"Jester" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... onward! Though the jester deride And the hand of the pilot the helm drops in fear; Sail on to the West, till that shore is descried Which so clearly defined to thy mind ...
— Thirteen Chapters of American History - represented by the Edward Moran series of Thirteen - Historical Marine Paintings • Theodore Sutro
... the dregs of the river than she had ever been in the dregs of New York. She shuddered. Then, as so often, the sense of the grotesque thrust in, as out of place as jester in cap and bells at a bier—and she smiled sardonically. "Why," thought she, "in being squeamish about Freddie I'm showing that I'm more respectable than the respectable women. There's hardly one of them that doesn't swallow worse doses with less excuse or no excuse at all—and ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... in a jeering tone, the Puritan deigned no reply; but an answer was given for him by Archee, the court jester, who had managed in the confusion to creep up to ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... not know whether it be worth while to tell what followed, for it was very ridiculous; but I shall venture at it, for as it is not foreign to this matter, so some good use may be made of it. There was a jester standing by, that counterfeited the fool so naturally, that he seemed to be really one. The jests which he offered were so cold and dull, that we laughed more at him than at them; yet sometimes he said, as it were by chance, things that were not unpleasant; so as to justify the old proverb, ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... had enjoyed the experience somewhat at first, for there is pleasing and indefinable thrill to unexpected adventure, and this, for a brief spell, had been adventure de luxe. There had been warmth and light, men's laughter, women's voices, and children's play. But the loudest jester among the men was now silent, huddled deep in his great coat; and the young woman who had clapped her hands in silly ecstasy when it was announced that the train was snowbound was weeping and shivering by turns. It was cold—so cold that the snow which came sweeping and swirling ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... mused the jester, fingering the mildewed shroud, "and sooth, he was the finest mute that ever crooked a back in the Bohemian court. Famous he was, all hereabouts, to the marches of ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... of trading, or offering us island curios at prices palpably absurd. There was no word of welcome; no show of civility; no hand extended save that of the chief and Mr. Regler. As we still continued to refuse the proffered articles, complaint ran high and rude; and one, the jester of the party, railed upon our meanness amid jeering laughter. Amongst other angry pleasantries—'Here is a mighty fine ship,' said he, 'to have no money on board!' I own I was inspired with sensible repugnance; even with ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had brought with him from town; ordinarily, that would have been enough to make a clerk go about banging doors and expressing himself emphatically upon many points; but no, Eleseus only grew the steadier for it firmer and more upright; a man indeed. Even Sivert, the jester, could not put him out of countenance. Today the pair of them were lying out on boulders in the river to drink, and Sivert imprudently offered to get some extra fine moss and dry it for tobacco—"unless you'd rather smoke ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... Average Jones. "This Ackroyd person seems to be a merry little jester. Well, I'm feeling rather jocular, myself, this morning. How does one collect black beetles, I wonder? When in doubt, inquire of ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the van, their-crowns were of silver, by gilt concealed, And emblems they. carried of quaint device, engraved on each jester's shield; They had staves which with crests were adorned, and ribs down their edges in red bronze ran; Three harp-players moved by the jesters' sides, and each was a kingly man. All these were the gifts that the fairy gave, and gaily they made their start, And to Croghan's[FN3] hold, in that guise ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... world, and the less at this; inasmuch as one of the first of our own Church, for whose candour and paternal sentiments I have the highest veneration, fell into the same mistake in the very same case: —"He could not bear," he said, "to look into the sermons wrote by the King of Denmark's jester." Good, my Lord said I; but there are two Yoricks. The Yorick your Lordship thinks of, has been dead and buried eight hundred years ago; he flourished in Horwendillus's court;—the other Yorick is myself, who have flourished, my Lord, in no court.- -He shook his head. Good ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne
... Simon—not "the Cellarer," but rather, "the sold one." Mr. MONKHOUSE, whose name and personality go to prove that a cowl does not preclude its occasional occupation by a wag, is most amusing as Gosric. Mr. ALBERT JAMES is a lively jester, whose quips and cranks might have been of considerable value to Mr. JOSEPH MILLER when that literary droll was engaged in compiling his comic classic. Miss D'ARVILLE and Madame AMADI both work with a will, and find a way to public favour. The dresses are in excellent ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 8, 1890 • Various
... your master's coming. Go thou hence and tell your master he can be proud of thee. And take you this bag of gold besides such other prizes as are yours." So as the knave stood there, the King turned to Sir Dagonet, his jester, who was ...
— In the Court of King Arthur • Samuel Lowe
... Pett; but it matters not. Yes, says my Lord, Sir J. Minnes, who is great with the Chancellor; I told him the Chancellor I have thought was declining, and however that the esteem he has among them is nothing but for a jester or a ballad maker; at which my Lord laughs, and asks me whether I believe he ever could do that well. Thence with Mr. Creed up and down to an ordinary, and, the King's Head being full, went to the other over against it, a pretty man ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... on the Italian stage permitted at the Foire du St. Germain, in Paris, was renowned for the wild, venturous, and extravagant wit, the brilliant sallies and fortunate repartees, with which he prodigally seasoned the character of the party-coloured jester. Some critics, whose good-will towards a favourite performer was stronger than their judgment, took occasion to remonstrate with the successful actor on the subject of the grotesque vizard. They went wilily to their purpose, observing that his classical and Attic ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... {182} habit of dressing in livid and unpleasant colors; and are distinguished from all other flowers by twisting, not only their stalks, but one of their petals, not once and a half only, but two or three times round, and putting it far out at the same time, as a foul jester would put out his tongue: while also the singular power of grotesque mimicry, which, though strong also in the other groups of their race, seems in the others more or less playful, is, in these, definitely ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... received this speech with the languid obliviousness of perception she usually meted out to this chartered jester. ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... insists on treating her criminals like this, she doesn't deserve to have any." Similarly, if the public insists on bringing its woes to its colyumists, it doesn't deserve to have any colyumists. Then the battered jester turns again to his machine and ticks off something ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... "The Cabinet's jester, in whom twenty years ago the country lost an excellent clown without gaining a statesman, was in great ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... as the cold morsel slipped along his spine, and ducking out of reach, the elder jester ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... commencing the trek when the aircraft alarm was sounded. This was immediately followed by eight bombs in quick succession. One of these unfortunately dropped amidst our transport column killing two favourite riders, "Bighead" and "Jester" and destroying two or three mules. Fortunately only one man was injured, and more luckily still, no bombs dropped in the camp, although they were near enough to be unpleasant. The day's excitement was ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... you are king you must appoint me court jester. Will you, my good Lord? We two are good contrasts: You full of dignity upon a royal throne, a golden crown upon your head, the scepter in your hand, and I dressed in motley with cap and bells. Heigh ho! That will be jolly. And after all we ...
— The Buddha - A Drama in Five Acts and Four Interludes • Paul Carus
... returned, however, and sat down, side by side, on a sofa near the doorway. The former, who was glad to see his old friend excited and talkative, recalled the memories of Plassans apropos of a bit of news he had learnt the previous day. Pouillaud, the old jester of their dormitory, who had become so grave a lawyer, was now in trouble over some adventure with a woman. Ah! that brute of a Pouillaud! But Claude did not answer, for, having heard his name mentioned in the dining-room, he listened ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... thinking of nothing but his expedition. Dick seemed a good deal moved, but was unwilling to betray it; while Joe was fairly dancing and breaking out in laughable remarks. The worthy fellow soon became the jester and merry-andrew of the boatswain's mess, where a berth had been ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... his great model was Rabelais. His books are full of digressions, breaks, surprises, innuendoes, double meanings, mystifications, and all manner of odd turns. {210} Coleridge and Carlyle unite in pronouncing him a great humorist. Thackeray says that he was only a great jester. Humor is the laughter of the heart, and Sterne's pathos is closely interwoven with his humor. He was the foremost of English sentimentalists, and he had that taint of insincerity which distinguishes sentimentalism ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... Augustus kept a jester, Gabba, and patronised mimes, and among other diversions with which he amused himself and his friends, was that of giving presents by lottery; each drew a ticket upon which something was named, but on applying for the article ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... tired of this Merry Andrew—they "sent him elsewhere to talk other folks to death"—to the State House, where he served several terms creditably, but was mainly the fund of jollity to the lobby and the chartered jester ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... America are the subsoil of American literary humour, a rich soil in which the plant cultivated by Mark Twain and Mr. Frank Stockton grows with vigour and puts forth fruit and flowers. Mr. Stockton is very unlike Mark Twain: he is quiet, domesticated, the jester of the family circle. Yet he has shown in "Rudder Grange," and in "The Transferred Ghost," very great powers, and a pleasant, dry kind of Amontillado flavour in his fun, which somewhat reminds one of Thackeray—the Thackeray of the "Bedford-row Conspiracy" and of "A Little Dinner at Timmins." ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... singers to be heard. When it was over it was announced that Hal Macy had carried off the role of the poor, neglected son, which was in reality the male lead. The Crane was selected for the king, while freckle-faced Daniel Seabrooke was chosen for the jester, greatly to his delight and surprise. There was an emphatic round of applause when Professor Harmon announced that Constance Stevens had been selected to sing the Princess. Ellen Seymour captured ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... Nox, was the god of pleasantry and wit, or rather the jester of the celestial assembly; for, like other monarchs, it was but reasonable that Jupiter too should have his fool. We have an instance of Momus's fantastic humor in the contest between Neptune, Minerva, and Vulcan, for skill. The first had made a bull, the second a house, and the third a man. ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... her intimate friends," seems to me a thoroughly humorous application of the exaggeration principle. So, too, is the description of a man so terribly thin that he never could tell whether he had the stomach-ache or the lumbago. But the jester who expects you to laugh at the tale of the fish that was so large that the water of the lake subsided two feet when it was drawn ashore simply does not know where humour ends and drivelling ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... such swinge-bucklers as were not to be found again in all the Inns o' Court, and we have it on the authority of Justice Shallow that Falstaff was a good backswordsman, and that before he had done growing he broke the head of Skogan at the Court gate. This Skogan appears to have been Court-jester to Edward III. No doubt the natural rivalry between the amateur and the professional caused the quarrel, and Skogan must have been a good man if he escaped with a broken head only, and without damage to his reputation as a professional wit. The same day that Falstaff did this deed of daring— ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... a noisy pounding on the closed door, rousing the lad, sorely tired from his day's hunting. Again and again the pel, or jester's staff, clamored against the door, and now the fully aroused duke caught his ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... of an athlete, was unable to resist the temptation: and after her there followed the soul of Epeus the son of Panopeus passing into the nature of a woman cunning in the arts; and far away among the last who chose, the soul of the jester Thersites was putting on the form of a monkey. There came also the soul of Odysseus having yet to make a choice, and his lot happened to be the last of them all. Now the recollection of former toils had ...
— The Republic • Plato
... affair with Thomas Saunders by this time had reached the stage where observers feel a hesitancy about twitting the parties most concerned. Even Britt, the bravest jester of them all, succumbed to the prevailing wind when he saw how it blew. He got in the lee of popular opinion and reefed the sails of the good ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... complimentary portrait of Jonson than a caricature. As to the personages actually ridiculed in "Every Man Out of His Humour," Carlo Buffone was formerly thought certainly to be Marston, as he was described as "a public, scurrilous, and profane jester," and elsewhere as "the grand scourge or second untruss [that is, satirist], of the time." (Joseph Hall being by his own boast the first, and Marston's work being entitled "The Scourge of Villainy"). Apparently we must now prefer for Carlo a notorious character named Charles ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... prose of Milton, only to run, the next moment, to the Silenian ribaldry of Tom Brown the younger,—and so keeping up a Saturnalia, in which goat-footed sylvans mix with the maidens of Diana, and the party-colored jester shakes his truncheon in the face of Plato. Only in this wild and promiscuous license can we taste the genuine ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... deserve thanks?' asked De Stancy. 'I wish I deserved a reward; but I must bear in mind the fable of the priest and the jester.' ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... Rock Carving A Runic Stone A Viking Ship Norse Metal Work (Museum, Copenhagen) Alfred the Great Alfred's Jewel (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford) A Scene from the Bayeux Tapestry (Museum of Bayeux, Normandy) Trial by Combat Mounted Knight Pierrefonds Chateau Gaillard (Restored) King and Jester Falconry Farm Work in the Fourteenth Century Pilgrims to Canterbury A Bishop ordaining a Priest St. Francis blessing the Birds The Spiritual and the Temporal Power Henry IV, Countess Matilda, and Gregory VII Contest ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... has been led according to immemorial ways. Even here is something sad and terrible. But the impression is fleeting, and serves only to give a greater acuteness to the enjoyment of the moment. It is like the sadness which you may see in the jester's eyes when a merry company is laughing at his sallies; his lips smile and his jokes are gayer because in the communion of laughter he finds himself more intolerably alone. For Tahiti is smiling and friendly; it is like a lovely woman graciously prodigal ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... the style of building and the inscriptions, have thrown an unexpected light on the life of antiquity. We can even read the passing conceits scribbled on the walls. At one corner a house is offered for hire from July I—"intending tenants should apply to the slave Primus." On another a jester advises an acquaintance: "Go and hang thyself." A citizen writes of a friend: "I have heard with sorrow that thou art dead—so adieu!" Another wall bears the following warning: "This is no place for idlers; go away, good-for-nothing." It is curious to read the names ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... must mingle the two feelings as he and the audience experience them. Taking his cue from the tone of the occasion he must fit his remarks to that mood. He may be as bright and sparkling and as amusing as a refined court jester. He may be as impressive and serious as a judge. The treatment must be ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... I heard a shrill and sudden cry, And, looking up, I saw the antic Puck Grappling with Time, who clutch'd him like a fly, Victim of his own sport,—the jester's luck! He, whilst his fellows grieved, poor wight, had stuck His freakish gauds upon the Ancient's brow, And now his ear, and now his beard, would pluck; Whereas the angry churl had snatched him now, Crying, "Thou impish ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... from their seats, and drew their swords. They would have killed the crazy man who insulted their king; but he raised his hand and stopped them, and with his eyes looking into Robert's eyes he said, "Not the king; you shall be the king's jester! You shall wear the cap and bells, and make laughter for my court. You shall be the servant of the servants, and your companion shall be the ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... him for a mad rogue! he poured a flagon of Rhenish on my head once. This same skull, sir, was Yorick's skull, the king's jester. ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... heart's palace Thoughts unnumbered throng; And there, most quiet and, as a child, most wise, High-throned you sit, and gracious. All day long Great Hopes gold-armoured, jester Fantasies, And pilgrim Dreams, and little beggar Sighs, Bow to your benediction, go their way. And the grave jewelled courtier Memories Worship and love and tend you, all ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... nothing but ladies?" says Feste the Jester to poor Malvolio. He might have said the same to Horace; for of the Odes in the first three Books one third part is addressed to or concerned with women. How many of the pretty female names which musicalize ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... World falls from her throne," mused Constantine, "and not even a waiting-maid attends her to her prison. But a blinded captain finds a regiment to escort him hence in love and honour, as though he were a new-crowned king. Truly Fortune is a jester. If ever Fate should rob me of my eyes, I wonder, when I had nothing more to give them, if three hundred faithful swords would follow me ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... locate the places where we are liable to meet with resistance. We will stop a moment now and then to shudder at Caliban, to admire Prospero, to love the sweet Miranda or to laugh at the nonsense of the jester and the drunken butler, but we will hasten on to the end nevertheless, knowing that we will become better acquainted with the people at ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... words, and aware of a double reputation as a man of erudition and a wit. This latter quality it was that won him advancement at court, and it may have been his too clearly confessed reluctance to play the part of an informal table jester to his king that laid the grounds of that deepening royal resentment that ended only with his execution. But he was also valued by the king for more solid merits, he was needed by the king, and it was more than a table scorned or a clash of opinion upon ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... and bells: The conventional dress of the court fool, or jester, of the Middle Ages, and, after him, of the stage clown, consisted of the "fool's cap" and suit of motley, ornamented with little ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... had seemed overwrought, Babbitt who had been the protecting big brother, Paul became clear-eyed and merry, while Babbitt sank into irritability. He uncovered layer on layer of hidden weariness. At first he had played nimble jester to Paul and for him sought amusements; by the end of the week Paul was nurse, and Babbitt accepted favors with the condescension one ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... again. He says that all the people said he was not a Christian, for he was not proud ever towards them as Christians are, but a real Sheykh, and that the Bedaween still talk of Sheykh Stanley and of his piety. The old half-witted jester of Luxor has found me out—he has wandered down here to see his eldest son who is serving in the army. He had brought a little boy with him, but is 'afraid for him' here, I don't know why, and has begged ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... affection he so generously bestowed on both. Waller, the most specious flatterer of flattering courts—the early worshipper of Charles the First—the pusillanimous betrayer of his friends—the adulator of Cromwell—the wit and the jester of the second Charles—the devotional whiner of the bigot James—had not, however, sufficient power to keep the lady from her slumbers long. She was soon in the refreshing sleep, known only ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... looking suddenly as black as thunder, "to drop all fence, I know neither who nor what you are; beyond the fact that you are not the person whose name you have assumed. But be what you please, spy, ghost, devil, or most ill-judging jester, if you do not immediately enter that house, I will cut you to the earth." And even as he spoke, he threw an uneasy glance behind him at the following crowd ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... him with languid approval, as if he were some paid jester, and went into the breakfast-room. There were others there beside Lady Clansford—most of them the young people—it is, alas! only the young who can sleep through the bright hours of a summer's morn—and a discussion on the programme of the ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... the life I passed with him. By the sweat of my brow I was compelled to serve him; for seven long years I was his slave. I sold myself for the sake of knowledge, I was consoled by progress. I was the servant, companion, jester, and slave of my tyrant, but I was also the disciple, the priest of learning. In my own room my chains fell off. In the lonely night-watches I communed with the great, the immortal spirits of Horace, Virgil, and even the proud Caesar, and the divine Homer. Those solitary ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... than the gloss of novelty (though other gloss there was), characterised the garments of the men. The toilettes of the women were modest; that amount of praise (and it is a good deal) they deserved. A young lady, Miss Maskelyne, an amber-hued beauty, who practically lived as a female jester at the houses of the great, shone resplendent, indeed, but magnificence of apparel ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... grave and joyous in his conversation. He is neither a jester nor a hermit; neither a misanthrope nor a fool. "Sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing," he "weeps with them that weep, and rejoices with them that rejoice." He is like the heavens; he has sunshine and cloud, each in its season, seemly, ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... the better he pleased. Let him split the ears of the groundlings, let him out-Herod Herod,—the judicious might grieve, but all would be excitedly attentive. Their Jeremiah seemed at times like to become a jester,—there was a suggestion of the ludicrous in the sudden passage from birds to Greek coins, to mills, to Walter Scott, to millionaire malefactors,—a suggestion of acrobatic tumbling and somersault; but he always got a hearing. In lecturing to the students of ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... fellow in his time, and notable jester; he loved to drink neat, as much as any man that then was in the world, and would willingly eat salt meat. To this intent he was ordinarily well furnished with gammons of bacon, both of Westphalia, Mayence and Bayonne, with store of dried neat's tongues, plenty of links, chitterlings ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... is remembered in similitude, by reference to Yorick, the king's jester, who died when Hamlet and ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... As he jerked the puppet-strings, he played continually on his pan-pipes the ribald tune of "Hey, boys, up go we," then very popular. The Duke spoke to him once; but he did not answer, only bowed very low, with his hat off, which made the people think him an idiot or a jester. They laughed heartily at him. After a bit, it occurred to me that this old puppet-shaker always crept into the ring (with his hat off to receive alms) whenever the Duke spoke aside to Lord Grey, or to some other officer. I watched him narrowly to make sure, because something in his manner ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... dignity. Now when all those that sat with him had laid the bones Of the several parts on a heap before Hyrcanus, [for they had themselves taken away the flesh belonging to them,] till the table where he sat was filled full with them, Trypho, who was the king's jester, and was appointed for jokes and laughter at festivals, was now asked by the guests that sat at the table [to expose him to laughter]. So he stood by the king, and said, "Dost thou not see, my lord, the bones that lie by Hyrcanus? by this ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... who were to sustain other characters in the great pageant. There was the Judge of Peace, and the Knight Marshal of the Lists, and the Jester, who was to ride on a caparisoned mule trapped with bells, and himself bearing a sceptre. Mr. Sidney Wilton came down, who had promised to be King of the Tournament; and, though rather late, for my lord had been detained ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... disinterested man I ever saw; while Tete Rouge, though equally good-natured in his way, cared for nobody but himself. Yet we would not have lost him on any account; he admirably served the purpose of a jester in a feudal castle; our camp would have been lifeless without him. For the past week he had fattened in a most amazing manner; and indeed this was not at all surprising, since his appetite was most inordinate. He ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... property-maker sometimes views from the wings with considerable dismay the severe usage to which his works of art are subjected. "He's an excellent clown, sir," one such was once heard to say, regarding from his own standpoint the performance of the jester in question; "he don't destroy the properties as some do." Perhaps now and then, too, a minor actor or a supernumerary, who has derided "the sham wine-parties of Macbeth and others," may lament the scandalous waste of seeming good victuals in a pantomime. But, as a rule, these performers ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... long jangling argument ensued, during which Beatrice, although she knew he had so well approved his valour in the late war, said that she would eat all he had killed there: and observing the prince take delight in Benedick's conversation, she called him "the prince's jester." This sarcasm sunk deeper into the mind of Benedick than all Beatrice had said before. The hint she gave him that he was a coward, by saying she would eat all he had killed, he did not regard, knowing himself to be a brave man: but there is nothing that great wits ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... other side of the room came softly to the place where he lay, with a large knife in his hand: and pressed the back of it with such violence upon his neck, the head hanging over the side of the bench, that it was not till after several efforts that he was able to rise. "Oh, Jack!" cried this manual jester, "I had almost done your business for you!" The other expressed no marks of resentment, but sullenly answered, "Damn you, why did not you take the edge? It would have been the best thing you have done ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... were so vicious that even in the Court of Venice to which he was accredited, in order to borrow money from the merchants of that city, he was too profligate to remain. He came back with Charles II., and was Master of the Revels, or King's Jester, as the court considered him, though without any regular appointment, during his life: the butt, at once, and ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... such an enormous success with "Peter Pan," Miss Adams now turned to her third boy's part. It was that of "Chicot, the Jester," John Raphael's adaptation of Miguel Zamaceis's play "The Jesters." This was a very delightful sort of Prince Charming play, fragile and artistic. The opposite part was played by Consuelo Bailey. It was a great triumph for Miss Adams, but not ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... killed a man and licenses creatures who despatch, medically speaking, a dozen young folks in a season. Morality is powerless against a dozen vices which destroy society and which nothing can punish.—Another cup!—Upon my word of honor! man is a jester dancing upon a precipice. They talk to us about the immorality of the Liaisons Dangereuses, and any other book you like with a vulgar reputation; but there exists a book, horrible, filthy, fearful, corrupting, which is always open and will never be shut, the great book of the world; ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... his rescue of Pecolat is another illustration of his character and of the strange, turbulent age in which he lived; and it went far to embitter the hatred of the duke and the bishop against him. This poor fellow was the jester, song-singer and epigrammatist of the madcap patriots who were associated under the title of "Sons of Geneva." Under a trumped-up charge of plotting the death of the bishop he was kidnapped and carried away ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... abuses which Luther later attacked escaped Erasmus' satirical pen. The book is a mixture of the lightest humor and the bitterest earnestness. As one turns its pages one is sometimes tempted to think Luther half right when he declared Erasmus "a regular jester who makes sport of everything, even of religion and Christ himself." Yet there was in this humorist a deep seriousness that cannot be ignored. Erasmus was really directing his extraordinary industry, knowledge, and insight, not toward a revival of classical literature, but to a renaissance ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... for his toil. His spirit pervades every scene, whether we view the king's son Ferdinand loving innocent Miranda, or the silent king mourning his son's loss, or the guilty conspirators plotting the king's death, or the drunken steward and jester plotting with the servant monster Caliban the overthrow of Prospero. All of them are led, by the wisdom of Prospero acting through Ariel, away from their own wrong impulses, and into reconcilement and peace. How much of The ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... do not also die hard," I replied, stepping out of the way of an idiot lad, who, dressed as a jester in Walker's colours, was sitting on a horse whose progress was blocked by the crowd, which ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... of a royal jester beset with great dangers, and the king having once gotten it into his royal head that I was a wizard, it was not long before I again fell into trouble, from which my wit did not a second time in a like way save me. I was cast into the dungeon to await my death. How, ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... literary fashion is more subject to change than the fashion of a jest, and that jokes that make one generation laugh seem insipid to the next. But there is something perennial in the fun of Rabelais, whom Bacon called "the great jester of France," and though the puns of Shakespeare's clowns are detestable the clowns themselves have not lost ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... days when the Schloss Heidelberg was in its most flourishing state the lord of the castle numbered among his retainers a jester, small of stature and ugly of feature, whose quips and drolleries provided endless amusement for himself and his guests. Prominent among the jester's characteristics was a weakness for getting tipsy. He was possessed of an unquenchable thirst, which he never lost ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... and had to be killed. This interpretation was probably the result of a confusion with the old legend of the fight between Horus and Set, the rulers of the two kingdoms of Egypt. The possibility also suggests itself that a pun made by some priestly jester may have been the real factor that led to this mingling of two originally separate stories. In the "Destruction of Mankind" the story runs, according to Budge,[195] that Re, referring to his enemies, said: ma-ten set uar er set, "Behold ye them (set) fleeing into ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... children with their faces blacked, and the red handkerchief about their brows, that makes the Malietoa uniform, and the boats have been coming in from the windward, some of them 50 strong, with a drum and a bugle on board—the bugle always ill-played—and a sort of jester leaping and capering on the sparred nose of the boat, and the whole crew uttering from time to time a kind of menacing ululation. Friday they marched out to the bush; and yesterday morning we heard that some had returned to their ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... too narrowly into the mouth of a Joe-Millerism. But Mr. Gillman, writing the life of a philosopher, and no jest-book, is under a different law of decorum. That retort, however, which silences the jester, it may seem, must be a good one. And we are desired to believe that, in this case, the baffled assailant rode off in a spirit of benign candor, saying aloud to himself, like the excellent philosopher that he ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... confirmed humorist could hardly be expected to indulge in drolleries in the presence of a girl who stuck her nose in the air and put on enough side for six. It became increasingly obvious that the depressed jester must straightway be removed from this blighting influence or ever the ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... his bad manners rose straightway; and the minstrel, who (as often happened in those days) was jester likewise, made merry at his expense, and advised the company to turn the wild beast out ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... conversationalists. The person who has imagination can cause the facts of the multiplication table to scintillate and glow. The person who lacks imagination is unable to invest with interest and charm even the mountain, the river, the landscape, or the poem. The gossip, the scandal-monger, or the coarse jester proves his lack of imagination and his consequent inability to hold his own in real conversation. We hope, of course, that some of our pupils may become inventors, but this will be impossible unless they possess imagination. A sociologist ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... neither were any indication of what they would be on Wednesday. Members ceased to attach any importance to his statements, or to think of them as calling for serious consideration. He came to be regarded as a sort of unlicensed jester who might be permitted to amuse the House by his antics when there was no pressing business on hand; but as to any real influence, he had no more than the junior messenger. It took him several years to find this out, and when ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... their monster; he trained me to his trade, taught me to sing foul songs and to dance foul dances. I have grinned and whistled through evil days and ways. My wit was gray with iniquities when Hildebrand, the King's minion, saw me one day at a fair in Naples and picked me out for jester to ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Jester and jolly fellow, he keeps on good terms with all political opinions, and is patriotic to the bottom of his soul. A capital mimic, he knows how to put on, turn and turn about, the smiles of persuasion, satisfaction, and good-nature, or drop them for the normal expression of his ...
— The Illustrious Gaudissart • Honore de Balzac
... also pious people who would venture body and soul for God's Word and the Scriptures, but where a blasphemer can thus openly speak and write, who esteems and treats God's holy words no better than if they were the fabled pratings of some fool or jester at the carnival. Because my Lord Christ and His holy Word, even He who gave His own blood as the purchase-price, is held to be but mockery and fools' wit, I must likewise drop all seriousness, and see whether I, too, have ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... disrelished me; till at last so tyr'd, that he could hold no longer; "D'ye think," said Habinas, "this boy has learn'd nothing? I bred him with juglers that follow the fair: Nor has he his fellow, whether he humours a muliteer or a jester. This never-be-good has abundance of wit; he's a taylor, a cook, a baker, a jack of all trades, and but for two faults, were exact to a hair: He's crack-brain'd, and snores in his sleep: For that ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... desire to spare thee a long journey and much danger. Leave here thy rum and presents, and return to thy patrons, Alrichs and Beeckman, bearing our English gratitude, and thou shalt wear a beautiful hat, such as the King of England allows only his jester ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... aware of the sorry tragedy in his voice that contrasted so sharply with the banality of his words. He felt that he was but a pitiful jester who was like a clown, compelled to play a merry part when there was anguish in his mind. But—he ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... little significant of Webster's relation to literature that he moved outside of the knot of men known in our literary history as the Hartford wits. So many recent claimants for the position of democratic jester have engaged the public attention that the Hartford wits who amused our grandfathers rest their fame now rather upon tradition than upon any perennial liveliness. By their solitude in the pages of American literature their very title has acquired a certain gravity, and we are apt ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... he took me by the hand, and said he hoped I should esteem him as he did me, and begged me to take a Pheasant pye to a gentleman who had been his constant shooting companion." Records, Sicily, vol. 97. Ferdinand was the last sovereign who habitually kept a professional fool, or jester, in attendance upon him. ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... impudence, arrogance, and ungratefulness were the outstanding traits of Agricola's character. Luther said that Agricola, swelled with vanity and ambition, was more vexatious to him than any pope; that he was fit only for the profession of a jester, etc. December 6, 1540, Luther wrote to Jacob Stratner, courtpreacher in Berlin: "Master Grickel is not, nor ever will be, the man that he may appear, or the Margrave may consider him to be. For if you wish to ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... to the scene. From Wittenberg had come the Pomeranian Duke Barnim, then Rector of the University. Prince George of Anhalt, then a young Leipzig student, and afterwards a friend of Luther, was there. Duke George of Saxony frequently attended the proceedings, and listened attentively. His court jester is said to have appeared with him, and a comic scene is mentioned as having occurred between him and Eck, to the great diversion of the meeting. Frederick the Wise was represented by one of ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... wild beasts through thickets and glens, who have abated the cruelty of priests, the pride of nobles, the divinity of kings in former times: to whom we owe it, that we no longer wear round our necks the collar of Gurth the swineherd, and of Wamba the jester; that the castles of great lords are no longer the dens of banditti, whence they issue with fire and sword to lay waste the land; that we no longer expire in loathsome dungeons without knowing the cause, or have our right hands struck off for raising them in ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... and over them fell green uniformed troopers, as grass will cover a bloody field, and the Municipal Guards, swaying up from behind, paid out a sprinkling of blue—a ghastly pousse-cafe, as one grim jester described it afterward. The long ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... Marcus Ordeyne At the Gate of Samaria A Study in Shadows Simon the Jester Where Love Is Derelicts The Demagogue and Lady Phayre The Beloved Vagabond The White Dove The Usurper Septimus ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... the same time, if he was the poet of the higher flirtation, was no mere amorous jester, as Moore was. His affairs of the heart were also affairs of the imagination. Love may not have transformed the earth for him, as it did Shakespeare and Donne and Browning, but at least it transformed his accents. He sang neither the "De Profundis" of love nor the triumphal ode of love that ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... another class of Fools which deserve mention. These are called Court Fools or Jesters. Until within a comparatively short time ago, every king had his Jester, whose duty it was to furnish mirth and merriment for the royal household. The real Court Fool was in reality a fool by birth, while a Jester was a pretended fool. The former was dressed in "a parti-colored dress, including a cowl, which ended in a cock's-head, and was ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... children,—he said to me one day at table,—I like 'em, and I respect 'em. Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by them. Do you know they play the part in the household which the king's jester, who very often had a mighty long head under his cap and bells, used to play for a monarch? There 's no radical club like a nest of little folks in a nursery. Did you ever watch a baby's fingers? I have, often ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... but there can be no such solidarity with children. And if it is really true that they must share responsibility for all their fathers' crimes, such a truth is not of this world and is beyond my comprehension. Some jester will say, perhaps, that the child would have grown up and have sinned, but you see he didn't grow up, he was torn to pieces by the dogs, at eight years old. Oh, Alyosha, I am not blaspheming! I understand, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... prop. the servant of the Almah-girls who acts buffoon as well as pimp. The "Maskharah" (whence our "mask") corresponds with the fool or jester of mediaeval Europe: amongst the Arnauts he is called "Suttari" and is known by his fox's tails: he mounts a mare, tom-toms on the kettle-drum and is generally one of the bravest of the corps. These buffoons are noted for extreme indecency: ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... In the Middle Ages kings and noblemen had in their courts jesters to make sport for the company; as every one then wore a dress indicating his rank or occupation, so the jester wore a cap hung with bells. The fool of Shakespeare's plays is the king's jester at ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... predecessors by the Great Humorist of Punch, may be applied without undue exaggeration to his colleagues on the paper. Though posing at first only as the puppet who waded knee-deep in comic vice, Punch has worked as a teacher as well as a jester—a leader, and a preacher of kindness. Nor was it simple humour that was Punch's profession at the beginning; he always had a more serious and, so to say, a worthier object in view. This may be gathered from ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... Archbishop of Mayence was chosen for his piety and learning, but many remembered him as the wheelwright's son, who had once worked at his father's trade. As the Archbishop passed in stately procession to the Cathedral, some jeered him, and one jester had chalked white cartwheels on all the walls on either side of the procession. When the Archbishop was enthroned in the Cathedral, he saw, hanging above his head, a shield which was to bear his arms. The Archbishop was told that he might choose what blazonry he liked, and he at once ordered ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... uniformly like the soft g, and is therefore a letter useless, except in etymology, as ejaculation, jester, jocund, juice. ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... The result was a naval victory at Sluys, in which well-nigh the whole French fleet was absolutely destroyed. It was by the English archers that the day was won. So complete was the victory that no one dared to tell the ill news to Philip, till his jester called out to him, "What cowards those English are!" "Because," he explained, "they did not dare to leap into the sea as ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... was one of the most remarkable persons that figured in the Renaissance, a learned scholar, physician, and philosopher, though known to posterity chiefly as an obscene humorist. He is called by Lord Bacon "the great jester of France." He was at first a monk of the Franciscan order, but he afterwards threw off the sacerdotal character, and studied medicine. From about the year 1534, Rabelais was in the service of the Cardinal Dubellay, and a favorite ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... unimportant; there was savage sincerity. Indeed, only a ferociously sincere person can produce such effective flippancies on a matter like war; just as only a strong man could juggle with cannon balls. It is all very well to use the word "fool" as synonymous with "jester"; but daily experience shows that it is generally the solemn and silent man who is the fool. It is all very well to accuse Mr. Shaw of standing on his head; but if you stand on your head you must have a hard and solid head to stand on. In Arms and the Man the bathos of form was strictly ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... between them, and a long jangling argument ensued, during which Beatrice, although she knew be had so well approved his valor in the late war, said that she would eat all he had killed there; and observing the prince take delight in Benedick's conversation, she called him "the prince's jester." This sarcasm sank deeper into the mind of Benedick than all Beatrice had said before. The hint she gave him that he was a coward, by saying she would eat all he bad killed, he did not regard, knowing himself to be a brave man; but there is nothing that great ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... harsh Voice croaked beside him, and it was the voice of the Jester who mocks at all things. "Too late! O madness, to despise the blood royal because it humbled itself to service and so was doubly royal. The Far Away Princess came laden with great gifts, and to her the King's gift was the wage of a slave and a broken heart. Cast ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... they called for so many ingredients, that the doctor had nearly expired when the list was presented to him. In addition to all these, arrived the king's band of singers and musicians, and the Luti Bashi (jester in chief) accompanied by twenty lutis, each with a ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... is a little hot and angry after riding,' the horse-dealer returned, with the leer of a privileged jester. 'Presently, he will see my horse's points more clearly. I will wait till he has finished his talk with the Padre. I will wait under ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... vaguely remembers Artemus Ward as the man who was willing to send all his wife's relatives to the war and who, standing by the tomb of Shakespeare, thought it "a success." But no one who turns to the almost forgotten pages of that kindly jester can fail to be impressed by his sunny quality, by the atmosphere of fraternal affection which glorifies his queer spelling and his somewhat threadbare witticisms. Mark Twain, who is universally recognized by Europeans as a representative of typical American humor, had precisely those qualities ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... find a perch. The horses, therefore, being harnessed, solemnly his imperial majesty ascended his new English throne under a flourish of trumpets, having the first lord of the treasury on his right hand, and the chief jester on his left. Pekin gloried in the spectacle; and in the whole flowery people, constructively present by representation, there was but one discontented person, and that was the coachman. This mutinous individual ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... they all declared Cuchulain would be no more valiant than another [2]of the men of Erin[2] were it not for the wonderful little trick he possessed, the spearlet of Cuchulain. Accordingly the men of Erin despatched from them Redg, Medb's[a] jester, to demand the light javelin ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... character is conveyed from the very first, when Lucio, the libertine jester, whose coarse audacious wit checks at every feather, thus expresses his ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... All these are old terms signifying a fool or idiot. Patch was the favourite jester of Henry the Eighth, whose name was used as synonymous ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... and thought Barton a miserable jester. He caught at the epithet "Noble," and asked if any one, lawfully entitled to it, would be so degenerate as to rebel against ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... making ready to impale the tailor, the sultan of Casgar, wanting the company of his crooked jester, asked where he was; and one of his officers told him; "The hunch-back, Sir, whom you inquire after, got drunk last night, and contrary to his custom slipped out of the palace, and went strolling about the city, and this morning was found dead. A man was brought before the chief ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... borne The foremost shield, and dealt the deadliest blow That drew the life-blood of a warring foe! Perhaps thou wor'st the courtier's gilded thrall,— Some glittering court's gay, proud papilio! Perchance a clown, the jester of some hall, The slave of one man, and the fool ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... comprehension upon the stage. It is not easy to convince an audience that jealousy of Isolde White-hand, whom Tristan had married after being banished from Cornwall, blinds Isolde Blond-hair into refusing to recognize him when he returns and pleads his case before her in the disguise of Tristram the Jester. Cavilling critics were quick to discover and to expatiate upon this weakness of the play. But the fine lines upon which it is built and the plastic figures standing out against the medieval background, the glowing color, radiant lights and brooding shadows of its ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... incredulously, and disputed by those who claim that laughter is a good thing; the honourable gentleman died from too much of a good thing. He was overpowered by having too much to laugh at, and the undiscerning thought him a fool, and the Empire had no need of a court jester. But many of his sayings have lived, nevertheless. He wrote a poem, said to be a plagiarism, which contains the quotation at the beginning of this chapter: "For bills may come, and bills may go, but I go on forever." The first person singular ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... He is dressed in sober grey and drab clothes, and contrasts strongly in his ascetic and suffering aspect with the gay revellers about him. The people are preparing for a festival, and splendidly and fantastically robed, some bringing wreaths of flowers. Bowing with mock reverence, a jester gibes at Dante. An indolent sentinel is seated at the porch, and looks on unconcernedly, his spear lying across his breast. A young man, probably acquainted with the writing of Dante, sympathises with him. In the centre and just before the feet of Dante, is a beautiful child, brilliantly ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... wooden palace meditated revenge. In the one authentic glimpse which we get of his mode of life, we see him at a banquet, while his nobles and warriors caroused and burst into peals of laughter at the buffooneries of an idiot and a jester. But the Hunnish king sat grave and silent, caressing the cheeks of the boy Ernak, his favorite son, whom the augur pointed out as the heir of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... thoughts bearing the mark of every age and nation, silly thoughts and wise thoughts, thoughts of people, of things, and of nothing, good thoughts, impish thoughts, and large, gracious thoughts. There they went swinging hand-in-hand in corkscrew fashion. An antic jester in green and gold led the dance. The guests followed no order or precedent. No two thoughts were related to each other even by the fortieth cousinship. There was not so much as an international alliance between them. Each thought behaved ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... said to me: "Oh, all that you have seen is nothing. You ought to see the Khitroff market-place, and the lodging-houses for the night there. There you would see a regular 'golden company.'" {1} One jester told me that this was no longer a company, but a GOLDEN REGIMENT: so greatly had their numbers increased. The jester was right, but he would have been still more accurate if he had said that these people now form in Moscow neither a company ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... you,' I said, 'it is Heaven, or else it is the blind jester Circumstance, that is ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... terrible court of justice in the city of Wuerzburg, in which his jester Hans acted as executioner, and struck off the heads of numbers of the prisoners, the bloody work being attended with laughter and jests, which added doubly to its horror. All who acknowledged that they had read the Bible, or even ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... brawls we have mentioned among that irritable race the Carmen, the mingled sounds which arose from the multitude were those of light-hearted mirth and tiptoe jollity. The musicians preluded on their instruments—the minstrels hummed their songs—the licensed jester whooped betwixt mirth and madness, as he brandished his bauble—the morrice-dancers jangled their bells—the rustics hallow'd and whistled—men laughed loud, and maidens giggled shrill; while many a broad jest flew like a shuttle-cock from one party to be caught in the air, ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... lord's jester) took upon himself to marshal the guests. And wild work he made of it; good Days, bad Days, all were shuffled together. He had stuck the Twenty-first of June next to the Twenty-second of December, and the former looked like a Maypole by the side of a marrow bone. ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... Barlow (Billy), a jester, who fancied himself a "mighty potentate." He was well known in the east of London, and died in Whitechapel workhouse. Some of his sayings were really witty, and some of his attitudes ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... [93] [Conan the Jester, a character in the Irish ballads, was "a kind of Thersites, but brave and daring even to rashness. He had made a vow that he would never take a blow without returning it; and having ... descended to the infernal regions, he received a cuff from the arch-fiend, which he ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... need of a court jester," returned her companion, with sarcasm. "But never mind, Adrien will find out his mistake for himself one day. Certainly, I am not going to attempt to strip the mask off his friend's face. Give him rope enough, and he will hang ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... broke out into a hearty laugh. When she had finished laughing, she said, "Ah! I see you are like all men—a hypocrite and a jester. Much truth is in your jesting words. I am the sun of your life! Without me life would be worth nothing! Indeed, without me, you would be sacrificed to a snake!" She seated herself, and said, "Be not afraid: swear to me by the ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... the comic faculty as certain potent authorities allege, we persistently doubt. Mr Macaulay affirms that Southey may be always read with pleasure, except when he tries to be droll; that a more insufferable jester never existed; and that, often as he attempts to be humorous, he in no single occasion has succeeded further than to be quaintly and flippantly dull. Another reviewer warned the author of the Doctor, that there is no greater mistake than that which a grave person falls into, when ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... "Profane jester! Would'st thou insult me with thy torn-foolery? Begone—all of ye! tramp! pack! I say: away with ye!" and into the woods ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... Bole, trunk of a tree, Boot, remedy, Borrow out, redeem, Borrows, pledges, Bote, remedy, Bound, ready, Bourded, jested, Bourder, jester, Braced, embraced, Brachet, little hound, Braide, quick movement, Brast, burst, break, Breaths, breathing holes, Brief, shorten, Brim, fierce, furious, Brised, broke, Broached, pierced, Broaches, spits, Bur, hand-guard ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... sainted memory. The most pious men in Polotzk danced the night through, their earlocks dangling, the tails of their long coats flying in a pious ecstasy. Beggars swarmed among the bidden guests, sure of an easy harvest where so many hearts were melted by piety. The wedding jester excelled himself in apt allusions to the friends and relatives who brought up their wedding presents at his merry invitation. The sixteen-year-old bride, suffocated beneath her heavy veil, blushed unseen at the numerous healths drunk to ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... foreigners who are astonished that in the plays of the great Shakespeare a Roman senator plays the buffoon, and that a king appears on the stage drunk, are treated as little-minded. I do not desire to suspect Master Johnson of being a sorry jester, and of being too fond of wine; but I find it somewhat extraordinary that he counts buffoonery and drunkenness among the beauties of the tragic stage: and no less singular is the reason he gives, that the poet disdains accidental ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... wit— a light, airy, joysome wit, spiced with anecdotes of prison cells and the torture chamber. Oh, a very delicate wit! I have tried it on many a prisoner, and there have been some who smiled. Now it is not easy to make a prisoner smile. And it should not be difficult to be a good jester, seeing that ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... beard. This extraordinary physiognomy was covered with a high cap, which had a tassel and bells. He wore also a party-coloured waistcoat, huge full breeches of all the colours of the rainbow, hose of yellow, and long shoes with rosettes of vast size. He stood forth a veritable clown or jester of bygone days. ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... long plank near the kitchen, his quips kept them laughing. Two college boys had just arrived to aid in the harvesting. Farmers are not much given to humor and the young fellows were clearly pleased to find a jester on the premises. At the supper table the Governor gave his conversational powers free rein. This was the only life; he had rested all winter so that he might enjoy farm life the more. He subjected the collegians to a rigid ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... country; if I abhor ... it is because I know there is but one man among them who is not laughing at the enormous folly and credulity of the country, and that he is an ignorant and mischievous bigot. As for the light and frivolous jester, of whom it is your misfortune to think so highly, learn, my dear Abraham, that this political Killigrew, just before the breaking up of the last administration, was in actual treaty with them for a place; and if they had survived twenty-four ...
— English Satires • Various
... flamed crimson. For here in Puritan garb was John Leslie, Jr., and his radiant wife—and Philip and Howard, smiling Quakers, and Anne and Margaret and Ellen with a trio of husbands, and beyond a laughing jester in cap and bells, whose dark, handsome face was a little too reckless and tired about the eyes, Roger thought, for a really happy ...
— When the Yule Log Burns - A Christmas Story • Leona Dalrymple
... in baggy silk trousers, high-heeled pink slippers, crimson jacket, embroidered with gold, and a white turban. Her bewitching eyes peeped through two holes in a muslin yashmak spangled with silver stars. Among the gentlemen I recall Lord Augustus Hervey, who disguised himself so completely as a jester that no one could make out who he was. He said saucy things as a court fool. He even guyed his own wife, and she never mistrusted she was flirting with her own husband, but then, as she was ready to flirt with anybody, it made ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... wrong. I have no father and no mother, but I have a goat and a donkey, and they are all in all to me. My goat gives me the sweetest milk, and when my dear good donkey brays it seems to me there is no music like to it. So when my lord the king's jester said the sweetest singer among all the animals should save the crown and nation, and moved ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain |
