About the book: 2020 / Even animals, according to experts, are capable of laughing. Laughter - sometimes cheerful and joyful, sometimes angry, sometimes bursting through tears - has accompanied people since ancient times. A person who is unable to laugh looks strange; his life in the world is bitter. Perhaps this is why, even at the dawn of civilizations, people appeared for whom the art of causing laughter was one of their main activities. The names of some of them have become household names and still live in everyday language. Laughter has become part of an integral philosophy and search for the meaning of life. For the first time published in modern spelling, the study of history professor A. Gazo on jesters and buffoonery was published in France back in 1882, and in 1898 its Russian translation appeared, made by N. Fedorova. Of particular value to the Russian edition is the additional outline of the history of laughter and buffoonery in Rus', starting from the Middle Ages and up to the times of Peter the Great and Anna Ioannovna. Wise Aesop, enchanting characters of the Italian comedy of masks, caustic Punch, unlucky and at the same time cunning Khoja Nasreddin, resourceful Balakirev... Rough morals coexist with high intelligence, and the clownish societies of the late Middle Ages with gangs of Russian buffoons are collected under one cover and reveal to the reader a side almost unknown to us today past.