Your Majesty, I have a confession. My secret I must now betray. I was not a born fool. It took work to get this way. When I was a lad, I was gloomy and sad as I was from the day I was born. When other lads giggled and gurgled and wiggled, I proudly was loudly forlorn. My friends and my family looked at me clamorly, thought there was something amiss. When others found various antics hilarious, all I could manage was this. My father, he shouted, he needs to be clouded, his teeth on a wreath, I'll hand him. My mother, she cried as she rushed to my side, you're a brute and you don't understand him. So they sent for a witch with a terrible twitch to ask how my future impressed her. She took one look at me and cried, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he. What else could he be but a jester, a jester, a jester, a funny idea, a jester. No butcher, no baker, no candlestick maker and me with the look of a fine undertaker impressed her. As a jester? Now where could I learn any comical turner was not in a book on the shelf. No teacher to take me to mold me and make me a merry man, fool or an elf. But I'm proud to recall that in no time at all with no other recourses but my own resources with firm application and determination, I made a fool of myself. I bought a little gun and I learned to shoot, I bought a little horn and I learned to toot, and I can shoot and toot, ain't I cute? I started to travel to try to unravel my mind and to find a new chance. When I get to Spain it was suddenly plain that the field that appeared was the dance. The Spanish were clannish but I wouldn't vanish, I learned every step they had planned. The first step of all isn't hard to recall, cause the first step of all is to stand, and stand, and stand, and stand, and stand, and stand, and... They sometimes stand this way for days. Then they get very mad at the floor and start to stomp on it. After all of my practice, the terrible fact is, I made a fool of myself. I sadly decided that dancing as I did to sing was a thing that was surer. I found me a teacher, a crotchety creature who used to sing coloratura. She twisted my chin, pushed my diaphragm in with a poker shiva who collised me, when she said it was best that I throw out my chest. You may gather that rather surprised me. I was on solid ground till I suddenly found that in Venice I was to appear. The gala locale was a choppy canal and me a high sea gondolier. I nervously perched the gondola lurch before the king's palazzo. As I started my song, my voice it was strong, but my stomach I fear was not so. O sole mio! O sole mio! Help! When I fell overboard, I was majesty wrought. And before a siesta he made me his jester. And I found out soon that to be a buffoon was a serious thing as a rule. For a jester's chief employment is to kill himself for your enjoyment. And a jester unemployed is nobody's fool.