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Hop-Frog

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The court jester Hop-Frog, "being also a dwarf and a cripple", is the much-abused "fool" of the king and queen. This king and queem have an insatiable sense of humor: "he seemed to live only for joking". Both Hop-Frog and his best friend, the dancer Trippetta (also small, but beautiful and well-proportioned), have been stolen from their homeland and essentially function as slaves. Because of his physical deformity, which prevents him from walking upright, the King and Queen nickname him "Hop-Frog". The action takes place in an unnamed kingdom at an unspecified time in the past at which "professing jesters had not altogether gone out of fashion at court". The title character is a crippled dwarf who is the court jester of the country's cruel king. Hop-Frog and a female dwarf, a dancer named Trippetta, had both been brought to the king's court as captives from a far away land. When Hop-Frog sees the king strike the defenseless Trippetta in front of his seven ministers, he determines to take revenge on the eight men by playing a trick on them. The trick proves fatal for all eight of its victims.

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The court jester Hop-Frog, "being also a dwarf and a cripple", is the much-abused "fool" of the king and queen. This king and queem have an insatiable sense of humor: "he seemed to live only for joking". Both Hop-Frog and his best friend, the dancer Trippetta (also small, but beautiful and well-proportioned), have been stolen from their homeland and essentially function as slaves. Because of his physical deformity, which prevents him from walking upright, the King and Queen nickname him "Hop-Frog". Hop-Frog reacts severely to alchohol, and though the king knows this, he forces Hop-Frog to consume several goblets full. Trippetta begs the king to stop and, in front of seven members of his cabinet council, he strikes her and throws another goblet of wine into her face. The powerful men laugh at the expense of their two servants and ask Hop-Frog (who has very suddenly sobered up and become cheerful) for advice on an upcoming masquarade. He suggests some very realistic costumes for the men and the queen: costumes of orangutans chained together. The men and the queen love the idea of scaring their guests and agree to wear tight-fitting shirts and pants saturated with tar and covered with flax. In full costume, the men and the queen are then chained together and led into the "grand saloon" of masqueraders just after midnight. As predicted, the guests are shocked and many believe the men to be real "beasts of some kind in reality, if not precisely ourang-outangs". Many rush for the doors to escape, but Hop-Frog has insisted the doors be locked and the keys given to him. Amidst the chaos, Hop-Frog attaches a chain from the ceiling to the chain linked around the men in costume. The chain then pulls them up via pulley (presumably by Trippetta, who had arranged the room so) far above the crowd. Hop-Frog puts on a spectacle so that the guests presume "the whole matter as a well-contrived pleasantry." He claims he can identify the culprits by looking at them up close. He climbs up to their level, and holds a torch close to the men's faces. They quickly catch fire: "In less than half a minute the whole eight ourang-outangs were blazing fiercely, amid the shrieks of the multitude who gazed at them from below, horror-stricken, and without the power to render them the slightest assistance." Finally, before escaping through a sky-light with Trippetta to their home country, Hop-Frog identifies the men in costume:I now see distinctly... what manner of people these maskers are. They are a great king and queen and their seven privy-councillors - a king who does not scruple to strike a defenceless girl, and his queen and seven councillors who abet him in the outrage. As for myself, I am simply Hop-Frog, the jester - and this is my last jest. The two then escape the ball and share a kiss as they leave for their counrtry. The action takes place in an unnamed kingdom at an unspecified time in the past at which "professing jesters had not altogether gone out of fashion at court". The title character is a crippled dwarf who is the court jester of the country's cruel king. Hop-Frog and a female dwarf, a dancer named Trippetta, had both been brought to the king's court as captives from a far away land. When Hop-Frog sees the king strike the defenseless Trippetta in front of his seven ministers, he determines to take revenge on the eight men by playing a trick on them. The trick proves fatal for all eight of its victims.