Clown: (1) A fool or rural bumpkin in Shakespearean vocabulary. Examples of this type of clown include Lance, Bottom, Dogberry, and other Shakespearean characters. (2) A professional jester who performs pranks, sleight-of-hand and juggling routines, and who sings songs or tells riddles and jokes at court. By convention, such jesters were given considerable leeway to speak on nearly any topic (even criticizing court policy) as long as the criticism was veiled in riddles and wordplay. Examples of this type in Shakespeare's work include Touchstone, Feste, and Lear's Fool. Cf. Fool.

 

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Clown: (1) A fool or rural bumpkin in Shakespearean vocabulary. Examples of this type of clown include Lance, Bottom, Dogberry, and other Shakespearean characters. (2) A professional jester who per . . . View Full Definition

Zani: A stock character in the commedia dell'arte, the zani was a buffoonish servant, a jester, a butt of jokes, i.e., what twentieth-century entertainment would call a 'stooge.' The modern Englis . . . View Full Definition

Speech Prefix: Often abbreviated 's.p.,' this term in drama refers to a character's name or an abbreviated version of a character's name which indicates what actor is speaking subsequent words in the text . . . View Full Definition

Fool: Originally a jester-at-court who would entertain the king and nobles, the court jester was often a dwarf or a mentally incompetent individual. His role was to amuse others with his physical . . . View Full Definition