"In the seventeenth century the Dutch were a surprisingly humorous people. There was a great demand for jestbooks and farces, and many painters specialised in comical genres. After 1670, however, under pressure from Calvinist preaching and stricter rules of etiquette, laughter was more and more proscibed. This image of the serious Dutch still obscures our understanding of the Golden Age. A recently discovered manuscript with some 2,000 jokes reveals another, more light-hearted side to the Dutch character. The author, Aernout van Overbeke, was a lawyer and poet, who preferred a bohemian life-style. His manuscript is close to oral humour. Many of his jokes are crude, obscene and tasteless compared to those found in printed jestbooks, but they throw new light on the prevailing attitudies towards sexuality, illness, social relationships and religion. Hundreds of anecdotes about friends and acquaintances, ranging from the Princes of Orange to painters and poets, show how jokes were used and make it clear how important humour once was as a part of Dutch culture."--BOOK JACKET.