The 2,188 occurrences of buffoon

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~   ~   ~   Sentence 6,158   ~   ~   ~

From this yawning cave the devils themselves constantly ascended to delight and to instruct the spectators:--to delight, because they were usually the greatest jesters and buffoons that then appeared; and to instruct, for that they treated the wretched mortals who were delivered to them with the utmost cruelty, warning thereby all men carefully to avoid the falling into the clutches of such hardened and remorseless spirits."

~   ~   ~   Sentence 7,714   ~   ~   ~

He was rather the _arch-buffoon_ than the _arch-poet_ of Leo.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,671   ~   ~   ~

Be the blood Scotch or English, French or Italian, a drummer's or a buffoon's, it carries a soul upon its stream; and every soul has many places to touch at, and much business to perform, before it reaches its ultimate destination.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,300   ~   ~   ~

This quality---- _Rousseau._ Is the quality of a buffoon and a courtier.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,301   ~   ~   ~

But the buffoon should have most of it, to support his higher dignity.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,049   ~   ~   ~

He was a universal actor--comedian, tragedian, buffoon--all in one.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 116   ~   ~   ~

It was not difficult, he remarks, to see plays, "when in the Colleges so many of the young divines, and those in next aptitude to divinity, have been seen so often upon the stage, writhing and unboning their clergy limbs to all the antic and dishonest gestures of Trinculoes, buffoons, and bawds."

~   ~   ~   Sentence 4,004   ~   ~   ~

Great people of yore, kings and queens, buffoons, and grave ambassadors, played their stately farce for centuries in Holyrood.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 152   ~   ~   ~

He, wearing his misery like a Cæsar's toga, compared by this young buffoon to a kid who had been spanked!

~   ~   ~   Sentence 687   ~   ~   ~

Afar, a dwarf buffoon stood telling tales To a sedate grey circle of old smokers, Of secret treasures found in hidden vales, Of wonderful replies from Arab jokers, Of charms to make good gold and cure bad ails, Of rocks bewitch'd that open to the knockers, Of magic ladies who, by one sole act, Transform'd their lords to beasts (but that 's a fact).

~   ~   ~   Sentence 837   ~   ~   ~

But I 'm digressing; what on earth has Nero, Or any such like sovereign buffoons, To do with the transactions of my hero, More than such madmen's fellow man--the moon's?

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,509   ~   ~   ~

Suwarrow chiefly was on the alert, Surveying, drilling, ordering, jesting, pondering; For the man was, we safely may assert, A thing to wonder at beyond most wondering; Hero, buffoon, half-demon, and half-dirt, Praying, instructing, desolating, plundering; Now Mars, now Momus; and when bent to storm A fortress, Harlequin in uniform.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,530   ~   ~   ~

The dervish, Hadji Abderhaman, turned out to be a gourmand, as well as a witty fellow and a buffoon.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 724   ~   ~   ~

I was much alarmed as well as surprised at this course of conduct; for although my friend was an inveterate joker, he was the very reverse of what is termed a buffoon, and never indulged in personally grotesque actions with a view to make people laugh--such as making faces, a practice which, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, causes the face-makers to look idiotical rather than funny, and induces beholders to pity them, and to feel very uncomfortable sensations.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 431   ~   ~   ~

When the caricaturist Foote threatened to take him off upon the stage, the most Christian of lexicographers caused it to be intimated to him that if he did the author of _Rasselas_ would thrash him in the public street, and the buffoon desisted.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 370   ~   ~   ~

Wine was drunk in great excess; and buffoons, Scythian and Moorish, exhibited their unseemly dances before the revellers.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 57   ~   ~   ~

Roger North's "Memoirs of Music"--Martinus Gerbertus, his "De Cantu et Musica Sacra"--Paul Lacroix' "Arts of the Middle Ages"--Earliest known representations of Bowed Instruments, sixth to ninth century--The Manuscript of St. Blasius--The Cheli or Chelys--Saxon Fiddle in the Cottonian Manuscripts, and in Strutt's "Sports and Pastimes"--The early Saxons' love of Music--The Saxon Fithele in the time of the Norman Conquest--The Geige in France, and the Jongleurs, "dancers, jugglers, and buffoons"--Domestic Music in Germany and the Low Countries in the sixteenth century--The Viol and the Madrigal--Music in Italy--Adrian Willaert, "The Father of the Madrigal"--Northern Musicians attracted to Italian Courts--Development of the Madrigal in Italy--High standard of early Italian work, but under German teaching--The Viols of Brensius of Bologna--Silvestro Ganassi, his work on the Viol--Duiffoprugcar and Gasparo da Salo and the development of the Violin--The Fretted Finger-board--The Violono or Bass Viol--Five-stringed Viols--The three-stringed Fiddle, or Geige, attributed to Andrea Amati, altered by the Brothers Mantegazza to a four-stringed Violin--Advent of the four-stringed Violin ascribed to Gasparo da Salo... 12-26 SECTION II.--THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE VIOLIN.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 310   ~   ~   ~

The evidence we have of the use to which the leading instrument was put in the days of its adolescence is indicative of its having grown up among dancers, jugglers, and buffoons.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 4,369   ~   ~   ~

As long as we are pleasant, witty, as long as we are buffoons ... but let us be human beings, Shane, and they hate us."

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,819   ~   ~   ~

"I go, Miss Woodley?" he replied, with astonishment, "Do you imagine I would play the buffoon at a masquerade?"

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,184   ~   ~   ~

Their sermons raise a laugh, the success of their fables encourages their rivals to imitate them; the Councils vainly interfere, and reiterate, until after the Renaissance, the prohibition "to provoke shouts of laughter, after the fashion of shameless buffoons, by ridiculous stories and old wives' tales.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 7,005   ~   ~   ~

The Court fool or buffoon had for his principal merit his clever knack of returning witty or confusing answers; the best of them were preserved; itinerant minstrels remembered and repeated them; clerks turned them into Latin, and gave them place in their collections of _exempla_.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 7,240   ~   ~   ~

Several devils are to be seen in the miniature; they have cloven feet, and stand outside the hell-mouth; a buffoon also is to be seen, who raises a laugh among the audience and shows his scorn for the martyr by the means described three centuries earlier in John of Salisbury's book, exhibiting his person in a way "quam erubescat videre vel cynicus."

~   ~   ~   Sentence 7,488   ~   ~   ~

[818] Fearing the audience might go to sleep, or perhaps go away, the science and the austere philosophy taught in these plays were enlivened by tavern scenes, and by the gambols of a clown, fool, or buffoon, called Vice, armed, as Harlequin, with a wooden dagger.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,477   ~   ~   ~

But his incapacity for doing anything as well as his impassiveness eventually exasperated his relatives, and he became a laughing-stock, a sort of martyred buffoon, a prey given over to native ferocity, to the savage gaiety of the brutes who surrounded him.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 623   ~   ~   ~

She was reminded of what Strang had so often said, referring to their lonely quest--that actual existence was like a forlorn shipwreck of some other life, a mere raft upon which, like grave buffoons, the ragged survivors went on handing one another watersoaked bread of faith, glassless binoculars of belief, oblivious of what radiant coasts or awful headlands might lie beyond the enveloping mists.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,568   ~   ~   ~

I am not referring to every shameless holiday tripper on the Continent who makes himself a buffoon by using misapplied, mispronounced, self-mistaught French or Italian or German sentences, but I mean the rare observant Englishman who studies languages seriously and practically.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 5,100   ~   ~   ~

Most probably it was from them that the "motley" descended to the fools and buffoons of the Middle Ages.]

~   ~   ~   Sentence 736   ~   ~   ~

It is argued that this is all deliberate--is an effect of premeditation: that Rabelais had certain home-truths to deliver to his generation, and delivered them in such terms as kept him from the fagot and the rope by bedaubing him with the renown of a common buffoon.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,193   ~   ~   ~

The public preferred him as a buffoon; and not until his last years (and then anonymously) was he able to utter his highest word.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 864   ~   ~   ~

The witty page supersedes the rude buffoon of earlier plays, and everything is graceful and ingenious, slight in serious interest, but relieved by movement and song.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,624   ~   ~   ~

With a start I wakened up to find the landlord making a buffoon's attempt at a dance in the middle of the floor to the tune of the Jew-trump, a transparent trick to restore the good-humour of his roysterers, and the black man who had fetched the spae-wife was standing at my side surveying me closely out of the corners of his eyes.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 899   ~   ~   ~

Buffoon though he was, still she had to admire his wide information and worldly wisdom; and though she could not agree with his views of hopping, she was amazed by all the new things he had taught her in their brief conversation.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 538   ~   ~   ~

Many critics have commented on the somewhat discordant and inartistic change between the earlier part of _Pickwick_ and the later; they have pointed out, not without good sense, that the character of Mr. Pickwick changes from that of a silly buffoon to that of a solid merchant.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 100   ~   ~   ~

ZANY, _A Buffoon_, _a Merry Andrew_.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 445   ~   ~   ~

Applause which ought to be measured out with scrupulous justice, correctness and precision, has been by admiring ignorance, poured forth in a torrent roar of uncouth and obstreperous _glee_ on the buffoon, "the clown that says more than is set down for him," and on "the robustious perriwig-pated fellow, who tears a passion all to rags," while chaste merit and propriety have often gone unrewarded by a smile.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 726   ~   ~   ~

In this _hero_ who is sometimes as bombastical as ancient Pistol, and sometimes as ridiculous as a buffoon, the author attempts to be droll, and Aims at wit--but levell'd in the dark, The random arrow never hits the mark.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 930   ~   ~   ~

Well may the Nobles of our present race Watch each distortion of a Naldi's face; Well may they smile on Italy's buffoons, And worship Catalani's pantaloons,[17] Since their own drama yields no fairer trace Of wit than puns, of humour than grimace.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 379   ~   ~   ~

We know how he gained renown for all time by the accuracy of the portraits he painted of various members of the court of Philip IV.--the king, the minister, Count Olivarez, the princes, the dwarfs, and the buffoons.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 12,900   ~   ~   ~

The _Tribune_, referring to his campaign as "a rhetorical spree," called him a "buffoon," a "political harlequin," a "repeater of mouldy jokes,"[852] and in bitter terms denounced his "low comedy performance at Tammany," his "double-shuffle dancing at Mozart Hall," his possession of a letter "by dishonourable means for a dishonourable purpose," and his wide-sweeping statements "which gentlemen over their own signatures pronounced lies.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 706   ~   ~   ~

With a pretty taste for epithets, in which our forefathers sometimes indulged, Hearne has defended his friend from Addison's sarcasms by declaring that the mistake could only have been made by a 'shallow buffoon.'

~   ~   ~   Sentence 952   ~   ~   ~

In another library, the great work of the naturalist, Buffon, was actually lettered "Buffoon's Natural History."

~   ~   ~   Sentence 166   ~   ~   ~

The author is a vulgar buffoon, and the editor a talkative, tedious old fool.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 571   ~   ~   ~

There's some resemblance to a spoon, But you are not considered "spooney"-- Word coined by some low buffoon, Romantic, quite, as "_Annie Rooney_."

~   ~   ~   Sentence 940   ~   ~   ~

He has with him a hobby-horse and buffoon covered with fantastic trappings, and carrying a small article called a "mapper" (which is conjectured to be a misreading for "snapper"), and representing the teeth and jaws of a horse.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,460   ~   ~   ~

To enforce this idea still more, I counterfeited his buffoons, whom they called _Egeums_.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,729   ~   ~   ~

I will have in my pay the whole troop of flatterers, parasites, and buffoons, and I'll say to them, as has been said to me: "Come, knaves, let me be amused," and amused I shall be; "Pull me some honest folk to pieces," and so they will be, if honest folk can be found.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 491   ~   ~   ~

As _Lord Glandeville_, Mr. VANE TEMPEST, most admirable of buffoons, must have longed to be allowed to make us laugh, but solemnity was his order of the day and he carried it out like a hero.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 366   ~   ~   ~

Up to this point, the candid reader has probably been conscious of a growing persuasion that this author must be at bottom a serious if also a humorous man,--a man, therefore, excusably intent not to be misunderstood as a mere buffoon.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 90   ~   ~   ~

XXI.--We approach TAMISSO--Our halt at a brook--bathing, beautifying, and adornment of the women--Message and welcome from MOHAMEDOO, by his son, with a gift of food--Our musical escort and procession to the city--My horse is led by a buffoon of the court, who takes care of my face--Curiosity of the townsfolk to see the white Mongo--I pass on hastily to the PALACE OF MOHAMEDOO--What an African palace and its furniture is--Mohamedoo's appearance, greeting and dissatisfaction--I make my present and clear up the clouds--I determine to bathe--How the girls watch me--Their commentaries on my skin and complexion--Negro curiosity--A bath scene--Appearance of Tamisso, and my entertainment there 157 CHAP.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,160   ~   ~   ~

I was quickly surrounded by the singers, who chanted the most fulsome praise of the opulent Mongo, while a court-fool or buffoon insisted on leading my horse, and occasionally wiping my face with his filthy handkerchief!

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,436   ~   ~   ~

An officer preceded him to clear the path; a fool or buffoon hopped beside him; a band of native musicians sounded their discordant instruments, and a couple of singers screamed, at the top of their voices, the most fulsome adulation of the mulatto.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,627   ~   ~   ~

It was the first time he had heard Mackenzie speak of his wife, and it turned out to be the last; but from that moment the older man had something of dignity in the eyes of this younger man, who had merely judged of him by his little foibles and eccentricities, and would have been ready to dismiss him contemptuously as a buffoon.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 222   ~   ~   ~

Yet such is the origin of these buffoons.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 67   ~   ~   ~

He chose the mask of a buffoon.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 111   ~   ~   ~

You have behaved like a buffoon, sir--d'you hear me?--like a buffoon!"

~   ~   ~   Sentence 213   ~   ~   ~

His profession of a buffoon sometimes exhausted him, but he could no longer dare to be like others.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 225   ~   ~   ~

This absurdity was a mechanical attempt to retrieve his buffoon's reputation, for he was really very much in love, and very serious in his desire to be married in quite the ordinary way.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 460   ~   ~   ~

He had put off the child--the buffoon--and looked for the moment a grave, dull young man, naturally at ease with all the conventions.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 628   ~   ~   ~

He was the Court Fool of Mayfair, the buffoon of the inner circles of the Metropolis, and, by degrees, his painted fame, jangling the bells in its cap, spun about England in a dervish dance, till Peckham whispered of him, and even the remotest suburbs crowned him with parsley and hung upon his doings.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 452   ~   ~   ~

There a man dressed like a buffoon, with a tall hat, a lobster claw for a nose, a uniform with big red flannel epaulettes and pasteboard buttons covered with gold paper, was pretending to conduct the band.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 544   ~   ~   ~

The Duke, who was accused at times of a shameful parsimony, was generous to profusion towards the bloated buffoon who was able and willing to divert him, and from that hour Rigby's pockets never wanted their supply of public money.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 553   ~   ~   ~

He had still eleven years to live without adding anything of honor or credit to his name, or earning any other reputation than that of a corrupt politician whose private life was passed chiefly in the society of gamblers, jockeys, and buffoons.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 330   ~   ~   ~

Thackeray, indeed, seems to have been a little too hard upon George, and to have regarded him merely as a worthless profligate and buffoon, who never really felt any of the generous emotions which the sovereign found it convenient to summon up at the appropriate seasons.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 456   ~   ~   ~

I ne'er Can see a smile, unless in some broad banquet's Intoxicating glare, when the buffoons 440 Have gorged themselves up to equality, Or I have quaffed me down to their abasement.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 11,598   ~   ~   ~

Thou waxest insolent, beyond the privilege Of a buffoon.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 12,368   ~   ~   ~

[214] [The outside of Socrates was that of a satyr and buffoon, but his soul was all virtue, and from within him came such divine and pathetic things, as pierced the heart, and drew tears from the hearers.--Plato, _Symp_., p. 216, D.] [215] {486}["Anthony had a noble dignity of countenance, a graceful length of beard, a large forehead, an aquiline nose: and, upon the whole, the same manly aspect that we see in the pictures and statues of Hercules."

~   ~   ~   Sentence 144   ~   ~   ~

Are jesters and buffoons your choice friends?

~   ~   ~   Sentence 51   ~   ~   ~

+----------------------------+ | ZANY, | |_A Buffoon, a Merry Andrew_.| +----------------------------+ Here's Zany reading in a book-- With heels above his head-- And, judging by his laughing look, Finds fun in what he's read.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 784   ~   ~   ~

'[107] But this is not perhaps so strange, considering Galba was a buffoon.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,594   ~   ~   ~

As Agis the Argive,[417] when Alexander bestowed great gifts on a buffoon, cried out in envy and displeasure, "What a piece of absurdity!" and on the king turning angrily to him and saying, "What are you talking about?" he replied, "I admit that I am vexed and put out, when I see that all you descendants of Zeus alike take delight in flatterers and jesters, for Hercules had his Cercopes, and Dionysus his Sileni, and with you too I see that such are held in good repute."

~   ~   ~   Sentence 4,070   ~   ~   ~

But he that has long accustomed himself never to go against his convictions in praising a speaker, or clapping a singer, or laughing at a dull buffoon, will never go to this length, nor say to some impudent fellow in such matters, "Swear on my behalf, bear false witness, pronounce an unjust verdict."

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,407   ~   ~   ~

Temples they turn into ruins, the vessels of the gods they use at their banquets, and make buffoons of priests and sages.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 4,019   ~   ~   ~

In turn appeared dancers, gymnasts, buffoons, performers of tricks, swordsmen; when any one gave an unusual proof of dexterity, the spectators threw to him gold rings or flowers from their garlands.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 6,241   ~   ~   ~

In turn appeared acrobats, serpent-charmers, dancers, buffoons, and jesters, who called forth shouts from the audience.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 6,565   ~   ~   ~

"Worthless buffoon!" whispered she; "Thou who art hardly fit to be a singing slave in my mansion."

~   ~   ~   Sentence 11,550   ~   ~   ~

He was at a school of the priests when, on the festival of the goddess Mut, after various amusements they introduced the most famous buffoon in Egypt.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 11,555   ~   ~   ~

"They want to make me like that buffoon," thought he.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 10   ~   ~   ~

On his throne in Fools' hall, Triboulet, the king's hunchback, leaned complacently back, his eyes bent upon a tapestry but newly hung in that room, the meeting place of jesters, buffoons and versifiers.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 19   ~   ~   ~

And truly it was said that sprightly ladies, working between love and pleasure times, drew from the court fool for their conception of the mythological buffoon, reproducing Triboulet's great head; his mouth, proportionately large; his protruding eyes; his bowed back, short, twisted legs and long, muscular arms; and his nose far larger than that of Francis, who otherwise had the largest nose in the kingdom.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 26   ~   ~   ~

Over a goodly gathering of jesters, buffoons, poets, and even philosophers, he lorded it, holding his head as high as his hump would permit and conscious of his own place in the esteem of the king.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 72   ~   ~   ~

At this the cardinal's buffoon looked disappointed, for his master liked more highly-flavored hearsay, while Triboulet frowned and brought down his heavy fist upon the arm of the throne.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 150   ~   ~   ~

Crouching like an animal, the king's buffoon sprang with headlong fury, uttering hoarse, guttural sounds that awakened misgivings regarding the fate of his too confident antagonist.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 235   ~   ~   ~

In portraiture the classical buffoon grinned and gibed at them from the tapestry; and even from his high station above the clouds Jupiter, who had ejected the offending fool of the gods, looked less stern and implacable.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 880   ~   ~   ~

As vagrant followers hover on the verge of a camp, or watchful vultures circle around their prey, so these lower parasites (distinct from the other well-born, more aristocratic genus of smell-feast) prowled vigilantly without the castle walls and beyond the limits of the royal pleasure grounds, finding occasional employment from lackey, valet or equerry, who, imitating their betters, amused themselves betimes with some low buffoon or vulgar clown and rewarded him for his gross stories and antics with a crust and a cup.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 913   ~   ~   ~

The king, who heard, laughed, and the dwarf's heart immediately expanded, auguring he should soon be restored to the monarch's favor; for since the night the buffoon had failed to answer the duke's jester in Fools' hall Francis had received Triboulet's advances and small pleasantries with terrifying coldness.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,095   ~   ~   ~

Nor had the princess' look when the goblet had fallen, been lost upon the misshapen buffoon; alert, wide-awake, his mind, quick to suspect, reached a sudden conclusion; a conclusion which by rapid process of reasoning became a conviction.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,128   ~   ~   ~

What have you to say, fool?" he continued, turning to the object of the buffoon's insidious and malicious attack.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,178   ~   ~   ~

With peals of merriment and triumphant shouts, the court, of one accord, directed a fusillade of fruits, nuts and other viands at the head and person of the raging and hapless buffoon, the countess herself, apple in hand--Eve bent upon vengeance--leading in the assault.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,148   ~   ~   ~

How Francis, evincing a sudden interest as strong as it was unexpected, had exchanged Triboulet for herself, and the princess, at the king's request, had taken the buffoon with her, and left the girl behind.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,373   ~   ~   ~

In this room was gathered a nondescript company: mountebanks and buffoons; rogues unclassified, drinking and dicing; a robust vagrant, at whose feet slept a performing boar, with a ring--badge of servitude--through its nose; a black-bearded, shaggy-haired Spanish troubadour, with attire so ragged and worn as to have lost its erstwhile picturesque characteristics.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 456   ~   ~   ~

A buffoon expression has this advantage, it is unanswerable.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 5,969   ~   ~   ~

His means sufficing him not to support the expense that his gluttony required and he being, for the rest, a very well-mannered man and full of goodly and pleasant sayings, he addressed himself to be, not altogether a buffoon, but a spunger[436] and to company with those who were rich and delighted to eat of good things; and with these he went often to dine and sup, albeit he was not always bidden.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 555   ~   ~   ~

Harpers, dancers, buffoons and all the sodden splendor of the East made the nights echo with "shouts, sacrifices, songs and groans."

~   ~   ~   Sentence 248   ~   ~   ~

Brine regarded him as a mere buffoon, devoid of either dignity or breeding; Crowquill, as a grinning, drum-beating Showman; Doyle, Thackeray, and others adhered to the idea of the Merry, but certainly not uproarious, Hunchback; Sir John Tenniel showed him as a vivified puppet, all that was earnest, responsible, and wise, laughing and high-minded; Keene looked on him generally as a youngish, bright-eyed, but apparently brainless gentleman, afflicted with a pitiable deformity of chin, and sometimes of spine; Sir John Gilbert as a rollicking Polichinelle, and Kenny Meadows as Punchinello; John Leech's conception, originally inspired, no doubt, by George Cruikshank's celebrated etchings, was the embodiment of everything that was jolly and all that was just, on occasion terribly severe, half flesh, half wood--the father, manifestly, of Sir John Tenniel's improved figure of more recent times.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,428   ~   ~   ~

Then it came to mean buffoon, in which sense Shakespeare applies it to grim death-- "For within the hollow crown That rounds the mortal temples of a king, Keeps death his court; and there the _antic_ sits, Scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp."

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,431   ~   ~   ~

and lastly the meaning was transferred to the capers of the buffoon.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,533   ~   ~   ~

_Mask_, which ultimately belongs to an Arabic word meaning buffoon, has had a sense development exactly opposite to that of _person_, its modern meaning corresponding to the Lat.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 977   ~   ~   ~

We could also see the trap-doors from whence buffoons were hoisted on to the stage.

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