What comes to mind when you think about a "court jester?"  What if we told you that fools in the Tudor court didn’t look or sound anything like the zany clowns you have in mind?

Historians don’t know much about Will Somer. We know he was Henry VIII’s court fool, but the details of his biography—and, crucially, his comedy—were never recorded.

By Shakespeare’s time, Somer had become famous. Whenever a poet or playwright needed to reference a long-lost comedy great, they’d name-check Will Somer—kind of like mentioning Charlie Chaplin or Groucho Marx today. But unlike Chaplin or Groucho, none of Somer's jokes survived. So later writers just made them up, inventing a comedian to suit their own tastes.

Peter K. Andersson’s new biography of Somer, "Fool: In Search of Henry the 8th’s Closest Man," digs through the layers of fiction that accumulated over the centuries to reveal is a fool very different from anything we might recognize from King Lear or Twelfth Night. We ask Andersson what we know about Somer, how he became a celebrity, and how people with intellectual disabilities were treated in the 16th century.

Peter K. Andersson is a historian at Sweden's Örebro University. "Fool: In Search of Henry the 8th’s Closest Man" is available from Princeton University Press.

From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast series. Published December 5, 2023. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer. Leonor Fernandez edits our transcripts. We had technical help from Frida Anund in Sweden and Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Final mixing services provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc.