the laughing fit



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Buffone


A buffoon: a ridiculous but amusing person. From the buffone or court jester. The most serious courts of Europe required a buffoon to alleviate the tedious pedanticism of mundane life. Said the Earl of Rochester to the King:

Poor Prince
Thy prick, like thy buffoons at Court
Will govern thee because it makes thee sport
Shakespeare chose to put some of the noblest words in the mouths of buffoons. The most famous of them all is Jaques in As You Like It. Here, for your amusement is the whole soliloquy that made Jacques immortal! By the way the photo is of a certain Pablo de Valladolid - a court buffoon in Madrid. Painting by Velazquez (1636-7) now lies in the Prado.

Jacques: All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the canon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes,sans taste, sans everything.

(As You Like It, 2. 7. 139-167)

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the laughing fit

  • A journal of merriment. "He deserves paradise who makes his companions laugh". Inspired by Punch, MAD, the Onion and other irreverent magazines. This is the blog that was created because "not everyone is in on the joke". The laughing fit ... the moaning stay out.


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"He deserves paradise who makes his companions laugh". Inspired by Punch, MAD, the Onion and other irreverent magazines. This is the blog that was created because "not everyone is in on the joke". The laughing fit ... the moaning stay out.