A comic.
"Now whether a party can have much success without a woman present I must ask others to decide, but one thing is certain, no party is any fun unless seasoned with folly. In fact, if there's no one there to raise a laugh with his folly, genuine or assumed, they have to bring on a 'jester', one who's paid for the job, or invite some absurd hanger-on whose laughable, that is, foolish, remarks will banish silence and gloom from the company. What was the point of loading the stomach with all those delicacies, fancy dishes, and titbits if the eyes and ears and the whole mind can't be fed as well on laughter, jokes, and wit?"
Erasmus, Praise of Folly, (1509)
[translated by Betty Radice, notes by A. H. T. Levi (1993)].
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