Pickelhering

Pickelhering or Pickelhäring was the nickname given to the comic stock character or stage buffoon in English comedy troupes that travelled through Germany in the 17th century.

Andreas Gryphius has a Pickelhering appear in his play Absurda Comica oder Herr Peter Squentz (1658) as "the king's comic advisor".

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe portrays a Pickleherring (with the L and E reversed) in the novel Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship (1794) as a member of a traveling acrobatic show.

"[4] According to Joel B. Lande: "The text name first appears in Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, when the allegorical embodiment of gluttony refers to his godfather as Peter Pickelherring.

For an attempt to uncover the etymological origin of the sobriquet, see John Alexander, 'Will Kemp, Thomas Sacheville, and Pickelhering: A Consanguinity and Confluence of Three Early Modern Clown Personas,' Daphnis 3, no.