a goddess personifying luck or ...
freak show
Public exhibition of the extraordinary body for pleasure and profit. Since the medieval period, the ‘othered’ body has been displayed, particularly at carnival occasions such as London's Bartholomew ...
Gotham
Sobriquet of New York City, derived from the jocular reputation of the “wise men” of Gotham, England, noted for their foolish actions. The name was first so used in Irving's Salmagundi (1807–8).
Jakob Ayrer
(1543–1605),early German dramatist, successor to Hans Sachs, and like him a prolific author of Fastnachtsspiele, of which about 60 were published in 1618. Ayrer, who spent most of his ...
Lugaid mac Con
[son of hound]. Mythical leader of the Érainn of Munster, to be distinguished from the similarly named Lugaid mac Con Roí. A leading figure of the Cycle of Kings, Lugaid mac Con suffers defeat from ...
Michel de Ghelderode
(b. Ixelles, Belgium, 3 April 1898; d. Schaerbeek, Belgium, 1 April 1962)Prolific avant-garde playwright and story writer. Although Ghelderode was the driving force in Belgian theatre during the ...
moonrakers
One of the stock jokes about fools is that they mistake the reflection of the full moon in a pond for a round cheese, and try to rake it out. The nickname ‘moonrakers’ is traditionally given to ...
Narr
German equivalent of the early English Fool, who appears in the 16th-century Fastnachtsspiel or Carnival Play. Though not originally a comic character (the fools in Sebastian Brant's poem Das ...
puppet
Inanimate figure controlled by human agency, which can be larger than life or only a few inches high. It is probably as old as the theatre itself, and it is ...
Richard Tarlton
(d.1588)English actor. From 1583 to his death, Tarlton acted with the Queen's Men, playing at the Curtain, at London inns, and on company tours. Whatever the play, Tarlton inhabited ...
Sotie
Topical and satirical play of medieval France, whose best-known author is Pierre Gringore (c.1475–1538). The sotie was not a farce, though the two forms had elements in common, and it ...
Vice
A fool or buffoon introduced into some of the interludes and later Moralities as a figure of evil. The descent of the figure from characters in Mystery Cycles and Morality Plays (such as ‘The Vices’, ...
