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More "Jester" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... arcades, were severely squeezed by this fresh pressure from without, and their outcries were loud of anger, alarm; or pain; while on the other side of the street arose shouts of delight and triumph, or, when anything singular came into view, loud laughter at the wit and irony of some jester. Added to these there were the clatter of hoofs and the roll of wheels, the whinnying of horses, the shouts of command, the rattle of drums, the blare of trumpets, and the shrill pipe of flutes, without a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... L. C. Moulton, correspondent of the Boston Herald, writes: "In old times a court astrologer used to be kept, as well as a court jester; but I confess I was not aware, until last night, that the astrologer of to-day might be as important to one's movements as one's doctor or one's lawyer. One of the cleverest and busiest literary men in all London said to me ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various
... returned from the abysms of the utter North to that little house upon the outskirts of Meudon, it was not the philosopher, the daring observer, the man of iron energy that imposed himself on his family, but a fat and even plaintive jester, a farceur incarnate and kindly, the co-equal of his children, and, it must be written, not seldom the comic despair of Madame Lavalle, who, as she writes five years after the marriage, to her venerable mother, found "in this unequalled intellect whose name I bear the abandon ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... 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 mischief, who ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... a wild and debauched youth, covets every girl or woman he sees, and is assisted in his vile purposes by his jester, Rigoletto an ugly, hump-backed man. We meet him first helping the Duke to seduce the wife of Count Ceprano, and afterwards the wife of Count Monterone. Both husbands curse the vile Rigoletto and swear to be avenged. Monterone especially, ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... is," he muttered. "It's Wamba, son of Witless, the Jester of Ivanhoe. I've been trying to catch him for seventy-two years, and if ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... have the prudence not to appear touched with the sarcasm of a jester, they subject themselves to his power, and the wise man will have his folly anatomised, that is dissected and laid open by the squandring glances or ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... started 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
... listless gait, like a weary workman, turning his face, as smooth as an apple, with its ball-like nose, from side to side; and when he entered the dining-room, he cast a glance round at the furniture and fixed his eyes on a small picture of Rigoletto, a hunchbacked jester, and made ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... 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
... the last of the tobacco he 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 ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... replied the Sepoy. "One's attitude cannot be rigid at all points; that is bad management. The finest tragedy I ever witnessed was emphasized by the trivialities of the king's jester. ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... Armstrong was Court jester to James I. of England. It is needless, perhaps, to say that he had no hand in this book of facetiae, which is composed for the most part of jests taken out of ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... character clown, harlequin, fat boy, jester, funny rustic, vied with each other in mirth-provoking antics so aptly described by the circus press agent as a "merry-hodgepodge of fun-provoking, acrobatic idiosyncrasies ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... retribution, too; 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, of course, what an upheaval of the universe ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... is flagrantly double, Conflicting in conduct and aim, Is seldom untainted by trouble And commonly closes in shame; But no such anxieties pester Your dual existence, which links The functions of don and of jester— High ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 14, 1917 • Various
... charge of him, to manage, and guide, and make a man of him. And yet, while it was not pure worldliness, much less was it actual love which moved her. It was a kind of habitual affection, as for the "poor thing, but mine own, sir," of the jester. He was but a poor creature, but Phoebe knew she could make something of him, and she had no distaste to the task. When she began to perceive that Reginald, in so many ways Clarence's superior, was at her disposal, a sense of gratification went through Phoebe's mind, and ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... between them, and a long jangling argument ensued, during which Beatrice, although she knew he had so well approved his velour 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 trim '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 so much ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... sports of fancy: though ten times told, the tale to them never can be tedious; though dull "as the fat weed that grows on Lethe's bank," the jest for them has all the poignancy of satire: on the very offals, the garbage of wit, they can feed and batten. Happy they who can find in every jester the wit of Sterne or Swift; who else can wade through hundreds of thickly-printed pages to obtain for their reward such witticisms ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... the market place, written with the name of him he desired should be banished, without actuall accusing him, sometimes banished an Aristides, for his reputation of Justice; And sometimes a scurrilous Jester, as Hyperbolus, to make a Jest of it. And yet a man cannot say, the Soveraign People of Athens wanted right to banish them; or an Athenian the Libertie to Jest, ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... their humors will soon be forgotten. It is true that no 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
... a jest on the part of the other, all serious as far as David was concerned. And then—Well, who could tell how it happened? The billiard cue was in David's hand, and the skull of the jester was split, a horrible gaping thing, ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... grateful sound has again the big conclusive phrase that merges into more pranks of the jaunty tune in the biggest revel of all, so that we suspect the jolly jester is the real hero and the majestic figures are, after all, mere background. And yet here follows the most tenderly moving verse, all unexpected, of the ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... eh?" observed 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
... feast was done; the King Sought some new sport to banish care, And to his jester cried: "Sir Fool, Kneel now, and make for ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... mortal hater of all good men, an adept in cozening, legerdemain, conycatching,[223:1] and all other shifts and sleights; a cracking boaster, proud, insolent, a secret back-biter, a contentious wrangler, a common jester and liar, a runagate wanderer, a cogging[223:2] sychophant and covetous exactor, a wringer of his patients. In a word, a man, or rather monster, made of a mixture ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... 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 hours ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... Inflamed by the insinuations of Mynheer Olenikke—a kind of Dutch Mephistopheles and Iago combined—he is secretly jealous of his consort the Princess Joedi's preference for the society of Djoe, the Court Jester and Society Clown. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 26, 1892 • Various
... this time, Master Sheriff, to which I most cheerfully invite you, and your late prisoner there. see you this goodly chain, sir? mun, no more words, twas lost, and is found again; come, my inestimable bullies, we'll talk of your noble Acts in sparkling Charnico, and in stead of a Jester, we'll ha the ghost ith white sheet sit at upper end ...
— The Puritain Widow • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... words she 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 Prophet that you will ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... Betty's fault, therefore. The most 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
... Then Chance, that sardonic jester who loves best to thwart the dearest desires of men and warp the destiny of nations, became piqued at the peace and the plenty in the land which lay around the bay. Chance, knowing well how best and quickest to let savagery loose upon the land, plucked a handful of gold from the breast of Nature, ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... 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
... particularly conspicuous: a dwarf, nicknamed Janus, or the Double-faced, of Danish—or, as some maintained, Jewish—extraction, and the mad Prince L. Contrary to what was customary in those days, the dwarf did nothing to amuse the master or mistress, and was not a jester—quite the opposite; he was always silent, had an ill-tempered and sullen appearance, and scowled and gnashed his teeth directly a question was addressed to him. Alexey Sergeitch called him a philosopher, and positively respected him; at table the dishes were handed to him first, ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... a literary ornament was wanted. A little savor of the Academy is not out of place in a brigand's cavern. M. Merimee was available. It was his destiny to sign himself "the Empress's Jester." Madame de Montijo presented him to Louis Bonaparte, who accepted him, and who completed his Court with this ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... to me. They seemed less real and living than the wonder of the sweet-smelling chairs, the birds, and the elegant dogs. Richest of treats, a monkey was introduced to me. 'It 's your papa's whim,' Mrs. Waddy said, resignedly; 'he says he must have his jester. Indeed it is no ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... comes bluff March—a cross between A Jester and a Libertine. He loves to make the parson race With wicked words his hat to chase; To dye with compromising rose The pious man's abstemious nose. The ladies hate him, though he shows A pretty taste for silken ...
— The Smoker's Year Book • Oliver Herford
... sonnets, which served as a model to the most popular poets of the age of Elizabeth, still excite the admiration of every student attached to the early literature of our country. Amongst other frivolous charges brought against him on his trial, it was mentioned that he kept an Italian jester, thought to be a spy, and that he loved to converse with foreigners and conform his behaviour to them. For his personal safety, therefore, it was perhaps unfortunate that a portion of his youth had been passed in a visit to Italy, then the ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... a dais which is shut off from behind by a railing. On the dais and on the floor are carpets. Servants take wine-flagons from a sideboard which stands on the left beside the stairs, and place them in front of the players. In front of the raised table UGRIN, the King's Jester, is asleep. The oil-torches give only a dim light. For a moment the players continue ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... part. It is a business he hath undertaken, and we are to suppose he is paid for his day's work. I only quarrel when in select and private meetings, where men of wit and learning are invited to pass an evening, this jester should be admitted to run over his circle of tricks, and make the whole company unfit for any other conversation, besides the indignity of confounding men's talents at so shameful ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... good For Henry Fifth, or Hotspur, or Macbeth. Promise that through to-morrow's spirit-war Man's deathless soul will hack and hew its way, Each flaunting Caesar climbing to his fate Scorning the utmost steps of yesterday. Never a shallow jester any more! Let not Jack Falstaff spill the ale in vain. Let Touchstone set the fashions for the wise And Ariel wreak his fancies through ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... the audience the devil of the Miracle plays was introduced; and another lively personage called the Vice was the predecessor of our modern clown and jester. His business was to torment the "virtues" by mischievous pranks, and especially to make the devil's life a burden by beating him with a bladder or a wooden sword at every opportunity. The Morality generally ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... sherbets, the ices, and the fruits were prepared; and 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 drum ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... if the girl were a penknife or a marble that had rolled from Bates's pocket, and the latter, irritated by an inward fear, grew to hate the jester. ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... embarrassed with baggage, surprised and terrified at the fate of their masters, fell an easy prey to the assailants; and the Lady Rowena, the Jew and his daughter experienced the same misfortune. Wamba, the jester, alone escaped, showing upon the occasion much more courage than those who pretended to greater sense. As he wandered through the forest, a dog, which he recognised, jumped up and fawned upon him, and Gurth, the swineherd, ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... that they can't descend into the filthy pool of politics. But it hain't reasonable, for how are you a goin' to clean out a filthy place if them that want it clean stand on the bank and hold their noses with one hand, and jester with the other, and quote scripter? And them that don't want it clean are throwin' slime and dirt into it all the time, heapin' up the loathsome filth. Somebody has got to take holt and work as well as pray, if these plague spots and misery breeders ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... French ships were taken: thirty thousand Frenchmen were killed, with two of their admirals: the loss of the English was inconsiderable, compared to the greatness and importance of the victory.[*] None of Philip's courtiers, it is said, dared to inform him of the event; till his fool or jester gave him a hint, by which he discovered the loss ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... then turns jester in a bitter way, and stoops to ironies and grinning sarcasm. Often it gives with the right hand only to take with the left, and blinded ones are set to chop and saw and plane those trees which in the end make gallows for their hopes. The story of the world shows ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... his stand against the Norman invaders of the Cambridgeshire fens, but if so, this did not prevent him, later on, from attaching himself to the court of the Conqueror's son. He is generally described as having been jester to Henry I., and it has been assumed that the nature of his engagement involved a course of life calling for repentance and a pilgrimage. But whatever the reason may have been, he apparently went to Rome in 1120, though the journey at that particular ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... they are full of very idle easiness, sith there is nothing of so sacred a majesty, but that an itching tongue may rub itself upon it: so deserve they no other answer, but instead of laughing at the jest, to laugh at the jester. We know a playing wit can praise the discretion of an ass; the comfortableness of being in debt, and the jolly commodity of being sick of the plague. So of the contrary side, if we ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... the Nabob spoke with severity to a native chief of high rank, whose followers had been engaged in a brawl with some of the Company's sepoys. "Are you yet to learn," he said, "who that Colonel Clive is, and in what station God has placed him?" The chief, who, as a famous jester and an old friend of Meer Jaffier, could venture to take liberties, answered, "I affront the Colonel! I, who never get up in the morning without making three low bows to his jackass!" This was hardly an exaggeration. Europeans and natives were alike at Clive's feet. The English regarded ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... corpse, that bears for winding-sheet The Stars and Stripes he lived to rear anew, Between the mourners at his head and feet, Say, scurrile jester, is there ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... 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 ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... "No, Monsieur Jester," replied d'Artagnan; "but with our four horses we may bring back our three friends, if we should have the good fortune ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... maid-of-honour with no heavier penalty than a box on the ears. The extreme licence he permitted himself is proved by that joke at the expense of Louis XIV., which might well have cost any other man his head. Louis, who always unbended to a merry jester, was showing his pictures to Killigrew, when they came to a painting of the Crucifixion, placed between portraits of the Pope and the "Roi Soleil" himself. "Ah, Sire," said the Jester, as he struck an attitude before the trio of canvases, "I knew that our Lord was crucified ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... point of taking them seriously and with scrupulous good manners. Wilde on his part also made a point of recognizing me as a man of distinction by his manner, and repudiating the current estimate of me as a mere jester. This was not the usual reciprocal-admiration trick: I believe he was sincere, and felt indignant at what he thought was a vulgar underestimate of me; and I had the same feeling about him. My impulse to rally to him in his misfortune, ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... men under whose patronage and in whose service 'Will the Jester' first showed himself, were men who were secretly endeavouring to make political capital of that new and immense motive power, that not yet available, and not very easily organised political power which was already beginning to move the masses ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... y' are so ill a jester," said Lawless, "ye shall have your word for me. 'Duckworth and Shelton' is the word; and here, to the illustration, is Shelton on my shoulders, and to Duckworth ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... therewith tired us, they took to playing the fool. Not merely in a general sense, in which they may be said to have been so engaged all along; but with heavy effort, and under the express direction of a professional master of the ceremonies. The Adalian jester was a tall ugly fellow, who had considerable power of comic expression in his face, but whose forte lay in a cap of fantastic device. It was made of the skin of some animal, whose genus I will not venture to guess; and had been contrived in such fashion that the tail hung over the top, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... 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 Christmas guest—young ...
— When the Yule Log Burns - A Christmas Story • Leona Dalrymple
... know that picture well, A monk, all else unheeding, Within a bare and gloomy cell A musty volume reading; While through the window you can see In sunny glade entrancing, With cap and bells beneath a tree A jester dancing, dancing. ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... lean and blanched and grey-haired. She wears gold spectacles, which stand out oddly against the thin whiteness of her face; she is still a handsome, distinguished woman, who can have, when she chooses, a most gracious manner. As I, worldling and jester though I am, for some mysterious reason have found favour in the lady's eyes, she manifests this graciousness whenever we foregather. Ergo, I like Lady Kynnersley, and would put myself to much inconvenience in order ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... the ugliest was La Mella; with her big, deformed head, her black eyes, her wide mouth and broken teeth, her dumpy figure, she looked like the lady-jester of some ancient princess. She had been on the point of becoming a chorus-girl; she was balked, however, for despite her good voice and excellent ear for music, she could not pronounce the words clearly ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... I march under the flag of the Sieur Bussy d'Amboise, a proud Clermont, of blood royal in the reign of Henry III., who shed luster upon a court that was edified by the wisdom of M. Chicot, the "King's Brother," the incomparable jester and philosopher, who would have himself exceeded all heroes except that he despised the actors and the audience of the world's theater and performed valiant feats only that he might hang his cap and bells upon ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... who had no thought 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 alarm. The ship was manifestly in their ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... wish to succeed as a jester, you'll need To consider each person auricular: What is all right for B would quite scandalize C (For C is so very particular); And D may be dull, and E's very thick skull Is as empty of brains as a ladle; While F is F sharp, and will cry with a carp, That ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... 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 was ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... An allusion probably to Archibald Armstrong, the fool or privileged jester of Charles I., usually called Archy, who had a quarrel with Archbishop Laud, and of whom many arch things are on record. There is a little jest-book, very high priced, and of little worth, which bears ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... 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 ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... the piece!' jested Grunbitz, who in Poland had been a Badchan (marriage-jester), and was now ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... 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, ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... when the hound seizes it. He could make Lovaina know anything he wanted to, and she could direct him to do anything she wished. In that house of mirth, brightness, and laughter, he was as a cunning and, at times, hateful jester, feared by the Tahitians, and, indeed, to whites a shadowy skeleton at the feast, a thing of indescribable possibilities. I knew him, he liked me, and I drew from him by motions and expressions some measure of his feelings and sufferings. But I, too, occasionally, shuddered at the animal cries ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... if my friend—did you call him Death?—was there, I was there, if you were there I was there and it was my hand that drew yonder great black bow of yours and my eye that guided the straight shaft which laid the foulmouthed jester low. Why, did you not say as much yourself when your master here bade farewell to his father in the ship at Calais? What were the words? Oh, I remember them. You wondered how One I may not name," and he bowed his solemn head, ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... was permitted a license not granted to the ordinary individual,—as indeed most actors are. Even princes, who hedge themselves round with impassable barriers to certain of their subjects who are in all ways great and worthy of notice, unbend to the Mime who today takes the place of the Court-jester, and allow him to enter the royal presence, often bringing his newest wanton with him. And there was not the slightest reason for the Marquis Fontenelle to be at all particular in his choice of acquaintances. Yet somehow or ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... of bells in the air, an all-pervading sense of jester's noise, and the flaunting vividness of royal colors; the streets swarm with humanity,—humanity in all shapes, manners, forms,—laughing, pushing, jostling, crowding, a mass of men and women and children, as varied and as assorted in their several individual peculiarities ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... difficulty of finding an answer in the same vein, he did well in not replying. Loyalty to Swinburne forbade. But I see a certain pathos in the unanswered message. It was a message from the hand of an old jester, but also, I think, from the heart of an old man—a signal waved jauntily, but in truth wistfully, across the gulf of years and estrangement; and one could wish ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... Mantua, the Duke and his suite, and the only member of his household who dared do as he pleased was the Duke of Mantua's jester, Rigoletto. The more deformed a jester happened to be, the more he was valued in his profession, and Rigoletto was a very ugly little man, and as vindictive and wicked as he was ill-favoured in appearance. The only thing he truly loved was his daughter, Gilda. ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... could forebode it so early as 1765,—but Rousseau more than all others is the unconscious expression of the groping after something radically new, the instinct for a change that should be organic and pervade every fibre of the social and political body. Freedom of thought owes far more to the jester Voltaire, who also had his solid kernel of earnest, than to the sombre Genevese, whose earnestness is of the deadly kind. Yet, for good or evil, the latter was the father of modern democracy, and with out ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... 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 himself. Meanwhile, give me some ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... very much, and she made her pet knight (for she had as many suitors as Penelope) promise that he would steal it from him that very night. So at the witching hour of midnight, the knight approached the palmer's couch, and gently abstracted the cockle hat and staff, placing in their stead, the jester's cap and bells, and bauble. Next morning when it was pitch dark, for it was the shortest day, up jumped the palmer, and prepared to resume his journey. Now it chanced that the day before, the lady had ordered that the fool should ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... existence. The children might make the very air vocal with their howls, Elaine might have hysterics, Mrs. Smithers render hymns in a cracked, squeaky voice, and Dick whistle eternally, but Harlan was in a strange new country, with a beautiful lady, a company of gallant knights, and a jester. ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... too the souvenir of that other gracious and graceful dandy, king of fashion in his day, the count D'Orsay. It was at a breakfast at Tortoni's that the preliminaries were arranged for the famous duel wherein D'Orsay appeared as the champion of the Virgin Mary. Some irreverent jester having made some slighting remark respecting the Virgin, D'Orsay took the matter up and called the speaker to account. "For," said the count, "the Virgin is a woman, and as such ought not to be slandered ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... made an admirable Olivia. She was particularly excellent in her unbending scenes in conversation with the Clown. I have seen some Olivias—and those very sensible actresses too—who in these interlocutions have seemed to set their wits at the jester, and to vie conceits with him in downright emulation. But she used him for her sport, like what he was, to trifle a leisure sentence or two with, and then to be dismissed, and she to be the Great Lady still. She touched the imperious fantastic humour of the character with nicety. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... 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 winged with a couple ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... Princess Elizabeth could scarcely wait for the morrow, so impatient were they to see all the grand devisings that were in store for them. So good Master Sandy, under-tutor to the Prince, proposed to wise Archie Armstrong, the King's jester, that they play at snapdragon for the children in ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... and kings too. The mountebank is wanted in the streets, the jester at the Louvre. The one is called a Clown, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... been living with us had married,—Nellie, to A. C. Jester, a cattle man, and May, to Ed. Bradford, a railroad engineer—and consequently left us; and my wife had been wishing for a long time to visit her parents in St. Louis. Taking these and other things into consideration I finally resolved to resign my seat in the legislature and ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... well swung, cousin mine! Its use depends not on the strength, but the practice. Why, look you now, there is the boy Richard of Gloucester, who comes not up to thy shoulder, and by dint of custom each day can wield mace or axe with as much ease as a jester doth his lathesword. Ah, trust me, Marmaduke, the York House is a princely one; and if we must have a king, we barons, by stout Saint George, let no meaner race ever furnish our lieges. But to thyself, Marmaduke—what are ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... fellow toilers, and as they splashed in the basins set out on a 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 examination in Latin, quizzed them in physics and promised the whole ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... his way a disciplinarian. He had arrested with his own hands, pulling him down from the rostrum and committing him to Bocardo prison, an undergraduate who had carried too far the wit of the 'Terrae Filius', the licensed jester ...
— The Oxford Degree Ceremony • Joseph Wells
... best is whet, So wit is by politeness sharpest set: Their want of edge from their offence is seen; Both pain us least when exquisitely keen. The fame men give is for the joy they find; Dull is the jester, when the joke's unkind. Since Marcus, doubtless, thinks himself a wit, To pay my compliment, what place so fit? His most facetious(11)letters came to hand, Which my first satire sweetly reprimand: If that a just offence to Marcus gave, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... for a jester (Chapter XX), from his motley clothes, is also sometimes a variant of Pash. And the dim. Patchett has become confused with Padgett, from Padge, a rimed form of Madge. Pentecost is recorded as a personal name in Anglo-Saxon times. Michaelmas ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... humorist, wag, wit, reparteeist[obs3], epigrammatist, punster; bel esprit, life of the party; wit-snapper, wit- cracker, wit-worm; joker, jester, Joe Miller|!, drole de corps[obs3], gaillard[obs3], spark; bon diable[Fr]; practical joker. buffoon, farceur[French], merry-andrew, mime, tumbler, acrobat, mountebank, charlatan, posturemaster[obs3], harlequin, punch, pulcinella[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... propounded 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 his ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... Tales? Those are not for children: Chaucer was a jester. You had better take my book. It has beautiful pictures." The young Percy took the little breviary, and, going down the path as though they sought the shade, they both quietly disappeared from the ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... "Speak'st thou of 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 ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... this state of affairs is rich in incident, varied and sufficiently complex in color, passion and character to furnish material for an exciting spectacular representation. The tragic element is strong, but supported and shaded by the company of roysterers, a jester, whose foolery is a compound of bluff of that period and bluff of modern politics and athletics. The jester, the black company and the penitents, together with the roysterers, form now the foreground, now the background, of action, which in itself is never without the dolorous sound of the death ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... Mock with your jester to divert the court, Fit Scene for sportive joys and frolic mirth; Think'st thou I lack that manly constancy Which braves misfortune, and remains unshaken? Are these, are these the emblems of thy friendship, ...
— The Prince of Parthia - A Tragedy • Thomas Godfrey
... they possessed of yore, ere they for ever lost the gay uniform of the Lord High Commissioner, the gold lace of his dragoon officers, and the glitter of his pages in silver and scarlet. 'We are two of the humblest servants of Mother Church,' said the Prior and his companion to Wamba, the jester of Rotherwood. 'Two of the humblest servants of Mother Church!' repeated Wamba; 'I should rather like to see her seneschals, her chief butlers, and her ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... a day, but when it matters not, Nor where, but mark! the sun was plaguy hot Falling athwart a long and dusty road In which same dust two dusty fellows strode. One was a tall, broad-shouldered, goodly wight In garb of motley like a jester dight, Fool's cap on head with ass's ears a-swing, While, with each stride, his bells did gaily ring; But, 'neath his cock's-comb showed a face so marred With cheek, with brow and lip so strangely scarred As might scare tender maid or timid child Unless, by chance, they saw him when he ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... that which is common to all would seem to be natural and not sinful. Now Augustine relates that the saying of a certain jester was accepted by all, "You wish to buy for a song and to sell at a premium," which agrees with the saying of Prov. 20:14, "It is naught, it is naught, saith every buyer: and when he is gone away, then he will boast." Therefore ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... invitation. They found Bobby Hargrew there before them. Harum-scarum as Bobby was, nobody could accuse her of lack of sympathy; and she had already learned that her fun and frolic pleased the invalid. Bobby did not mind playing the jester for ...
— The Girls of Central High Aiding the Red Cross - Or Amateur Theatricals for a Worthy Cause • Gertrude W. Morrison
... have the pond dragged; but would go thither and gloat upon them for half a summer's day. The mansion was full of gay folks—his old town companions invited to visit him, and behold his greatness (as he had often imagined they should be): Tub Ryll was his jester now, and Parson Whymper his "chaplain." They were all playing pool as usual, and he was just about to make an easy hazard, when somebody jogged his elbow. It was ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... Shakespearian, but it is difficult to recall an allusion to Shakespeare's humour, except in the rather oblique form of Dogberry as the type of German officialdom. Swift he quoted with admirable effect, but it was Swift the reviler, not Swift the jester. He says that he made a "wooden Oxford audience laugh aloud with two pages of Heine's wit"; but the lecture, as we read it, shows more of mordant sarcasm than of the material for laughter. Scott he knew by heart, and Carlyle he honestly revered; but he admired the one for his romance ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... and sang little songs—French and English, funny and sentimental—he became, as he had so often become in other scenes, the Rigoletto of the company; and Riffrath was a kingdom in which he might be court jester in ordinary if he chose, whenever he elected to honor it with his ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... one thing not 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 ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... their temper. Excepting the occasional 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 ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... last scene, and even then uttered not a word, was the once great actor on that itinerant Thespian stage, known through many a fair for his exuberant humour, his impromptu jokes, his arch eye, his redundant life of drollery, and the strange pathos or dignity with which he could suddenly exalt a jester's part, and call forth tears in the startled hush of laughter; he whom the Cobbler had rightly said, "might have made a fortune at Covent Garden." There was the remnant of the old popular mime!—all his attributes of eloquence reduced to dumb ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Critic of the craft, As stage tradition tells; And yet—perhaps 'twill only be The jester ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman
... shade of scarlet. Thus disguised, he crept softly down the Opera House Building stairs and ran full into Billy Getz, Riverbank's best example of the spoiled only-son species, and the town's inveterate jester. Mr. Getz put a hand ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... Somnus and 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, ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... 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 so much dread as the imputation ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... vessel upon which he could lay hands. 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 our brave ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... beautiful dull gold, shines with the lustre of an emerald. In his happy moods Dosso set colour upon canvas, as no other painter out of Venice ever did; and here he is at his happiest. The picture is the portrait of a jester, dressed in courtly clothes and with a feathered cap upon his head. He holds a lamb in his arms, and carries the legend, Sic Genius. Behind him is a landscape of exquisite brilliancy and depth. His face is young and handsome. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... the Corporal now (like an experienced jester) withdrew to leave its full effect on the admiration of his master. A little before sunset the two travellers renewed ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... illustrations to a poem of A. von Marens entitled "The Court of Wine." He represents King Wine as leading a triumphal march enthroned on a wine-press, wreathed with vine leaves and drawn with grape vines by jolly vintagers of every age and sex. Behind follow as chamberlains a band of coopers, a jester dancing on a cask, and a troop of gay youths full of all "quips and cranks and youthful wiles." Then come, represented by most happily conceived figures, the German rivers on whose shores are the world-famous vineyards whose ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... here have had, at Pompeii, looking at Sallust's house and the relics of an orgy, a dried wine-jar or two, a charred supper-table, the breast of a dancing girl pressed against the ashes, the laughing skull of a jester, a perfect stillness round about, as the cicerone twangs his moral, and the blue sky shines calmly over the ruin. The Congreve muse is dead, and her song choked in Time's ashes. We gaze at the skeleton, and wonder at the life which ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... whiskers is inimitable, incomparable, almost indescribable. On the one hand, he is a prodigy of learning, a veritable warehouse of musical information, true, half-true and apocryphal; on the other hand, he is a jester who delights in reducing all learning to absurdity. Reading him somehow suggests hearing a Bach mass rescored for two fifes, a tambourine in B, a wind machine, two tenor harps, a contrabass oboe, two banjos, eight tubas and the usual clergy and strings. The substance is there; every note is ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... a man of very great parts, almost a poet, and as entertaining as a jester, but he was very vicious and sinful. Being in Ravenna during the time that Messer Bernardino of Polenta held the lordship, it chanced that this Messer Antonio, who was a very great gambler, had been gambling one day and had lost nearly all ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... the Court Jester, Archie Armstrong, when he had begged to act as chaplain, in the absence of that official, at the dinner-table of Charles I. Archbishop ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... 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 ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... in the middle of the night, and send him in great haste to draw up a will for a client, whom he finds in good health; these and a thousand other silly pranks of the same nature, are the stock in trade of a jester; and no one knew them better than ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... with a sense upon him that elsewhere it is Eugene and not he who is the jester, and that in these circles where Eugene persists in being speechless, he, Mortimer, is but the double of the friend on whom he ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... princess had for some time been sharing this great adventure. She was a beautiful golden-haired princess, though quite small, and had flowers in her hair and put some in the cap of Jimmie Time—behind the nickel badge—and said she would make him her court dwarf or jester or knight, or something; only the scout who was with her said this was rather silly and that they had better be getting home or they knew very well what would happen to them. But when they got lost Jimmie Time looked at this scout's rifle and said it was ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... Dagonet come to the forest] Now, you are to know that though Sir Dagonet was the King's jester, and though he was slack of wit, yet he was also a knight of no mean prowess. For he had performed several deeds of good repute and was well held in all courts of chivalry. So Sir Dagonet always went armed; though he bore upon ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... brilliancies, and wit, and eloquence, and taste, and genius, of his thousand opponents—whose crown was a branch of English oak, his sceptre a strong sapling of the same, his throne a mound of turf—who economised matters by being at once king and king's jester, and whose mere clenched fist, held up at home or across the waters, saved millions of money, awed despots, encouraged freedom in every part of the world, and had nearly established a pure form of Christianity over Great Britain—who gave his country a model of excellence ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... dollar," she said, "but it is a jester's dollar, the fee of a clown. Don't you see, Martin, the whole thing is lowering. I want the man I love and honor to be something finer and higher than a ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... a habit peculiar to many walkers, which Punch, some years ago, touched upon satirically, but which seems to have survived the jester's ridicule. It is that custom of stopping friends in the street, to whom we have nothing whatever to communicate, but whom we embarrass for no other purpose than simply to show our friendship. Jones meets his friend Smith, whom he has met in nearly the same locality but a few hours before. ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... humorist, wag, wit, reparteeist^, epigrammatist, punster; bel esprit, life of the party; wit-snapper, wit-cracker, wit- worm; joker, jester, Joe Miller^, drole de corps^, gaillard^, spark; bon diable [Fr.]; practical joker. buffoon, farceur [Fr.], merry-andrew, mime, tumbler, acrobat, mountebank, charlatan, posturemaster^, harlequin, punch, pulcinella^, scaramouch^, clown; wearer of the cap and bells, wearer of ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... 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 his counsellors, ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... pages with racy anecdotes of the keen wit and the varied erudition of my venerable friend. But let none of my readers think of Dr. Cox as a clerical jester, or a pedant. He was a powerful and intensely spiritual preacher of the living Gospel. In his New York congregation were many of the best brains and fervent hearts to be found in that city, and some of the leading laymen revered him as their spiritual father. ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... us what of the humorous came under his observation without himself seeing the fun in it. Where he sets forth with intent to be humorous he sometimes attains almost to the tragic; there are few things so sad as a joke that misses fire or a jester without sense ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... this address, Nicholas recognised the king's jester, Archie Armstrong, a merry little knave, with light blue eyes, long yellow hair hanging about his ears, and a sandy beard. There was a great deal of mother wit about Archie, and quite as much shrewdness as folly. He wore no distinctive dress ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... feels an aversion to hunting. "I would not be able to shoot this arrow at the gazelles who have lived with her, and who taught the beloved to gaze so innocently." He grows thin from loss of sleep. Unable to keep his feelings locked up in his bosom, he reveals them to his companion, the jester, but afterward, fearing he might tell his wives about this love-affair, he says ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... badinage, 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 ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... was beloved by a jester, And once when the owls grew still He made his soul go upward And stand ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
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