Download or read book A Social History of the Fool written by Sandra Billington and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2015-03-19 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who is the Fool and what does he mean to us? Pre-1900 scholars thought him a Renaissance fashion, a continental import of note in the British Isles only between 1486 and the 1630s, per his appearances in Shakespeare's plays. However, as Sandra Billington shows in this pioneering study, the Fool has been with us from medieval times and has worn many guises: village idiot and sophisticated comedian, embodiment of Satan and God's own jester. He has managed, as Billington notes, 'to inspire or infect our thinking for at least eight hundred years'.