Speaker 1: Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim
Speaker 1: and Mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion advised.
Speaker 2: Hi, welcome to a new episode of Noble Blood. I
Speaker 2: am talking today with Peter k Anderson, who is a
Speaker 2: senior lecturer in history at Oraboro University in Sweden and
Speaker 2: author of the new book Fool in Search of Henry
Speaker 2: the Eighth's Closest Man, which is a book about the
Speaker 2: personal history, but also I would say, the social and
Speaker 2: political history of Henry the Eighth's fool, William Summer, and
Speaker 2: also just of royal fools in general. Hi, how are you.
Speaker 3: I'm good. It's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for joining us all the way
Speaker 2: from Sweden. Let's just start with the basics. Who was
Speaker 2: William Summer, or, as he was sometimes known, Will Summer.
Speaker 3: Yeah, William or will Most people who were named William
Speaker 3: were nicknamed will In this period. Will Summer was Henry
Speaker 3: the Eighth's fool, so he is known mostly as the
Speaker 3: King's fool, but he was not just Henry the A's fool.
Speaker 3: He was the court fool at the British Royal Court
Speaker 3: from about fifteen thirty up until his death in fifteen sixty,
Speaker 3: and that's when Queen Elizabeth First had just been crowned.
Speaker 3: So he was a royal fool with Mary and King
Speaker 3: Edward and up until Elizabeth First.
Speaker 2: And also considering Henry's famously rocky marriage situations, this is
Speaker 2: one of the longest term relationships he had in his life.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's true. I've never thought about it that way,
Speaker 3: but yeah, they must have had some sort of special relationship,
Speaker 3: so to speak. What the nature of that relationship was
Speaker 3: we will discuss, but it's not very clear cut. As
Speaker 3: the title indicates, he was a person who was very
Speaker 3: close to Henry the eighth in one way or another.
Speaker 2: Before we get into Summer's biography or what we know
Speaker 2: of his biography. I think people when they hear, you know,
Speaker 2: medieval fool, they sort of think of a juster hat
Speaker 2: with bells and shoes with pointed feet. How close is
Speaker 2: that popular perception to the reality.
Speaker 3: Not particularly in this case. I think there were fools
Speaker 3: in Motley wearing the cap with bells and so on,
Speaker 3: but mostly this seems to have been some sort of
Speaker 3: stereotype about the fool. When we come to this period,
Speaker 3: the Renaissance, most fools, at least the fools we find
Speaker 3: in portraits. The fools that are depicted and that we
Speaker 3: can identify, they don't look anything like that. If you
Speaker 3: see a typical portrait of a Renaissance fool, you wouldn't
Speaker 3: know that it was a fool if you didn't look closely.
Speaker 3: There is very little too identify them as fools in
Speaker 3: their portraits. And this goes especially for Will Summer, who
Speaker 3: was depicted many times in portraits, but always looking very mysterious,
Speaker 3: very brooding, never smiling or anything like that, a very
Speaker 3: sort of mysterious and almost dark figure.
Speaker 2: So what do we know about the life of Will Summer?
Speaker 2: Who was this man who was so prominent at one
Speaker 2: of the most famous Renaissance courts in history.
Speaker 3: We know very little about him, and the sort of
Speaker 3: contemporary references to him you could fit them on one
Speaker 3: piece of paper. Really. The thing about Will Summer is
Speaker 3: that quite a legend grew around him after his death.
Speaker 3: So when you look at the late sixteenth century and
Speaker 3: the period of Shakespeare and so on, there's quite a
Speaker 3: lot of references to him.
Speaker 2: There.
Speaker 3: There's some sort of mythology around him, and he is
Speaker 3: invoked as a sort of mythological gesture of the past,
Speaker 3: a sort of almost godlike figure in comedy, so to speak,
Speaker 3: and a lot of playwrights include him in place about
Speaker 3: the reign of Henry the Eighth, where he's depicted as
Speaker 3: a very sort of jesting and shrewd comic, and a
Speaker 3: lot of books were written about him in that period,
Speaker 3: but very little of what you can find in that
Speaker 3: period is truthful. And when you start to move closer
Speaker 3: in on his own period and the sources that are
Speaker 3: closest to his life, you see that he was quite
Speaker 3: a different character. He was probably what was called in
Speaker 3: those times a natural fool. You had this distinction between
Speaker 3: natural and artificial fools, and artificial fools constituted what we
Speaker 3: would call a comedian, basically someone who was skillful at
Speaker 3: being funny. But natural fools were employed based mainly on
Speaker 3: what we would today called an intellectual disability. It could
Speaker 3: be other things as well. It could be persons with
Speaker 3: a very sort of rural or common background who would
Speaker 3: be a contrast to the other peoples at court in
Speaker 3: a way that would be considered amusing. But natural fools
Speaker 3: were not the sort of shrewd wits that they are
Speaker 3: sometimes depicted as in Shakespeare place or later fiction.
Speaker 2: One thing that I found so fascinating about your book
Speaker 2: is how you sort of trace how some are the
Speaker 2: character in fiction. In plays is depicted as this famous wit,
Speaker 2: as a man of the people, who sort of this
Speaker 2: outside observer who's able to comment on the insanity of
Speaker 2: court or the indulgences of the church, even though as
Speaker 2: you lay out in Summer's lifetime, he almost certainly wasn't,
Speaker 2: at least, you know, a famous wit by anything that
Speaker 2: he was doing purposefully. How did that shift happen?
Speaker 3: That's a good question, really, it's difficult to say. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's very The image that you describe is, of course
Speaker 3: very attractive to us. We like to think of the
Speaker 3: fool as someone who sort of looks through all the
Speaker 3: performances and all the role playing going on at court,
Speaker 3: and who is a bit more like us, perhaps, and
Speaker 3: who sort of represents our perspective on this period. But
Speaker 3: it wasn't like that, and it's difficult to say how
Speaker 3: this shift in the image of will Summer happens. But
Speaker 3: when we go a bit closer to his own lifetime,
Speaker 3: you see anecdotes about him, stories told about him where
Speaker 3: you can find perhaps a grain of truth. You can
Speaker 3: find little facts and little nuggets of information that you
Speaker 3: can single out because they don't really have any purpose
Speaker 3: in the anecdote. So it's just something that is mentioned
Speaker 3: in passing. Things like the fact that he came from Shropshire,
Speaker 3: apparently that he had a strange ability to fall asleep
Speaker 3: in odd places, which is mentioned in a posthumous biography,
Speaker 3: but also in his own lifetime and so on. So
Speaker 3: there are little things when we get closer to his
Speaker 3: own lifetime that might have a basis in the truth.
Speaker 2: I love that detail of him frequently falling asleep because
Speaker 2: listeners might be familiar with the fictional novels of Hilary Mantel, which,
Speaker 2: as you point out, she briefly alludes to Will Summer,
Speaker 2: but paint him almost as a narcaliptic, which I love
Speaker 2: when fiction just takes it a detail.
Speaker 3: She does a big thing about that that he has
Speaker 3: you know, he has to have an attendant when he's
Speaker 3: in town so that he doesn't fall asleep in the
Speaker 3: street and so on. There is no source about that,
Speaker 3: but we have these indications that he might have had
Speaker 3: that sort of condition. So she does a funny thing
Speaker 3: about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that you alluded to earlier, the fact
Speaker 2: that Summer is featured in numerous portraits I think four
Speaker 2: that we know for sure, sometimes with Henry the Eighth
Speaker 2: at his side. Was that common for fools at the
Speaker 2: time or does it say something about Summer's relationship with
Speaker 2: Henry the Eighth?
Speaker 3: It wasn't that common in England. Actually. The only other
Speaker 3: example is there's a portrait of Thomas Moore with his family,
Speaker 3: which includes his own fool. And you can find examples
Speaker 3: from other countries, the Spanish court for instance, as on,
Speaker 3: but in England this doesn't seem to have been a convention.
Speaker 3: So that's quite interesting to find him in several portraits.
Speaker 3: There are no portraits of William Summer alone, we haven't
Speaker 3: been able to find anything like that, but he is
Speaker 3: included in a lot of family portraits, dynastic portraits where
Speaker 3: he is standing in the background, and when you compare
Speaker 3: all these different portraits to each other, you can easily
Speaker 3: recognize this man, and you can also see a bit
Speaker 3: how he gradually becomes older and older as time passes.
Speaker 3: There are, of course posthumous portraits he was invoked and
Speaker 3: used as a sort of mascot of the court even
Speaker 3: up until the time of Elizabeth First, So he was
Speaker 3: probably viewed and used as a source of symbol of
Speaker 3: the continuity of the Tudor court.
Speaker 2: That's fascinating that these portraits of him are less to
Speaker 2: feature him as an individual and more just what he
Speaker 2: represented as a symbol. One other sort of I think
Speaker 2: maybe modern stereotype we have about the medieval and Renaissance
Speaker 2: fool is the idea of jester's privilege, that the gester
Speaker 2: gets to say anything that he wants and he won't
Speaker 2: get in trouble to speak truth to power. In the book,
Speaker 2: you refer to it as the legendary fool's license. Can
Speaker 2: you talk a little bit about that idea?
Speaker 3: Yes, and that, as I said, it connects a bit
Speaker 3: with this myth that has grown around fools as literary characters. Really,
Speaker 3: you find that a lot of course in shakespeare place,
Speaker 3: which often include a fool character that is very sort
Speaker 3: of shrewd and very amusing and clever and so on.
Speaker 3: The thing about the fool's license and so on, that
Speaker 3: that is a bit of a myth, really, because when
Speaker 3: you look at the real fools in the period before this,
Speaker 3: they were not treated very very respectfully. They were they
Speaker 3: were definitely not sort of taken seriously in any way.
Speaker 3: I would say that perhaps they had a sort of
Speaker 3: cart blanche in a way that they weren't taken seriously,
Speaker 3: and they were considered fools, so they could in a
Speaker 3: way say what they wanted, but what they said was
Speaker 3: so little regarded, so it wasn't really a thing or
Speaker 3: or something that would sort of have any political importance.
Speaker 3: So the natural fools, which were sort of the majority
Speaker 3: of fools in this time, they were not licensed in
Speaker 3: any way like that. They had a relevance. Of course,
Speaker 3: they were entertainers in one respect, they were also sort
Speaker 3: of symbols of the deviance of something different, something curious.
Speaker 3: In a way. They were in a way sort of
Speaker 3: part of the royal curiosity collections. The role was something
Speaker 3: quite different from the sort of myth that emerged in
Speaker 3: literature later. I mean, it comes partly from Shakespeare, partly
Speaker 3: from writers like Erasmus of Rotterdam, who wrote about the
Speaker 3: Praise of Folly pamphlet and so on. But then it
Speaker 3: starts actually to influence the role of actual court fools.
Speaker 3: When you come into the seventeenth and early eighteenth century.
Speaker 3: Then you find fools that are more artificial fools. They
Speaker 3: begin to be called court justice more than earlier, and
Speaker 3: that's a different type of fool.
Speaker 2: Really.
Speaker 3: They are more sort of clever and shrewd, and they
Speaker 3: do have the odd moment of sarcassm and criticism. Archie
Speaker 3: art Armstrong was the main fool in the English court
Speaker 3: in the in the seventeenth century, and he got into
Speaker 3: trouble a few times for saying witty or shrewd things
Speaker 3: that weren't very popular with the king.
Speaker 2: And sometimes fools like will Summer were disciplined quite harshly.
Speaker 2: It wasn't necessarily an easy or fun life. There are
Speaker 2: some violence that you remark on in this book.
Speaker 3: Yes, they were disciplined, and especially Will Summer, we see
Speaker 3: was subjected to physical punishment and chastisement. As a contemporary
Speaker 3: play by a court poet called John Heywood, he sort
Speaker 3: of references the conditions of court fools at this time,
Speaker 3: and he has a long list of how they are treated.
Speaker 3: Some beat him, some bob him, some job him, some
Speaker 3: job him, some tug him by the ass, some lug
Speaker 3: him by the ears, some spitted him, some on him,
Speaker 3: and the list goes on and on and on. So
Speaker 3: it was quite an obvious thing at this time that
Speaker 3: the fool was someone who was physically punished a lot.
Speaker 3: And this long monologue ends saying that not even will
Speaker 3: some o, the king's own fool, can avoid this kind
Speaker 3: of treatment. So he was definitely treated in the same
Speaker 3: way as other fools, and by the way, as children
Speaker 3: and servants in this period.
Speaker 2: And there's an allusion you make in the book to
Speaker 2: a fool, possibly Summer, who said something that insulted the
Speaker 2: queen and princess that insulted court. Can you speak.
Speaker 3: We don't know if it is will Summer. Possibly it is,
Speaker 3: And in that case, there's an ambassador who mentions this
Speaker 3: in a letter home to Spain, and he he says
Speaker 3: that the king's own fool slandered the king's mistress and
Speaker 3: the king flew into rage and nearly nearly murdered him
Speaker 3: or threatened to murder him or something like that, and
Speaker 3: the fool had to go in hiding. So this isn't
Speaker 3: really the only the only sort of proof we have
Speaker 3: that the King Henry would have become physically violent himself
Speaker 3: towards his fool. But it is very interesting and it
Speaker 3: shows that, Yeah, the carte blanche fool's license and so on,
Speaker 3: but you could over overstep the mark, of course, and uh,
Speaker 3: and even though you were just a fool who just
Speaker 3: said foolish things, perhaps now and then there were moments
Speaker 3: when when when the fool said things that could enrage
Speaker 3: the king. Of course, possibly this this is not Will
Speaker 3: Summer at all. Possibly this is some sort of clever
Speaker 3: fool who had a very brief stint at the royal court.
Speaker 2: So we made brief for by his lack of tact exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And maybe Will Summer was better in that respect
Speaker 3: because he didn't. There are no other other sources really
Speaker 3: of him being critical or anything like that.
Speaker 2: One thing that I find very interesting about your book
Speaker 2: is how you talk about the influence that the Renaissance
Speaker 2: fool has on the modern stand up comedian, and you
Speaker 2: sort of suggest that that link isn't as clear as
Speaker 2: some historians like to believe, and that it's almost as
Speaker 2: if the idea of the Renaissance fool is what influenced
Speaker 2: the idea of modern comedians more than the actual fact.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, we like to think of medieval fools
Speaker 3: sometimes perhaps some sort of precursor to the modern stand
Speaker 3: up comedian. They stood up in front of the dinner
Speaker 3: guests and had like a monologue or something like that.
Speaker 3: There is some there's a Woody Allen film where he
Speaker 3: plays a medieval fool in just the same way as
Speaker 3: he is normally. That's, of course a very appealing thought,
Speaker 3: but I don't think it was quite like that, especially
Speaker 3: not when we spoke speak about the natural pools of
Speaker 3: the Renaissance. The link that I try to sort of
Speaker 3: put forth in my book is that the taste for
Speaker 3: natural foolery in the Renaissance was based on a sort
Speaker 3: of comic taste for the natural, for the spontaneous comedy
Speaker 3: and some sort of authenticity, and that this should in
Speaker 3: some way have been taken further with the with the
Speaker 3: image of the court fool in Shakespeare and related to literature,
Speaker 3: and in that way, the sort of because Shakespeare expresses
Speaker 3: this sort of pension for more sort of natural and
Speaker 3: spontaneous and comedians who don't laugh at their own jokes
Speaker 3: and so on, that's that's the sort of things that
Speaker 3: Hamlet says he likes in that place. So possibly there
Speaker 3: is a line to identify there, which goes forward to
Speaker 3: today when we perhaps often think of spontaneous comedy or
Speaker 3: a sort of natural streak in comedy as something to
Speaker 3: be strived after. Hmm and yeah, so so. But but
Speaker 3: it's not very it's not a sort of straight line
Speaker 3: from from the medieval fool to the stand up comedian.
Speaker 2: Shakespeare is famous for his fools that he's written, except
Speaker 2: in his History Henry the Eighth, he specifically does not
Speaker 2: include Will Summer. Why do you think that is?
Speaker 3: I don't know. I think I think there are There
Speaker 3: have been different explanations for that. One is that his
Speaker 3: regular clown actor, Robert Armand wasn't available at that time.
Speaker 3: I don't think Shakespeare wanted to do what all the
Speaker 3: other playwrights did, so he left Will Summer out of
Speaker 3: his play. But he but he still he has a
Speaker 3: prologue that says to the audience, you know, you won't
Speaker 3: find this fool in this play that you might expect
Speaker 3: in a play about Henry the Eighth. So apparently the
Speaker 3: fool's absence had to be explained away. And this shows
Speaker 3: that it was on sort of a convention to include
Speaker 3: Will Summer and in these very popular history plays about
Speaker 3: the reign of Henry.
Speaker 2: Yet, as you say in your book, the information we
Speaker 2: have about Summer's life is incredibly sparse, and you almost
Speaker 2: have to read between the lines in various legends and
Speaker 2: secondhand anecdotes that we get about him. Why as a
Speaker 2: historian were you drawn to this figure.
Speaker 3: I've had a long standing obsession with court fools as
Speaker 3: a sort of historical problem. Really, I mean, naturally, there
Speaker 3: have been earlier historians writing books about this, the history
Speaker 3: of the fool from the antiquity really too up until today.
Speaker 3: And I've written a book myself in Swedish unfortunately, called
Speaker 3: the History of the Comedian, where I tried to see
Speaker 3: this sort of long history. There is something special about
Speaker 3: the court fool and the fool in the Renaissance or
Speaker 3: the early modern period. They aren't, as I said, the
Speaker 3: sort of typical precursor of the modern comedian. They are
Speaker 3: not just entertainers. If we look at Will Summer, for instance,
Speaker 3: he is never listed in payments or accounts together with
Speaker 3: other entertainers. You have a list of the sort of
Speaker 3: the minstrels and the musicians and all those people. He
Speaker 3: is never among those. He is always listed separately, perhaps
Speaker 3: together with stable boys or something like that. Very strange,
Speaker 3: So apparently he belonged to a different category. And that's
Speaker 3: also what you see when you look closely at the
Speaker 3: Renaissance fool, that they had a sort of ceremonial or
Speaker 3: almost ritualistic purpose, which you can sort of trace back
Speaker 3: to earlier times when the fool had a sort of
Speaker 3: almost scapegoat symbolic importance. And of course there's also a
Speaker 3: lot of theology involved in this, and the image of
Speaker 3: the fool in the Bible and so on.
Speaker 2: You speak to the contradiction of the fool as a
Speaker 2: figure someone who is sometimes physically disciplined in a cruel way,
Speaker 2: treated cruelly laughed at, but that there is this almost
Speaker 2: religious side where they're considered almost godly, closer to God
Speaker 2: in that sense. Can you speak to that contrast a
Speaker 2: little bit.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's very interesting because not even modern scholars have
Speaker 3: really been able to resolve that contradiction. If you look
Speaker 3: at theological writings on fools or references to fools, you
Speaker 3: can find both a sort of tradition about the so
Speaker 3: called holy fools, the image as you said, that fools
Speaker 3: were closer to God or had some sort of innocent
Speaker 3: connection with God and so on. And this tradition is
Speaker 3: very clear if you look at authors Christianity. I think
Speaker 3: if you look at Russia, for instance, you can find
Speaker 3: a lot of ideas about holy fools. But then there
Speaker 3: are other ideas which also say that that fools are
Speaker 3: almost like devils, they are godless, And there's a Psalm
Speaker 3: line the fool hath said in his heart there is
Speaker 3: no God and so on. So there is like a
Speaker 3: tradition connecting atheism to foolishness, because it's foolish to deny
Speaker 3: the existence of God. And this also sort of implicates
Speaker 3: and comes into play where when people speak about fools
Speaker 3: in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, so it was
Speaker 3: very much ambivalent, and I think this is visible also
Speaker 3: when you look at the treatment of ordinary fools like
Speaker 3: Will Summer.
Speaker 2: It almost is is an interesting through line to how
Speaker 2: people in the Renaissance and early modern period viewed mental
Speaker 2: disability intellectual disability.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and that's a big issue of coursed which a
Speaker 3: lot of historians have treated and are beginning to study
Speaker 3: more and more. What you can say about that is
Speaker 3: of course that it's difficult to apply our terminology on
Speaker 3: that period, because the terminology back then was completely different,
Speaker 3: and the definitions and what you sort of what was
Speaker 3: and wasn't a disability then was different. But even there
Speaker 3: you can see this ambivalence. You can see a lot
Speaker 3: of empathy and a lot of care, especially in communities
Speaker 3: taking care of people with a disability and so on,
Speaker 3: but also the cruelty and the beating and the sort
Speaker 3: of very cruel humor that fools are subjected to. The
Speaker 3: fool is a sort of bully victim really in a
Speaker 3: lot of situations, and that's often the most obvious modern
Speaker 3: parallel when when you study fools this time.
Speaker 2: Bully in the sense that they were the ones being bullied.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, bully victims very much so. So there aren't
Speaker 3: any more obvious bullies in history than Henry the Ah.
Speaker 3: So it's very suitable this particular fool, but also in
Speaker 3: other cases.
Speaker 2: Of course, you mentioned earlier the sort of nebulous position
Speaker 2: that Will Sommer had in court, not part of the chamber,
Speaker 2: but also not quite part of the household. What might
Speaker 2: his daily life have looked like. Obviously we don't know,
Speaker 2: but just if you had to.
Speaker 3: Imagine, yeah, that's very interesting. Some people earlier suggested that
Speaker 3: he had his own sort of quarters in the royal
Speaker 3: palaces and so on. I don't think that was the case.
Speaker 3: I well, in that case, a very something very simple
Speaker 3: and perhaps together with servants or stable boys or something
Speaker 3: like that. There's even a reference in one of the
Speaker 3: anecdotes about him. It says that after he had been
Speaker 3: entertaining the king, he went into a corner of the
Speaker 3: room to sleep with the spaniels, so suggesting that that
Speaker 3: he slept in the dog basket basically. And there are
Speaker 3: theories about fools and dwarfs at this time being sort
Speaker 3: of human pets. And you can see that image sometimes
Speaker 3: when you when you see him falling asleep and being
Speaker 3: sort of in the background, lounging around, being quite comfortable really,
Speaker 3: but also treated with this combination of sympathy and and
Speaker 3: cruelty that that you might compare with the pets. So
Speaker 3: so there is that dimension in it, really. So possibly
Speaker 3: his his daily life would be something like that. He
Speaker 3: would it would be around, especially when called for, but
Speaker 3: he would also probably live outside of the court, and
Speaker 3: his life outside of court we know very little about.
Speaker 3: So there is a there is a a documentary in
Speaker 3: the Royal Archives with payments for him being washed and
Speaker 3: shaved and his feet being washed. And this is in
Speaker 3: connection with the coronation of Mary Tudor. So it's quite
Speaker 3: possible that he was not at court before that, but
Speaker 3: he was taken in. Maybe some servant was sent out
Speaker 3: to find him in a tavern in London or something,
Speaker 3: and he was taken in because you had to have,
Speaker 3: of course Henry the Eighth Fool around for the coronation.
Speaker 3: So he was taken in, he was shaved, he was
Speaker 3: fitted with new clothes, washed and so on.
Speaker 2: And I believe he was also president at the coronation
Speaker 2: of Elizabeth as well.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, that's one of the last sort of records
Speaker 3: we have of him in his life.
Speaker 2: That sort of also image of the fool as more
Speaker 2: of a pet or mass got I think also fits
Speaker 2: with this idea of him being featured in portraits. What
Speaker 2: sort of information have you gleaned about Willsommer from the
Speaker 2: visual aspect of him that we get in his portraits.
Speaker 3: Well, it's quite difficult to I mean, it's very easy
Speaker 3: to get ahead of yourself and draw foregone conclusions based
Speaker 3: on his appearance. We can't really say anything about his
Speaker 3: appearance based on the portraits apart from the fact that
Speaker 3: he was simply but nicely dressed. Sometimes you can even
Speaker 3: identify the clothes he wears in the portraits with records
Speaker 3: from the wardrobe accounts where these specific items of dress
Speaker 3: are ordered for him. His hair was cut short, which
Speaker 3: was common in fools. There's also a portrait of the
Speaker 3: Queen's fool at one point, Jane Fool. We know very
Speaker 3: little about what she is. Also, she also has her
Speaker 3: head shaved, so this was this was something that was
Speaker 3: done in other fools as well. Apart from this, you
Speaker 3: can'tantly say anything about him from based on the portraits.
Speaker 3: But it's very frustrating, of course, because you have these
Speaker 3: portraits and you can recognize him, and in the very
Speaker 3: good portraits, of course, you can really see this is
Speaker 3: a real person. So you get very intrigued and very
Speaker 3: and you want to know more. But then you have
Speaker 3: to go to other types of sources to be able
Speaker 3: to learn something more substantial about who he was.
Speaker 2: One point that you make in the book that I
Speaker 2: just found so fascinating is this idea of what folklore
Speaker 2: historians called tradition dominant that when folk heroes are sort
Speaker 2: of being added to the cultural lexicon, they're almost like
Speaker 2: slotted into cultural archetypes that already exist that you know,
Speaker 2: you'll just apply a local hero to a trope of
Speaker 2: a type of hero that people already know about. So
Speaker 2: with that said, we don't really know any specific justs
Speaker 2: that Will Summer did specifically, because he might have just
Speaker 2: been used as you know that we mean, you know,
Speaker 2: we know.
Speaker 3: I mean, there are of course contemporary records that I
Speaker 3: study in the book which are sort of references to
Speaker 3: him saying things, and that seems to have been the
Speaker 3: main sort of appeal of him, that he had. He
Speaker 3: had a tendency to put his foot in his mouth,
Speaker 3: to say things that others found funny, that that sounded stupid,
Speaker 3: or something like that. Sometimes it's like it's difficult to
Speaker 3: say is he being intentionally funny here or is it
Speaker 3: just a gaff that people have sort of recorded here.
Speaker 3: And that's also interesting, of course, because was he sort
Speaker 3: of doing something himself deliberately or was he simply a
Speaker 3: bolivicly subject to circumstances and too other people's mockery and
Speaker 3: so on. But you can actually find that's the most
Speaker 3: interesting sources where people in letters or pamphlets say something
Speaker 3: that Will Summer has said, or that they have heard
Speaker 3: that he has said. Absolutely, Yeah, you get closest to him.
Speaker 3: But it's also very very strange because you never you
Speaker 3: never hear his own voice.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I just met sort of the larger stories that
Speaker 2: have surrounded him. Also as the decades went by, I
Speaker 2: was wondering if you had a favorite just that had
Speaker 2: been attributed to him, either correctly or incorrect.
Speaker 3: Okay, oh, that's a good, good question. I mean, he
Speaker 3: doesn't seem to have been, and that also sort of
Speaker 3: says something about his personality. He doesn't seem to have
Speaker 3: been like a practical joker or a physical comedian, which
Speaker 3: other fools at this time could be. There are other
Speaker 3: stories of fools, you know, eating a lot of laxatives
Speaker 3: and then sitting on top of the face of someone
Speaker 3: who's sleeping, something like that.
Speaker 2: It's always funny. It was funny hundreds of years ago,
Speaker 2: it's funny today exactly.
Speaker 3: And I mean, who wouldn't love studying court fools in
Speaker 3: the Renaissance when you read a story like that. But
Speaker 3: Will Summers everything is much more subtle and therefore it's
Speaker 3: very much more interesting, but also very difficult to sort
Speaker 3: of get at him. But the things he said and
Speaker 3: the quotes from him are funny in themselves. But the
Speaker 3: thing that the sort of the motto that he had
Speaker 3: that most people who quote him refer to is you
Speaker 3: should you shouldn't abide by anything I say, And that
Speaker 3: becomes us a sort of figure of speech among courtiers
Speaker 3: in this time. Oh as Will Summers says, you shouldn't
Speaker 3: abide by anything I say, they sort of remark in passing,
Speaker 3: and that's just a fool who. Yes, maybe he had
Speaker 3: a tendency to put his foot in his mouth and
Speaker 3: so on, but maybe he was also a bit self
Speaker 3: conscious about this. Wouldn't he have have become that after
Speaker 3: all these years being being a court fool? So there
Speaker 3: you see just a hint of a person back behind
Speaker 3: those words. I mean, it's not quite Gratio Marx. I
Speaker 3: wouldn't belong to a club that would have me as
Speaker 3: a member, But it's not that far from it, because
Speaker 3: there is some sort of self consciousness there about the
Speaker 3: silliness and the foolishness of the fool, and also perhaps
Speaker 3: a bit of you know, sadness about how he had
Speaker 3: ended up and what his status was as a man.
Speaker 3: Don't abide by anything I say. That's that's the sort
Speaker 3: of that's his message in a way which I think
Speaker 3: you can Yeah, you can go on and analyze that
Speaker 3: for quite a long time.
Speaker 2: Well, I think that's a brilliant place to wrap up
Speaker 2: the sort of subtle tragedy of a man who's lefele
Speaker 2: has far outlived him. Peter Anderson, thank you so much.
Speaker 2: This has been such a pleasure. If you're interested in
Speaker 2: learning more about Will Summer or the cultural and political
Speaker 2: history of the Fool, pick up fool. Thank you so much,
Speaker 2: and have a lovely evening. I'll enjoy my day in
Speaker 2: Los Angeles and you enjoy your evening in Europe.
Speaker 3: Yes, thank you. It's a pleasure really.
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