Fool

A biography of Henry VIII's court fool William Somer, a legendary entertainer and one of the most intriguing figures of the Tudor age. Peter K. Andersson pieces together the fullest picture yet of an enigmatic and unusual man with a very strange job. Somer's story provides new insights into how fools lived and what exactly they did for a living, how monarchs and courtiers related to commoners and people with disabilities, and whether aspects of the Renaissance fool live on in the modern comedian. But most of all, we learn how a commoner without property or education managed to become the court's chief mascot and a continuous presence at the centre of Tudor power from the 1530s to the reign of Elizabeth I. 'Fool' reveals a little-known world, surprising and disturbing, when comedy was something crueller and more unpleasant than we like to think.