Woody Allen : the clown as tragic hero -- The anthropology of fools -- Robert Armin -- Archy Armstrong -- The Badin -- Lucille Ball -- Jean-Louis Barrault -- Beckett's postmodern clowns : Vladimir (Didi), Estragon (Gogo), Pozzo, and Lucky -- Jack Benny -- Birbal -- The Bishop of Fools -- George Burns and Gracie Allen : the Jewish vaudeville tradition -- The camp -- Canio-Pagliacco and Petrouchka : two contrasting images of Pierrot -- Charlie Chaplin -- The American circus clown -- Commedia dell'Arte -- Native American coyote trickster tales and cycles -- The drag queen -- Sir John Falstaff -- Feste -- W.C. Fields -- Folly in the enduring tradition -- The fop : "Apes and echoes of men" : gentlemanly ideals and the restoration -- Gimpel -- Joseph Grimaldi -- Forrest Gump : innocent fool -- Hamlet -- Hephaestus, Hermes, and Prometheus : jesters to the gods -- The Heyoka of the Sioux -- Clowns of the Hopi -- Knaves and fools in Ben Jonson -- Buster Keaton -- William Kemp -- Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy : yin and yang -- Lear's Fool -- Loki, the Norse fool -- The Marx Brothers -- Merry Report -- Paul the apostle -- Penasar of Bali : sacred clowns -- Pierrot : dramatic and literary mask -- Plautus's clowns -- Puck/Robin Goodfellow -- Punch and Judy -- François Rabelais -- Martha Raye -- Rigoletto -- Schlemiels and schlimazels -- The Sleary circus -- Socrates as fool in Aristophanes and Plato -- Will Sommers -- The sottie, the sots, and the fols -- South African political clowning : laughter and resistance to apartheid -- Country squires and bumpkins -- The Three Stooges -- Taishu Engeki : subverting the patterns of Japanese culture -- The tarot fool -- The tarot fool in English and American novels -- Touchstone -- The vice figure in middle English morality plays -- The vice in Henry Medwall's Nature -- Mae West -- The Yankee -- Zanni.