Z IS FOR ZINES

     For the last time, stop being so literal-minded!  (Get it?  "For the last time," because this is Z and the Challenge is now over?)  There were no actual 16th-century zines.  Come on!  Moveable type had only been invented in 1439!  But by the early 1500's, pamphlets had become a thing, and from there to the creation of periodical magazines, it was only a matter of time.
     Pamphlets were short, unbound or loosely bound booklets that could be printed at low cost and could be distributed by anyone willing to stand on street corners for hours at a time (or to pay someone else to do it for them).  Basically, pamphlets were a tool used by people who wanted to rant - about religion, about politics, about specific authority figures they hated - you name it. 
     In Italy, our buddy Aretino started out as a pamphleteer so he could spread his anti-authority satires far and wide.  In Germany, Martin Luther used pamphlets very effectively to promote the Protestant reformation. 

 

     Of course, the Church could play the pamphlet game too.

pamphlet depicting Luther as a seven-headed beast

     In England, writers like Thomas Dekker, Thomas Nashe, and Robert Greene used pamphlets to distribute their romantic fiction and social or literary criticism, Francis Bacon published his Essays as a series of pamphlets, and King Henry VIII had pamphlets distributed to publicly defend his break from the Catholic Church.  ("Like it's my fault they won't let me divorce my first wife after 20 years to marry that hottie Anne Boleyn!")
     French writers also distributed their fiction in pamphlet form.

     In the 1560's, long before the first newspapers were invented, pamphlets first began to be used in England to convey news to the public. 

     Unlike a book, a pamphlet describing a political event could be written and printed up within hours after it occurred, enabling people outside of court circles to quickly be in the know.  Elizabethan England also became the base for "pamphlet wars" - the use of pamphlets by groups holding opposing viewpoints to carry out public debates on issues ranging from the civil war to the roles of women in society.  In fact, pamphlets became so popular that the Queen herself recognized their propaganda value and took to participating in these discussions.
     Pamphlets continued to gain popularity well into the 17th century, and only began to die out after newspapers and journals became widespread.

                                   *                   *                    *                    *

     So there you have it, folks.  There were times when I thought I would never make it through this Challenge, but I survived, thanks in large part to the support and encouragement of a lot of amazing A to Z bloggers who, in addition to consistently writing wonderful posts on their own blogs, also somehow found the time to bloghop and offer kind words.  Sincere thanks to everyone who visited here, either to leave comments or just to read.  I love learning more and more about the 16th century.  For me, it's a well that never runs dry.  And I love sharing the things I learn with as many people as I can.  Blogs work so much better than 16th-century pamphlets in that regard!
     It's been a lot of work for me, but so much fun that it was worth every hour of research.  Ciao for now, and I hope to catch up with you next year, if not sooner!
    

Y IS FOR YELP

     No, silly, there was no system for members of the public to log in and rate everything they had ever experienced, from restaurants to acupuncturists.  There was no such democratic forum in the 16th century, but there were critics - drama critics, literary critics, art critics - and the things they wrote mattered to people.  Unlike present-day critics, however, they were often active participants in the arts which they discussed in their writings.  And they didn't focus their attention on a specific book or play or work of art.  Instead, it was all about theory.
      The greatest literary theorist of the Classical world was Aristotle, and once his Poetics had been translated into Latin in 1498, European literary theory constantly referred back to it.

 In Aristotle's view - at least as interpreted by Renaissance scholars -  all drama had to abide by the Three Unities: unity of action - almost complete focus on one main plot element; unity of time - all action to occur within a 24-hour period; and unity of place - all action to occur at the same location.  It's easy to see at a glance how constraining it would be for a playwright to have to follow those rules, and yet the 16th century was an age of Neoclassicism, and the notion of rejecting the Unities seemed like heresy to many intellectuals.
      One hot topic during the 16th century was the purpose of poetry (which basically included fiction in any form).  Julius Caesar Scaliger (1484-1558) exalted classical Roman authors (ironically in keeping with his first and middle names), and rejected any modern innovations that aimed to improve on what Scaliger considered perfection.  He also held the mainstream belief that poetry must serve a moral, didactic purpose.  This view was in direct contradiction to that of Luigi Castelvetro (1505-71), who wrote that the aim of poetry should be to keep the common people happy.  A completely different third view was voiced by the Englishman Sir Philip Sidney in his Defence of Poesy (published posthumously in 1595), in which he argued that the poet exists separately from society and is a creator of a new and variant form of nature.
     When it came to 16th century art criticism, one figure towers above all others.

Giorgio Vasari (1511-74) was an Italian artist, architect, and most importantly, author of a masterwork: Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects (1650-52).  This book earned him his reputation as the father of art history.  Vasari did not just present the biographies of artists; he also rated three periods of Western artistic development: the Classical (top-notch); the Dark Ages (the pits); and the Renaissance (a return to former glory).  Vasari was a juicy biographer, who didn't mind filling in gaps in his knowledge of individual artists with gossip and innuendo, but he was also a first-class theorist, and his views have influenced the study of art history right up to the present day.
     Maybe none of these people sound much like what we 21st-century folks tend to think of as critics, but the world has changed a lot since then, and the profession of criticism has changed along with it.  It's been a 500-year-long road, but trust me - it leads directly to Yelp.

X IS FOR X-RATED ENTERTAINMENT

     Come on, admit it.  You've been waiting for the post about 16th century porn, haven't you?  Well, my friend, your wait is now over.
     It all started in 1521 with the death of Pope Leo X and the elaborate process of electing his successor.  People of influence set to work pushing their own favorite candidates, and satirists had a field day with the corrupt nature of the process - and of the candidates.  One such satirist, Pietro Aretino, wrote charming verses like:

          If Filisco [becomes] Pope, he'll go for a whole year without suing anyone.
          [If] Mantua's Pope, he'll try to avoid [touching] small boys.
          Ponzetta will spend all the money in lavish parties,
          And Grassi will have to desert his [illicit] wife, poor dear.
          Valle will have to give up his brats, Cesarini his whores,
           And Trani [will give up] his poor ma, who loves him so.

And Aretino would sign them with his real name, too, because what could possibly go wrong? 

Portrait of Aretino by Titian

But when the lucky winner of the papacy contest turned out to be Adrian VI, who had a reputation for extreme sternness, Aretino prudently decided to leave Rome and go live in the countryside for awhile.  Adrian died a year later, and apparently Aretino, thinking the coast was clear, returned to Rome and to his old tricks of publicly mocking the rich and powerful.  Probably to his delight, he managed to deeply offend Giovanmatteo Gilberti, a high official of Clement VII, the next Pope after Adrian.  Gilberti threatened that if Aretino didn't stop his hijinks, Gilberti would "find a way to cut his tongue from his loud mouth."  Naturally, this only encouraged Aretino to take it to the next level.
     That same summer, an opportunity fell into his lap.  An artist named Giulio Romano, during his breaks from painting saints in the Vatican, dashed off sixteen very explicit sketches of people having sex. 

    

     Marcantonio Raimondi of Bologna came across the sketches and made Romano a business proposition:  Raimondi would make copper engravings of Romano's drawings, print and sell a few hundred copies, and split the profits with Romano.  This plan worked out great for both of them until Raimondi got a little too careless about keeping their enterprise semi-private, and he ended up arrested and imprisoned.  But wouldn't you know it?  Raimondi happened to be friends with Bad Boy Aretino, who had a lot of important connections (high-ranking people often figured it was safer to be his friend than his enemy) and managed to get Raimondi released.  The grateful Raimondi then showed Aretino the engravings, thus providing him with just the kind of inspiration Aretino was seeking.

          I was inspired by the same spirit that had caused Romano to paint them...
          and I amused myself by writing sixteen [corresponding] sonnets. I
          dedicate these to all hypocrites, for I am all out of patience with their
          scurvy strictures and their villainous judgment and that dirty custom
          that forbids the eyes to see what most delights them. What harm is
          there to see a man possess a woman? Are the beasts freer than we?

     Aretino's sonnets - which he called his Sonetti Lussuriosi (Lust Songs), were written in the form of extremely graphic dialogues between a prostitute and her client.  Then, worried that he had perhaps not been offensive enough, Aretino thoughtfully assigned the names of political figures (including, of course, Gilberti) to some of the men, and of notable women to some of the prostitutes.  With the publication of this illustrated work, Aretino achieved the distinction of being called the father of "literate pornography" in Europe.
     A copy of the engravings with their attached sonnets somehow found its way into Gilberti's hands (imagine that!) and he ordered Aretino's arrest, but once again Aretino had slipped away.  He next turned up in Mantua, from whence he continued to write and publish scandalous works about Gilberti, who could not retaliate directly because evidently Mantua was outside of his jurisdiction.  But one day in July of 1525, in the early morning hours as Aretino was riding home from a night of drinking and partying, a masked man on foot approached, seized the horse's reins, and stabbed Aretino twice in the chest with a dagger.  Aretino was not expected to survive this assault - but he did, and made a full recovery, which allowed him to continue with his career as a professional troublemaker.
     In 1527 Aretino settled permanently in Venice - the "seat of all vices," as he gleefully boasted - and developed a new side-career as a blackmailer.  He was well known as a gay man (no sham marriages for him), and sometimes closeted gay men visiting Venice would seek him out as a guide to the underside of the city.  Aretino would happily oblige, and then threaten to expose his clients' secrets if they didn't pay up.  For Aretino, it was an easy way to supplement his income.  He himself lived without fear of prosecution: everyone had secrets, and he made it his business to know them all.  It was quite obvious that he would be more than happy to ruin the career of anyone who tried to mess with him, and as a result, after Gilberti, no one ever did.
     But Aretino also wrote things that were maybe R-rated, or maybe occasionally even PG: six plays (five comedies and one drama),  six published volumes of letters, and many vicious satirical attacks on powerful people he didn't like.  He also wrote books: Ragionamenti  ("Discussions") (1534-36), written in the form of a dialogue between an older and a younger prostitute, and I Dialoghi  ("Dialogues"), another very frank conversation between two prostitutes about the three roles available to women - wife, whore and nun - and the pluses and minuses of each.
     Aretino lived exactly the way he wanted to live into his mid-sixties, utterly unrepentant, and is said to have died of suffocation from laughing too much.  Here he is in his later life - rich, famous, and wearing a ginormous gold chain given to him by a king:

    
        

W IS FOR WIKIPEDIA

     As you might imagine, the 16th century was a wiki-less world.  Is that any wonder?  There were only two ways to gain knowledge: find something out through your own experience, or read about it in a book.  The limits of both of these methods should be fairly obvious.  Knowing everything was simply beyond human capacity.
     And yet, working alone against insurmountable odds, one person devoted his life to trying.  And here is where I shamelessly plagiarize myself by copying one of my posts from last year's A to Z Challenge.  It's cheating, I know, but Konrad Gesner's scholarly ambitions and accomplishments were so extraordinary that I don't feel the least bit guilty about shining a light on him once again.

                                                                  (1516 - 1565)

     Honestly, I'm not at all sure how to categorize Gesner.  Some of the people I've been posting about make it easy: painter, midwife, astronomer.  Gesner is not one of those people.  He's often referred to as a naturalist, but if I had to categorize him, it might actually be as a categorizer!  Essentially, he created exhaustive databases compiled through laborious research, which he conducted both hands-on and through information received from his huge number of correspondents located around the world.  Had he lived in our century, he would have invented the first Internet search engine.  Living as he did in the 16th century, he did the very best he could with the tools available to him, and his very best was nothing short of astounding.
     For a thumbnail sketch of this man, I couldn't hope to do better than Daniel Boorstin, former Librarian of Congress and ongoing Knower of Everything, so I'm just going to quote this paragraph from p. 427 of his book, THE DISCOVERERS:

          These opportunities (voyages to the New World) inspired a new generation
           of encyclopedists of nature. The most remarkable of them, Konrad Gesner,
           had a genius for grafting the new onto the old. Prodigiously learned in
           several languages, Gesner was torn between what he had read and what he
           saw. He was born into a poor Zurich family in 1516, educated himself as
           a vagrant scholar, and, when he was only twenty, wrote a Greek-Latin
           dictionary. In the next thirty years he turned out seventy volumes on
           every conceivable subject. His monumental Bibliotheca Universalis (4
           vols., 1545-1555) aimed to provide a catalogue of all writings that had
           ever existed in Latin, Greek and Hebrew. Gesner listed eighteen hundred
           authors and titles of their works in manuscript and in print, with summaries
           of their content. Thus he earned his title as the Father of Bibliography.
           What cartography was to explorers on land and sea, bibliography would
           be to libraries.

     If by any chance your mind is not yet blown, I'll now go on to tell you about his five-volume Historia Animalium, which, in Boorstin's words, "supplied everything known, speculated, imagined, or reported about all known animals."  Gesner divided the animal kingdom into quadrupeds, amphibians, birds, fishes and snakes.  Because he was being as inclusive as he could with this catalogue, it featured some animals with which you or I might not be particularly familiar:

     But truly - the last thing I want to do is mock Gesner.  If he didn't know for a fact that a particular creature didn't exist, he included it just in case it did.  (Fun fact: the Historia Amimalium  made it onto the Church's list of Banned Books.  Was it, perhaps, because he included mermaids, unicorns and basilisks?  Nah.  It was because he was Protestant!)   Gesner's approach to every academic subject was far beyond thorough.  Which reminds me - Did I mention that he was primarily a botanist?  And, oh yeah - also a physician.  And a mountain climber.  If he wasn't the guy for whom the term "Renaissance man" was coined, he gets my vote for the title.
     Gesner's education wasn't quite as haphazard as Boorstin suggests; his intelligence was so apparent to all his teachers that at an early age he acquired some important sponsors who supported him financially and put him through top universities.  At the age of 21 Gesner became a professor of Greek at the Academy of Lausanne.  The steady income enabled him to devote time to studying botany.  After teaching at Lausanne for three years, he left to attend medical school at the world-renowned University of Montpelier in France.  He received his degree in 1541, when he was 25, and relocated to Zurich to practice medicine and to teach physics at the Collegium Carolinum, the precursor to the University of Zurich.  In 1554 he became the city physician, and he remained in Zurich for the rest of his life.  It was during this settled period that he began his writings in earnest. 
     In addition to his other interests, he was also a linguist, and in 1555 published a book describing about 130 known languages.  He was always collecting samples of plants and having his farflung friends send him even more samples.  Although only two of his botanical books were published during his lifetime, his extensive notes and woodcuts of plants were circulated and used by other authors for hundreds of years.
     Gesner climbed mountains not only to collect botanical samples, but also for the sheer joy of it.  He wrote a letter to a friend in 1541 declaring his intention to climb at least one mountain every year for the rest of his life.  He authored what might well be the first written account of climbing.
     When he was only 49, Gesner contracted the plague.  Legend has it that when he knew he was about to die, he asked to be brought to his library where he could be surrounded by his beloved books.  At his death, he left behind 18 unpublished manuscripts in addition to the veritable mountain of his published works.

V IS FOR VIDEO GAMES

     Look, obviously there were no computer-generated role-playing video games in the 16th century.  Give me a break!  But I contend that a kind of antecedent did exist back then.  In modern role-playing video games, the player takes on the stylized persona of someone else - an avatar - and in that role, s/he has to improvise his/her way through an experience.  I don't think it's too much of a stretch to trace such games back to the commedia dell'arte tradition which sprang to vibrant life in Italy during the 16th century.

       Commedia performances essentially were a form of improvisational street theater.  Individual street performers banded together to form traveling  troupes, and the players developed their own chosen roles.  The first record of a commedia troupe dates to 1545.  The most famous early troupe, the Gelosi, was founded by a husband-and-wife team and performed from 1568 to 1604.  Over time, universal stock characters were created: vecchi (old men/masters), a category which included Il Capitano, a bullying braggart in military uniform who is always revealed to be a secret coward; innamorati (young lovers), who must overcome obstacles thrown at them by the vecchi;  and zanni (eccentric servants/ clowns, including Pierrot and Harlequin.  This is the origin of the English word zany). 

Harlequin

Renoir's "White Pierrot"

     The actors who played the zanni were often acrobats, singers or musicians, and during intermissions would present their own performances, called lazzi, that entertained the audience but had nothing to do with the main event (basically, half-time shows).  Audiences could identify the characters by the distinct costumes and masks each wore.  The lovers were the good guys, the characters the audiences rooted for; the authority figures were the bad guys, the funsuckers, and they were the ones the audiences loved to hate.  Plots were minimal and generic.  The most common were rom-coms, in which the lovers had to outwit the scheming vecchi  with the help of the silly but loyal servants.  Other common plots involved adultery, jealousy between husbands and wives, or the outwitting of a buffoonish character by his cleverer servant.  The acting style was exaggerated, over-the-top.  There was usually a happy ending.  In short, everything was about as far removed from classical drama as it could possibly be, and audiences just ate it all up (and still do.  Where would Jennifer Aniston's career be without it?).
     Although the basic parameters of character and plot were preplanned, all of the dialogue and some of the stage business would be improvised, which allowed talented actors to adapt their schtick to suit the preferences of particular audiences and to add topical humor to the mix.  Just as in modern-day improv, the players had to be witty, flexible and creative.  In short, the phenomenon of commedia dell'arte (literally, "comedy of professional artists") introduced the concept of professional actors to Italy, and from there, to the rest of Europe.

Watteau, "Italian Comedians"

     Commedia dell'arte became wildly popular in Italy during the sixteenth century, and its fame spread to France, England, Spain and Bavaria.  By the end of the seventeenth century, though, the art form came to lose much of its charm and spontaneity, and died out soon afterward.  But its influence is still apparent in puppet shows, mime and slapstick.
     And video games.  Stay with me now.  Role-playing: check.  Stylized characters: check.  Clearly identified good and bad guys: check.  Need to improvise:  check.  In my opinion, all fans of role-playing games owe a debt of gratitude to these 16th-century innovators.

T IS FOR TINDER

     Tinder: a system for judging a potential partner solely by his/her physical appearance.  I've never participated in it myself, but from what I hear, sometimes it works and sometimes it really, really doesn't.  For a 16th century example of the latter, I give you the story of King Henry VIII's blink-and-you-missed-it marriage to his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves (whom I briefly mentioned in my B is for Bathrooms post - sorry, Anne.  I'm glad you never knew that history would remember you chiefly for your body odor).
     Unlike any of Henry's previous or subsequent wives, Anne didn't live in England, but in her native Germany, when he was considering her as a prospect.  In order to determine whether he would be attracted to her (or to her sister, another prospect), Henry sent Hans Holbein the Younger, the highly regarded portrait painter, to travel to the Duchy of Cleves, paint both of the women's portraits, and return to England so that Henry could decide if either of the sisters met his standards.  Here's the portrait of Anne which Holbein presented to the king:

     Despite the weird lifelessness of the painting, Henry apparently found Anne acceptable, and the marriage negotiations went forward.  At the urging of Thomas Cromwell, who thought the match would create a good strategic alliance, a marriage treaty was signed in October 1539.
     When Anne herself arrived in England in January of 1540, however, Henry was considerably less pleased with the real-life version than he had been with the portrait, and famously described her as a "fat Flanders mare."  (I believe the word we're looking for here is "gallant.")  After her formal reception, he was heard to gripe, "She is nothing so fair as she hath been reported."  But by then the marriage was a done deal; Henry couldn't back out without infuriating Germany.
     The wedding took place on January 6th.  The next day, Henry reported to Cromwell that they hadn't had sex, because "I liked her before not well, but now I like her much worse."  His publicly-voiced objections included both her body odor and her sagging breasts.  Things between them did not improve, and on June 24th Anne was commanded to leave the court.  Soon after that she was asked to consent to an annulment, and she agreed.  The marriage was annulled on July 9th, just six months after it had begun.
     On July 28th, two important events occurred: Henry married Wife #5,  Catherine Howard (this one didn't end well either - for the wife, that is), and Thomas Cromwell, who had engineered the marriage to Anne, was executed for treason - because how could he not have known that Henry wouldn't want to sleep with her?
     Fortunately for Anne, Henry chose Cromwell, not her, as a scapegoat for his "need" to seek an annulment.  She made a smart move when she took the deal.  Henry provided her with a generous settlement, including several royal palaces, and until his death he treated her as an honorary member of the royal family, referred to as "the King's beloved sister."  She was often invited to court to play cards, a favorite pastime of hers.  Apparently either someone had told her about the 16th-century equivalent of deodorant, or Henry wasn't bothered by the way she smelled from across a card table.  And she certainly dressed well.

     I find it satisfying that Anne had the last laugh.  She outlived both Henry and his sickly son and heir Edward, who in 1547 became regent at age 9 after Henry's death and died himself at the age of 15.  When Mary then took over the throne, Anne participated in her coronation ceremony. 
     Anne never returned to Germany.  Her remaining life wasn't long - she died, probably of cancer, shortly before turning 42 - but it was comfortable and peaceful, and it seems fair to assume that it would have been a whole lot shorter if she hadn't gone along with the annulment.  She was the last of Henry's six wives to die, and the only one to be buried at Westminster Abbey.

 

     That epitaph raises an interesting question: if the marriage was annulled, doesn't that mean that - retroactively speaking - she was never Queen of England in the first place?  Not that I begrudge her anything, in her life or her death.  If you ask me, she deserved a medal for putting up with Henry's insufferable crap.

     Please note: none of this happy-ending stuff should be interpreted as an endorsement of Tinder.  Play at your own risk.

S IS FOR STANDUP COMEDY

     Who needs comedy clubs when you can have your own personal jester(s) on call 24/7?  If the jester is a member of your household, you don't ever have to worry about the show being sold out before you've had a chance to score tickets. 

 
     The jester could have many talents - singing, dancing, juggling, acrobatics, magic tricks - but primarily, his job  was to make people laugh, with his jokes or with his physical comedy or both.  Not only royals, but also wealthy aristocrats, kept jesters as household members.  Recruitment was apparently a pretty casual process, as shown in this 1662 account of the recruitment of a man named Tarlton to be a jester for Queen Elizabeth I:

          Here he was in the field, keeping his father's swine, when a servant of
          Robert Earl of Leicester... was so highly pleased with his happy/
          unhappy answers, that he brought him to Court, where he became
          the most famous jester to Queen Elizabeth.

     To quote from Beatrice K. Otto's FOOLS ARE EVERYWHERE: THE COURT JESTER AROUND THE WORLD (University of Chicago Press, 2001), an online excerpt of which has provided me with much of the information I share in this post:

                        An individual court jester in Europe could emerge from a
                        wide range of backgrounds; an erudite but nonconformist
                        university dropout, a monk thrown out of a priory for
                        nun frolics, a jongleur [juggler] with exceptional verbal
                        or physical dexterity, or the apprentice of a village
                        blacksmith whose fooling amused a passing nobleman.
                        Just as a modern-day television stand-up comedian might
                        begin his career on the pub and club circuit, so a would-be
                         jester could make it big time in court if he was lucky
                         enough to be spotted.

     Some jesters were witty and well-educated.  Some were just naturally funny people, the smartasses of their era.  Unfortunately, others were chosen from among the ranks of the physically or mentally handicapped.  Dwarves abounded in the profession..  

      There were also a fair share of "naturals," people with intellectual limitations who were, on the one hand, mocked and infantilized, but on the other hand, were treated with a measure of awe because they were thought to be divinely inspired.
     Otto contends that "the court jester is a universal phenomenon," and cites to historical records from China, India, Japan, Russia and Africa.   But fortunately for 16th-century European jesters, the long tradition of their profession was given a boost by the 1511 publication of a short book by the philosopher Desiderius Erasmus called IN PRAISE OF FOLLY:

                         We have all seen how an appropriate and well-timed joke
                          can sometimes influence even grim tyrants... The most
                          violent tyrants put up with their clowns and fools, though
                          these often made them the butt of open insults.

     According to Otto, "the fortunes of the European court jesters rose and fell with the tsunami-scale wave of medieval and Renaissance fool mania that engulfed the continent."  Thanks to Erasmus, folly became a hot topic in Europe, and professional "fools" became hugely popular for their illustration of the concept as well as for their entertainment value.

traditional jester's hat sporting three points, each ending in a jingle bell

older-style jester's costume, featuring hat with ass's ears
 

     But there was a second aspect of jesterdom that Otto says was also universal: "jesters everywhere were allowed and encouraged to offer counsel and to influence the whims and policies of kings."  Instead of being expected to fawn over and flatter their masters like everyone else, jesters were given unique liberty to speak their minds and to offer criticisms that might have gotten anyone else thrown into a dungeon, as the above quote from Erasmus demonstrates.  This situation led to the paradox of the "wise fool," a societal outcast who sees and says things more clearly and truthfully than anyone else.  A prime example is the Fool in Shakespeare's King Lear, who repeatedly (and with impunity) chastised the old king for his poor judgment and egotistical shortsightedness.  On the other hand, once Lear was dethroned by his conniving daughters and had become a demented, friendless, homeless old man, the Fool was the only person who loyally stayed by his side in his wanderings.

     In short, a jester's master might have had the jester at his beck and call, but in exchange, he would have to put up with whatever verbal abuse the jester felt like dishing out.  So it really was like stand-up comedy in a way; the Fool would get heckled, but he would heckle the audience right back.