by Becky Fury

Before the alternative comedy revolution and the political satire of Peter Cook and Lenny Bruce during the 1960s counter-culture revolution, there was the French Revolution 

And before the French Revolution, the only refuge for speaking truth to power or proto-leftist critique of the excesses and abuses of power was humour. 

The political left didn’t exist before the seismic shift of the French Revolution. Then there was only the political establishment – hereditary aristocrats, kings, queens, hereditary military elites – and a disenfranchised Third Estate. Critiquing or challenging the power of the political establishment was either done with violence or, more civilly, with humour. 

As medieval scholar Desiderius Erasmus wrote in his essay In Praise Of Folly, a text that helped kick off the Reformation, the revolution that occurred in 16th Century European Christianity: ‘Fools… Are the only ones who can speak the truth’.

There are many documented examples of from royal courts across the world of jesters given licence to speak the truth to the monarch. ‘In risu veritas’ – or many a true word is spoken in jest.

In pre-revolutionary France when a monarch had become insensible to the reasoning of couriers a fool was called in to try to get through to them 

The Infantrie Dijonnaise was one of the medieval French fooling societies from which these jesters were plucked and its motto was ‘qui non vult stultum videre, speculum suum frangat’ – ‘he who does not want to see a fool should smash his mirror’

If comic remonstration failed, the guild motto was a great topper, a tactful way and funny way of slapping an egocentric monarch out of whatever gilded delusion the jester had been contracted to slap them out of. 

It is recorded that Elizabeth I’s jester Richard Tarlton commented on her relationship with  Sir Walter Raleigh: ‘The knave controls the queen’, which may have been an example of a using humour to speak truth to power –  but is more likely an early example of the phenomenon we describe today as cock blocking. Tarlton wanted to be the knave that controlled (or chirped) the queen and didn’t want any dashing adventurers doing the same.

Interestingly, when Charles II was restored to the throne after the English Revolution, he did not reinstate the tradition of the court jester. 

He however did frequent restoration comedy – the forerunner to music hall entertainments – and was a fan of the work of Thomas Killigrew. Although not officially a jester, the diarist Samuel Pepys called Killigrew ‘the King's jester’ with the power to 'mock and revile even the most prominent without penalty’.

Maybe the events of the English Revolution had made the King aware that he should pay more heed to his critics - but also make it as difficult as possible for them to murder him in his bed. 

This could have been all the more important due to the fact that Charles was banging Elizabeth Killgrew, Thomas Killgrew’s sister. 

Without taking George Orwell’s assessment that ‘every joke being a tiny revolution’ literally, humour is always to left of the established order. 

Every type of humour, from clever puns to dark gallows humour to clownish slapstick to whimsical surrealism all follow the same basic premise – they use the authority of established order to create humour by undermining it 

A skilfully aimed and well-timed custard pie in the face is funny because it disrupts the established order of consensus reality in a surprising way 

Likewise, a good quality pun is funny because it cleverly undermines a word or words and their established meaning 

All jokes use the established order as a set up and undermine this expectation as a punchline.

Published: 8 Nov 2024