FOOL, a term frequently used to describe persons whose absurd and sometimes imbecilic behavior provided entertainment for royalty and nobility in the past. Few professional fools, or jesters, in history or in literature, were actual imbeciles. Most made their living by cleverly steering a precarious course between wit and horseplay, flattery and insult. Man gained an enduring reputation for humor and won the affection of their masters.

傻瓜（愚人），一个常用于形容那些愚蠢人们的术语，有时也常形容在过去为王室和贵族提供娱乐的愚蠢行为。在历史或文学中，很少有职业的傻瓜或小丑是真正愚蠢的人。大多数人都是在机智与恶作剧，奉承与侮辱之间通过巧妙地驾驭不确定的途径来谋生。人因幽默获得了持久的声誉，赢得了他们主人的喜爱。

Famous Fools in History. There is evidence of the existence of fools in the early history of most cultures. They range from the ancient Greek Philip, mentioned by Xenophon in his Symposium as confounding even Socrates, through the Turkish Nasr-ed-Din, the legendary jester of Tamerlane in the 14^th century, to the famous Triboulet (the original of Rigoletto) in the service of the French kings Louis XII and Francis I. In England, Will Somers, the jester of King Henry VIII, had a reputation not only for wit but for kindness. These men usually adopted some obviously ridiculous mode of dress, of which the traditional parti-colored suit with cap and bells was but one type. Their “sayings” were often incorporated into jestbooks, such as the Elizabethan Richard Tarleton’s Book of Jests (1611). It is doubtful, however, whether much of the content of these books stemmed from their alleged sources. After the 17^th century the custom of maintaining court fools died out in most European countries.

历史上著名的傻瓜。在大多数文化的早期历史中都有傻瓜存在的证据。他们包括色诺芬在其《会饮》中提到的古希腊的菲利普，甚至使苏格拉底都感到困惑，至14世纪贴木尔的传奇小丑，土耳其的纳斯-艾德-丁，到为法国国王路易十二和弗朗西斯一世服务的著名的特里布莱（《弄臣》的原型）。在英格兰，亨利八世的小丑威尔·萨默斯不仅因机智获得了名声，而且也因善良获得了声誉。这些人通常采取了一些可笑的着装方式，其中传统的戴着帽子和铃铛的杂色套装只是一种类型。他们的“警句”常常被纳入笑话集中，比如伊丽莎白时代的《理查德·塔尔顿的笑话集》（1611年）。然而，值得怀疑的是，这些书的内容多少是源自它们声称的来源。17世纪之后，维持宫廷傻瓜的习俗在欧洲大多数国家已消失。

The “wise’ Fool. The oldest work of Greek literature, the Iliad, features a fool—the loutish, antisocial Thersites. A more significant type of fool, however, is the cunning parasite found in the Greek New Comedy (4^th century B. C.) and in the Roman comedy of Plautus and Terence (2d century B. C.) In these plays the plot often hinges on the machinations of a slave or freedman, who manipulates his superiors to his own ends. The “wise” fool is also found in the discourses of the Greek philosopher Epictetus (2d century A. D.), in which an emperor is forced to reveal his ignorance through the skill of a slave and in the medieval story of King Solomon and Marcolf, in which an impudent servant proves to have more sense than the wisest of men. Marcolf is the direct ancestor of such characters as the shepherd in the French farce Maitre Pathelin and of Sancho Panza in Don Quixote.

“聪明”的傻瓜。最古老的希腊文学作品《伊利亚特》描绘了一个傻瓜---粗野的、反社会的瑟赛蒂兹。然而，一类更重要的傻瓜类型是在希腊新喜剧中（公元前4世纪）以及在普劳图斯和特伦斯的罗马喜剧中（公元前2世纪）中发现的狡猾的寄生者。在这些剧作中，情节常常取决于奴隶或自由人的诡计，他操纵他的上司来达到其目的。在希腊哲学家埃皮克提图（公元2世纪）的演讲中也发现了“聪明”的傻瓜，其中一位皇帝被迫通过一个奴隶的技能暴露了他的无知，而在中世纪所罗门王和马尔科夫的故事中一位放肆无礼的仆人证明了比那些最聪明人更有见识。马尔科夫是法国闹剧《巴特兰管家》中的牧羊人，以及《唐吉诃德》中的桑丘·潘扎这类人物的直接始源。

The fool in Shakespeare is closely connected with this tradition. Dramatically, he derives from Vice, the burlesque figure of evil in the medieval morality plays. However, the fool in the comedies, including Touchstone in As You Like It and Festus in Twelfth Night, is a witty critic of his superiors. In King Lear, the fool is a pathetic observer of a tragedy that he is powerless to avert and of whose inevitability he is more aware than any other character.

莎士比亚笔下的傻瓜与这一传统密切相关。从戏剧性方面，他来源于邪恶，中世纪道德剧中的滑稽的邪恶形象。然而，喜剧中的傻瓜，包括在《皆大欢喜》中的试金石以及《第十二夜》中的费斯特斯都是机智的对上司的批评者。在《李尔王》中，傻瓜是悲剧的一位令人怜悯的目击者，而他却无力避免它，而且他比任何其他角色都更清楚他的必然性。

The Fool as Sinner.  In the Judeo-Christian tradition, folly has often been equated with sin. It is the fool who says in his heart “there is no God.” During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, works about such fools became very popular. In Das Narrenschiff (1494; Ship of Fools) by the German satirist Sebastian Brant, the author presents side by side fools guilty of the worst sins and those who merely commit social follies. His criterion seems to be that any conduct with which he does not agree is folly. Much wittier isthe Praise of Folly (1511) by Erasmus, in which Folly is personified so that she can tell of her services to mankind---and incidentally satirize those numerous features of contemporary social life of which the author disapproved.

傻瓜如同罪人。在犹太教-基督教的传统中，愚蠢常常被等同于罪恶。在心里说“上帝不存在”的那是傻瓜。在中世纪和文艺复兴时期，关于这类傻瓜的作品非常流行。在德国讽刺作家塞巴斯蒂安·勃兰特的《Das Narrenschiff》（1494年；《愚人船》）中，作者将那些犯有最严重罪行的傻瓜与只犯了社会荒唐行为的人放在一起。他的标准似乎是他不赞同的任何行为都是愚蠢的。更机智的是伊拉斯谟的《愚人颂》（1511年），愚蠢被拟人化，这样她就能讲述她对人类的贡献---而且顺便讽刺了作者不赞成的那些当代社会生活中的许多特征。

The Fool as Social Rebel.  Another view of the fool has been as the upsetter of convention and tradition. This concept was dramatically played out in the Middle Ages at the Feast of Fools, held at Christmas time, in which the church ceremonies appropriate to the season were mocked. In literature, one of the most famous rebel fools was the legendary German folk character Till Eulenspiegel, whose adventures were first collected in written form about 1500. A cunning, even malicious figure, he played many practical jokes on the bourgeoisie, consistently robbing them of their dignity. Continuers of this tradition were Harlequin of the commedia dell’arte of Italy and his descendants, the clowns and such comedians as Charlie Chaplin, all of whom, however, evoke a note of pathos and of sympathy for the downtrodden that is absent from the character of Eulenspiegel. See also CLOWN.

作为社会判逆者的傻瓜。对傻瓜的另一种看法一直是作为惯例和传统的颠覆者。这一概念在中世纪圣诞节举行的愚人节上得到了戏剧性的展现，其中，适合当季的教堂仪式受到了嘲笑。在文学中，最著名的叛逆傻瓜之一是传说中的德国民间人物蒂尔·奥伊伦斯皮格尔，他的冒险活动大约在1500年首次是以书面形式收集的。一位狡猾、甚至是恶意的人物，他对资产阶级做了许多恶作剧，不断剥夺他们的尊严。这一传统的继承者是意大利喜剧艺术的丑角和他的后代们，小丑以及像查理·卓别林这样的喜剧演员，然而，所有这些人都唤起了对被压迫者悲怆和同情的关注，这在奥伊伦斯皮格尔的角色中是不存在的。也可参阅小丑词条。

                                        W. T. H. JACKSON

                                   Author of “Medieval Literature”

                                         W. T. H. 杰克逊

                                    “中世纪文学”的作者

                                                                     2023年11月21日译

（译者注：该词条位列《大美百科全书》1985年版，第11卷，第528页）