Fondlove (Sir William), a vain old baronet of 60, who fancies himself a schoolboy, capable of playing boyish games, dancing, or doing anything that young men do. “How marvellously I wear! What signs of age have I? I’m certainly a wonder for my age. I walk as well as ever. Do I stoop? Observe the hollow of my back. As now I stand, so stood I when a child, a rosy, chubby boy. My arm is as firm as ’twas at 20. Oak, oak, isn’t it? Think you my leg is shrunk?—not in the calf a little? When others waste, ’tis growing-time with me. Vigor, sir, vigor, in every joint. Could run, could leap. Why shouldn’t I marry?” So thought Sir William of Sir William, and he married the Widow Green, a buxom dame of 40 summers.—S. Knowles, The Love-Chase (1837).
Fool. James I. of Great Britain was called by Henri IV. of France, “The Wisest Fool in Christendom” (1566-1625).
Fool (The), in the ancient morris-dance, represented the court-jester. He carried in his hand a yellow bauble, and wore on his head a hood with ass’s ears, the top of the hood rising into the form of a cock’s neck and head, with a belt at the extreme end. The hood was blue, edged with yellow and scolloped, the doublet red, edged with yellow, the girdle yellow, the hose of one leg yellow and of the other blue, shoes red. (See Morris-Dance.)
Fool’s Prayer (The). A king calls upon his jester to “kneel down and make a prayer!” The fool obeys in words so full of pregnant truth that—
“The room was hushed. In silence rose
The King and sought his gardens cool,
And walked apart, and murmured low
‘Be merciful to me, a fool!’”
Edward Rowland Sill, The Fool’s Prayer (1883).
Fools, Jesters and Mirthmen. Those in italics were mirthmen, but not licensed fools or jesters.