Sentence Examples:
Hook was a certificated jester, with a lenient society to hear and applaud him, instead of an irritable tyrant to keep him in order: and he filled his post well.
A giant and a dwarf were at one period of the present reign part of the royal establishment; and it is never without a jester, who enjoys an extraordinary latitude of speech, and, both in his dress and manner, assumes the habit and appearance of folly.
Pleased as a child over a Christmas stocking, he straightway mounted the beautiful beast and galloped away to the south, still led by Chance, the jester.
He was young now, but he knew that the jesters of the years stuck their tongues out at mortality and ran off quickly to hide someplace.
As the hunchback was one of the Sultan's private jesters, the chief of police resolved to defer sentence of death until he had consulted his master.
And yet this decree is at variance with the temperaments with which we were endowed by the bitter jester who modeled all creatures.
Sometimes it may, without discord, as in the scene between King Lear and his jester, mingle its shrill voice with the most sublime, the most dismal, the dreamiest music of the soul.
As he reached it the dwarf jester made a ceremonious obeisance and handed him a glove which he had dropped as he came forward.
For this the jester was glad, knowing that tears quench the first white heat of such sorrows as can burn out the soul and drive the brain raving mad, when life can bear the torture.
Jesters, dwarfs, and minstrels were there in unusual numbers, and more noisy and intrusive than they were permitted to be in better regulated society.
Books are then, of course, well to have, but rather as giving one texts for thoughts and talk than as preachers, counselors, jesters, or friends.
To his own age he was the prince of jesters; to English literature he has given its best illustration of the burlesque in rhetoric.
Gray laughed gently at his jokes, for he was a tireless jester (sometimes a tiresome one), and he enjoyed seeing the serious light in Winifred's eyes change to mirth under his curious speeches.
He spoke exactly as 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.
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.
In an instant a sword was whipped from its scabbard and a practiced hand sent its blade through the arm of the jester, who presently fell backward.
"Our age," he says, "has fallen back to fables," and he speaks as though the jesters of the day indulged in very questionable jokes and performances.
Jesters obtained patrons, and a distinct class of men grew up, who, having more humor than means were glad to barter their pleasantries for something more substantial.
I learned later that I had been addressing one of the public jesters employed by the community to keep Broadway from becoming intolerably dull.
"The grave world always wants a pert little Cornelia to tease it out of its peculiarities: people in old times kept their jesters, and you're nearly as good!"
The jester laughed, or, more strictly, exhaled his mirth from the roof of a wide-spread mouth in a long hiss that would have been more like an angered alligator's if alligators used fine-cut tobacco.
We can afford, therefore, to wait with supreme confidence, because the good sense of the people will not always submit to the tactics of the jester when it needs a savior.
Then the jester called the ship's company to behold, and bear him witness, that he made the Quaker hale the king's ropes; so veering the ropes they lowered me half-way down, then made me fast again.
Finding himself overpowered, the jester threw himself from his horse, plunged into a thicket, and, favored by the general confusion, escaped from the scene of action.
Therewith the Archbishop, in his purple robes, appeared in the archway at the other end of the hall, the King joined him, and still followed by the jester, they both vanished.
Gaffer Martin mumbled something to them incomprehensible, but which the jester comprehended, for he called them up and named them to him, and Martin put out a bony hand, and gave them a greeting.
Just then a court fool or jester stepped forward, and cried aloud his announcements of the events of the day, mixed with highly complimentary praises of his master.
The chief and jester professed themselves charmed with the proposal, although each had been roused from a pleasant slumber.
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.
Then, at the conclusion, after a general clashing and crossing of swords, the fool or jester stepped forward, and wound up the performance with an appeal for pecuniary recognition.
For some time his vigilant eyes had been covertly studying the unconscious foreign jester, noting sundry signs and symptoms.
"Before this tribunal of ladies whose beauty and learning he has outraged by his disaffection and spleen, I summon him for trial," continued the duke's jester.
"The same, my friend of the motley," continued the other, not without complacency, observing the effect of his announcement on the jester.
At the same time a dagger descended in the empty air, just grazing the shoulder of the jester, who, recovering himself, grasped the arm of his assailant and grappled with him.
To offset the triumphs of the king's guest there occurred to the jester the comforting afterthought that the greater the other's successes now the more ignominious would be his downfall.
True, he had forgotten he was only a jester; but had it not been the memory of her soft glances that had hurried him on to the avowal?
During the wrestling the jester's doublet had been torn open and suddenly the gaze of the king's guest fell, as if fascinated, upon an object which hung from his neck.
Beyond the great ditch outstretched a rolling country on which the jester gazed with eager eyes, while his companion swiftly led the way to a clump of willow and aspen on the other side of the moat.
The jester glanced at the colossal monster, repugnant in deformity, and then at the girl, who was tapping impatiently on the table with her white fingers.
Standing in the shadow at the head of the stairs, the jester only gripped tighter the hilt of the coveted sword, while across his vision flashed the picture of the young girl, left helpless, alone!
The jester at once seized the means of descent, but not before the man who had discovered them was on the upper rounds; a quick effort on the fool's part, and ladder and rogue toppled over together.
A moment the jester listened, his head raised to the growing splendor of the heavens, then threw himself on the earthen floor of the hut and was at once overcome with sleep.
She appeared over-anxious to leave the shepherd's hut; the jester, on the other hand, cast a backward glance at the poplar, the hovel, the brook.
Suspiciously the duke's jester regarded the hunchback and then glanced dubiously toward the gate through which they had entered the town.
The sight of the tavern which they came suddenly upon and the appearance of the innkeeper interrupted this dark trend of thought, and, springing from his horse, the jester helped the girl to dismount.
Even the jester has come down to us as Patch, a name given regularly to this member of the household in allusion to his motley attire.
In a paltry generation of superficial thinking the subject was one for jest, but there is far more in it than jesters are likely to discover.
George's Day, surrounded by scholars and courtiers, dwarfs and jesters, and fair ladies clad in glittering robes of cloth of silver and gold.
Nor could the irksome offices of the barber check the festivities of the day, though it was well known he was enacting the part of jester by appointment at the czar's court.
The plump hostess, who knew her knight for a merry jester, was yet half inclined to believe his account of the forest dwellers, and she looked with added interest upon the blushing Dolly.
It became increasingly obvious that the depressed jester must straightway be removed from this blighting influence or ever the cap and bells would jingle.
If the jester had fastened the end of his rope to the stern of the boat and then, while standing in the bows, had given a series of violent jerks, the boat would have been propelled forward.
"In his house they did nothing but feast, dance, and masque; and himself passed away the time in hearing of foolish plays, and in marrying these players, tumblers, jesters, and such sort of people."
Presently he roused himself from his meditations, and, with a gesture of his hand, bade the rest of the court retire, and beckoned the jester to draw near him.
Looking round in wonderment, his eye was caught by his attire; instead of the sorry garb of the jester he was clothed in royal robes of ermine and cloth of gold.
Leaping upon the table, amid the smothered mirth of the assemblage, the two jesters placed themselves opposite each other, and grinned such comical defiance that the king roared with laughter.
His jester had acquainted him with the discovery just made of the secret hoard, and he was therefore compelled to have recourse to this desperate move.
Some irreverent jester having made some slighting remark respecting the Virgin, D'Orsay took the matter up and called the speaker to account.
To be sure, to all appearance he was still the same light-footed jester as of old; he enjoyed his good bed, the warm stove, the solid and sufficient food, and seemed to find no fault with anything.
He bore it at first with an inviting patience; but upon one of the students proceeding to an unpardonable freedom, plucked out his knife and suddenly plunged it in the belly of the jester.
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.
"He is the greatest jester at Arthur's court, but a good knight withal, and I know no man whom I like better as a comrade."
Nobody doubted for a moment that it was Velasquez, the governor's relative, who had feed the jester with a few pesos to utter these complaints, all emanating from a bad feeling.
Oftentimes the retort was so pat that one couldn't help an inward question whether the two jesters had not arranged it in advance.
Later, from this audience of soldiers there were yells of laughter, though the effect of shells arriving at unexpected moments, in untoward circumstances, was a favorite theme of the jesters.
The executioner turned and glanced angrily at the speaker; a small man, almost a dwarf in stature, with intelligent features and eyes beaming with malice, he was dressed in the garb of a jester, and wore on his head a bright scarlet cap with asses' ears.
A person who happened to be at the time afflicted with this convulsive movement was suddenly struck on the back, by a practical jester, by way of surprising him out of the distemper.
"I do not at all consider this a subject for jest," said the little lady, surveying the jester indignantly through her tears.
Pandora wore a cunning little red leather hood with some bells attached to it, and, to keep her from escaping from him, a cord attached to her leg was fastened to the jester's arm.
With mischief in his eyes, Antoine kept singing faster and faster, which caused the jester to whirl about like a top, while the little princess clapped her hands with delight.
Later when the jester saw the archduke he was clothed as became his rank, in velvet trimmed in fur, while gems flashed in the chain about his neck and on his fingers.
Marguerite was not an angel, as the jester had well said, but to the girl who now gazed upon her, and who had received so great a boon at her hands, she seemed more than human.
The latter, being upright as well as good-natured, refused to take all the money offered him by the jester, merely taking what he had expected to receive for the bear, showing that honesty is a plant that will flourish anywhere, provided the ground be favorable.
"What a mess this room is in," grumbled the jester, as he stumbled over the fallen hangings, coughing violently as the dust from them tickled his throat.
"If harm had befallen me I should have borne it alone," returned the jester coldly, "as you did not wait for me as you promised to do."
Marguerite asked the two comrades a great many questions about the province of Burgundy, and the jester told her many incidents of her mother's girlhood.
While at the height of their exultation a troop came filing along the causeway, the sight of which brought a sudden change over the countenances of the jesters.
Carteret's egotism and selfishness were diluted by a sense of humor that enabled him to tolerate Swift, his unofficial jester.
Choosing to do this through the force of her own personality rather than by infusing her personality into a dramatist's conception, she became a droll, a professional jester.
It is said that one king suffered terribly from an abscess in the lip, till his physician called in a jester, whose pranks made the king laugh heartily, and so the abscess burst.
Grant was then a man of some ability, and if he could have forgotten his aptitudes as a circus jester, would have been a redoubtable antagonist.
This invitation to merriment was supported by the jester, who had already seated himself, and now arose with a look of the most grave importance.
Cried out the count to his jester: "I have some difficulty in rising; and, truly, such confounded laws are not worth rising for."
The jester had withdrawn to the farther end of the apartment, where he stood in the shade, observing the effects of his mimicry.
At the moment the accident happened to the count, the jester had cast aside his parchment crown and purple mantle, and thrown himself, with an exclamation of intense grief, over his wounded master; but Count Gerhard quickly arose, holding his hand over his bleeding wound.
For this unwieldy jester, with the jolly red face and rough tongue, could touch the heart with a word, when she was in the humor.
Now he comes forth from his long night into the fullness of sunlit day, to proclaim his awakening to his summer comrades, a gay recluse clad all in the motley, a jester, maybe, yet no fool.
It was so preposterous that a jester should ask her to dance at all, that everyone said it was the funniest thing he had done, and they went into a gale about it on the marble stairway.
The jester was not good-looking enough for her; they had put his eyes in so carelessly, and his face had such a 'queer' look, and he was altogether a limp, unmanageable person.
The prison governor sat down at the table with the two women, and did the part of jester, so much so that no one could have said that they were in a house of mourning, but rather in one of festivity.
Being quite aware of the diversity of the objects, the jester unites them, with secret wit, under one concept, and then starting from this concept he receives from the subsequently discovered diversity of the objects the surprise which he himself prepared.
One with difficulty resisted the suggestion that, if he could be as funny as he felt, he should set up for a humorist, and oust some of the dull dogs who pose as jesters.
They shook like aspens, and stole away on tiptoe one by one at first, then in a rush and jostling, and left me alone; and most scared of all was the fool: never earned jester fairer his ass's ears.
"Don't throttle me, sir," said the jester apologetically, "for then you would be the biggest fool at the court of the Prince."
All English poets have ever been ready to sing English flowers until jesters have laughed, and to sing garden flowers as well as wild flowers.
His mode of life showed the magnificent and stately etiquette of a European monarch, with lords-in-waiting, court jesters, pages, secretaries, and household guards.
While refusing the part of jester yourself, do not, by stiff manners, or cold, contemptuous looks, endeavor to check the innocent mirth of others.
The province of those jesters is to make their owner laugh by all sorts of jokes which are usually nothing but disgusting tricks, or low, impertinent jests.
It was the old, old story of the jester who to the world's eye was a merry and boisterous fellow, though in his inner being he was suffering all the while the tortures of anguish.
He was quizzed as his predecessor had been, and, like him, laughed at the jesters; and he gradually turned their scoffs to approbation by his equanimity and the merit of his performances.