The Monkey and the Cat
Encyclopedia
The Monkey and the Cat is best known as a fable adapted by Jean de La Fontaine
that appeared in the second edition of his Fables Choisies in 1679 (book IX, No. 17). Although there is no evidence that the story existed before the 15th century, it began to appear in collections of Aesop's Fables
from the 17th century but is not included in the Perry Index
. There are popular idioms derived from it in both English and French with the general meaning of being the dupe of another (e.g., a cat's-paw). Usage of these and reference to the fable have been particularly employed in (although not limited to) political contexts.
records the saying c’est un bon jeu de chat et singe (it's a cat and monkey game) in his Proverbes (1456) and there is another apparent reference to the story in a poem in Jean Molinet
’s Faictz et dictz. In the following century, Jean-Antoine de Baïf
has the version faire comme le singe, tirer les marrons du feu avec la patte du chat in his Mimes, enseignements et proverbes (1575) and John Florio includes the saying in his collection of idioms Second Frutes (1591).
However, the earliest surviving texts relating the story date from the mid-16th century and some of these have a puppy in place of a cat as the monkey's victim. Johannes Sambucus reports it as happening recently in the Dutch town of Bergen op Zoom
in his Emblemata (1564). The Latin poem there continues, 'A small monkey gave us an example noteworthy and amusing for its cunning. For, when he saw the chestnuts buried in the hearth, he began to brush the ash aside but, afraid of the burning coals, he suddenly seized the foot of a sleeping puppy and stole it out.' The same story involving a sleeping dog appeared in other emblem book
s, including the Choice of Emblemes by the English poet Geoffrey Whitney
(1586), who draws a political lesson from it in common with the other emblematists:
A version in which a cat figures is in Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder
's illustrated book of fables, De warachtighe fabulen der dieren (True animal fables, Bruges, 1567), with Flemish verse provided by the foremost Netherlandic emblematist Edewaerd de Dene. A French version of the Fabulen was published in 1578 under the title Esbatement moral des animaux. Circular English engravings, intended to be used as trenchers, were made in 1630-36 based on twelve of Gheeraerts' illustrations, including one of this fable. The text around the edge of the picture reads: "The Monkey seing nuts in fire Doth force the Cat to plucke them neir; Which showeth the Envious doth not care, Whose House do burne so they have share". At the start of the 17th century the Dutch poet Joost van den Vondel
published an emblematic collection also based on Marcus Gheeraerts' prints, Vorstelijke Warande der Dieren (Princely pleasure-ground of beasts, Amsterdam 1617), in which the poem Den aap en de katte appears.
Elsewhere in Europe, the monkey and cat version is found in Simone Majoli
's Latin work Dies caniculares (1588), where it is told of the antics of the pet monkey of Pope Julius II
at the start of the century; a little later the story appeared as Un Singe et un Chat in Philippe Deprez's collection of a hundred verse fables, Le Théâtre des animaux (Paris, 1595). It is from one or other of these last two that La Fontaine is said to have adapted his story. Even before he popularised it, the earlier version had been used by two artists: the Roman painter Tommaso Salini
and the Dutch animal painter Abraham Hondius
. Both of these illustrate the detail that La Fontaine chose to modify, in which the monkey uses the cat's paw to poke out the chestnuts against its will. A third version of the story, yet again quoted as happening recently, was contained in Gemelli Careri
's Voyage round the world (1695) and related by 'the admiral of the Portugese fleet in India' as witnessed by him.
One of the channels through which the fable was taken to be Aesop's was its inclusion among the hydraulic statues in the labyrinth of Versailles
in 1669. These were accompanied by quatrain
s by Isaac de Benserade
, which subsequently appeared in Les fables d'Ésope, mises en françois, avec le sens moral en quatre vers, & des figures à chaque fable (Aesop's fables in French,with a verse commentary and illustrations, 1709). Here the initial quatrain refers to the version where force is used ('The monkey looks sprightly/ but the cat doesn't take lightly/ having its paw acquired/ to pull chestnuts from the fire') while the prose telling which follows is of La Fontaine's version. The statue accompanied by De Benserade's verse is described in Daniel Bellamy's 18th century description of the labyrinth: ‘Upon a shell composed of brass, and supported by a column erected in the antique taste with the same metal, the spectator is amused with the resemblance of a large fire, from whence issues a torrent of water. Here a monkey appears with a smiling countenance, grasping a cat’s paw with his own, whilst the latter is seemingly struggling to get loose.’
It was a version in which the monkey uses force that was painted by Edwin Landseer in 1824 and by his 19th century imitator (see the gallery below). When the former painting was put up for auction in January 2011, U.S. Christie's
recorded that 'The subject of the present painting is taken from the ancient fable traditionally ascribed to Aesop'. While this is far from true, the fable had been appearing in collections of Aesop's Fables since the 17th century. Where the story is ascribed to Aesop, it is in the version where the monkey forcibly uses the cat's paw. La Fontaine's modified version of 1679 can only be regarded as original for the detail of persuasion rather than compulsion. It was translated by neither of La Fontaine's main 18th century English translators, Bernard de Mandeville
(1704) and Charles Denis (1754), but was ascribed to him in the verse Flowers of Fable in 1832. Charles H. Bennett
also included the story in his The Fables of Aesop and Others, translated into Human Nature (1857) under the title of "The Cat's Paw". Referring back to the plot of Oliver Twist
, Bennett's cat acts as thief's apprentice to the monkey.
and was later followed in this by political cartoonists. One English example, dating from 1766 and titled "The Cat's Paw", satirises a political alliance of the time and represents the Earl of Bute
as a monkey, using the paw of the feline Earl of Chatham
to extract chestnuts from a fire. Use of the idiom at this date is one of the earliest examples in English. A later caricature from 1804 and titled "The monkey and the cat’s paw, a fable from Esop", pictures yet another simian statesman manipulating a politician to pick out the flaming chestnut of Catholic Emancipation
. The cat's paw title was to be used once again in a cartoon relating to the political maneuvering that preceded the passing of the English Reform Act in 1832
. In this King William IV
is the cat, being coaxed by the bewigged Lord Chancellor Henry Brougham
, depicted as a monkey seated at his side, to pull the hot iron of reform from a blazing fire. In this case the reference is to La Fontaine's version of the story.
In France the fable was often used to satirise the ambitious sacrificing the life of others for their own ends. The cartoon Bertrand avec Raton s'amusent à tirer les marrons du feu, dating from Napoleonic times, pictures a red uniformed monkey marshall guiding a blue-uniformed infantryman in the task. The theme reappeared in the broadside La Caricature with the title "The monkey and the cat: a military pastime". Another cartoon has a marquis urging a barefoot patriotic workman to take his place on a republican barricade, while chuckling to himself that soon the artistocratic exiles will return with their allies to impose a renewed feudalism. This too is titled "Bertrand et Raton".
The French dramatist Eugène Scribe
gave the same title to his social comedy of 1833. Subtitled l'art de conspirer (the art of conspiracy), it has also been translated as 'The school for politicians' and is a reworking of a play of the same name by Louis-Benoît Picard
(1805). It is ostensibly based on an episode of Danish history and concerns a bourgeois dupe caught up in political intrigue. In reality it satirises the July Revolution
of 1830.
In the Netherlands the words of Vondel's Den aap en de katte were set for a capella male chorus by Sem Dresden
to celebrate the centenary of the Royal Dutch Choir in 1953. In the aftermath of World War II
, the closing moral that rulers are careless of the suffering of others in fulfilling their ambition had special resonance.
Jean de La Fontaine
Jean de La Fontaine was the most famous French fabulist and one of the most widely read French poets of the 17th century. He is known above all for his Fables, which provided a model for subsequent fabulists across Europe and numerous alternative versions in France, and in French regional...
that appeared in the second edition of his Fables Choisies in 1679 (book IX, No. 17). Although there is no evidence that the story existed before the 15th century, it began to appear in collections of Aesop's Fables
Aesop's Fables
Aesop's Fables or the Aesopica are a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a slave and story-teller believed to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BCE. The fables remain a popular choice for moral education of children today...
from the 17th century but is not included in the Perry Index
Perry Index
The Perry Index is a widely-used index of "Aesop's Fables" or "Aesopica", the fables credited to Aesop, the story-teller who lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BC...
. There are popular idioms derived from it in both English and French with the general meaning of being the dupe of another (e.g., a cat's-paw). Usage of these and reference to the fable have been particularly employed in (although not limited to) political contexts.
The fable and its history
In La Fontaine's telling, Bertrand the monkey persuades Raton the cat to pull chestnuts from the embers amongst which they are roasting, promising him a share. As the cat scoops them from the fire one by one, burning his paw in the process, the monkey gobbles them up. They are disturbed by a maid entering and the cat gets nothing for its pains. It is from this fable that the French get their idiom Tirer les marrons du feu, meaning to act as someone's dupe or, deriving from that, to benefit from the dirty work of others. It is also the source of the English idiom 'a cat's paw', defined in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as 'one used by another as a tool'. There are earlier idiomatic allusions in 15th century Burgundian sources. Jean MiélotJean Miélot
Jean Miélot, also Jehan, was an author, translator, manuscript illuminator, scribe and priest, who served as secretary to Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy from 1449 to Philip's death in 1467, and then to his son Charles the Rash. He also served as chaplain to Louis of Luxembourg, Count of St....
records the saying c’est un bon jeu de chat et singe (it's a cat and monkey game) in his Proverbes (1456) and there is another apparent reference to the story in a poem in Jean Molinet
Jean Molinet
Jean Molinet was a French poet, chronicler, and composer. He is best remembered for his prose translation of Roman de la rose.Born in Desvres, which is now part of France, he studied in Paris...
’s Faictz et dictz. In the following century, Jean-Antoine de Baïf
Jean-Antoine de Baïf
Jean Antoine de Baïf was a French poet and member of the Pléiade.-Life:He was born in Venice, the natural son of the scholar Lazare de Baïf, who was at that time French ambassador at Venice...
has the version faire comme le singe, tirer les marrons du feu avec la patte du chat in his Mimes, enseignements et proverbes (1575) and John Florio includes the saying in his collection of idioms Second Frutes (1591).
However, the earliest surviving texts relating the story date from the mid-16th century and some of these have a puppy in place of a cat as the monkey's victim. Johannes Sambucus reports it as happening recently in the Dutch town of Bergen op Zoom
Bergen op Zoom
Bergen op Zoom is a municipality and a city located in the south of the Netherlands.-History:Bergen op Zoom was granted city status probably in 1266. In 1287 the city and its surroundings became a lordship as it was separated from the lordship of Breda. The lordship was elevated to a margraviate...
in his Emblemata (1564). The Latin poem there continues, 'A small monkey gave us an example noteworthy and amusing for its cunning. For, when he saw the chestnuts buried in the hearth, he began to brush the ash aside but, afraid of the burning coals, he suddenly seized the foot of a sleeping puppy and stole it out.' The same story involving a sleeping dog appeared in other emblem book
Emblem book
Emblem books are a category of mainly didactic illustrated book printed in Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries, typically containing a number of emblematic images with explanatory text....
s, including the Choice of Emblemes by the English poet Geoffrey Whitney
Geoffrey Whitney
Geoffrey Whitney was an English poet, now best known for the influence on Elizabethan writing of the Choice of Emblemes that he compiled.-Life:...
(1586), who draws a political lesson from it in common with the other emblematists:
-
- Which shewes, when as ambition fowle doth prick
- The hartes of kinges, then there is no remorce,
- But oftentimes, to aunswere theire desire,
- The subjectes feele both famine, sworde and fire.
A version in which a cat figures is in Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder
Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder
Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder was a Flemish printmaker and painter associated with the English court of the mid-16th Century and mainly remembered as the illustrator of the 1567 edition of Aesop's Fables.-Biography:...
's illustrated book of fables, De warachtighe fabulen der dieren (True animal fables, Bruges, 1567), with Flemish verse provided by the foremost Netherlandic emblematist Edewaerd de Dene. A French version of the Fabulen was published in 1578 under the title Esbatement moral des animaux. Circular English engravings, intended to be used as trenchers, were made in 1630-36 based on twelve of Gheeraerts' illustrations, including one of this fable. The text around the edge of the picture reads: "The Monkey seing nuts in fire Doth force the Cat to plucke them neir; Which showeth the Envious doth not care, Whose House do burne so they have share". At the start of the 17th century the Dutch poet Joost van den Vondel
Joost van den Vondel
Joost van den Vondel was a Dutch writer and playwright. He is considered the most prominent Dutch poet and playwright of the 17th century. His plays are the ones from that period that are still most frequently performed, and his epic Joannes de Boetgezant , on the life of John the Baptist, has...
published an emblematic collection also based on Marcus Gheeraerts' prints, Vorstelijke Warande der Dieren (Princely pleasure-ground of beasts, Amsterdam 1617), in which the poem Den aap en de katte appears.
Elsewhere in Europe, the monkey and cat version is found in Simone Majoli
Simone Majoli
Simone Majoli was an Italian canon lawyer, bishop and author. He wrote an encyclopedic work Dies caniculares , covering a wide range of topics in natural history, demonology and other subjects such as werewolves. First published in 1597, it ran to several later editions...
's Latin work Dies caniculares (1588), where it is told of the antics of the pet monkey of Pope Julius II
Pope Julius II
Pope Julius II , nicknamed "The Fearsome Pope" and "The Warrior Pope" , born Giuliano della Rovere, was Pope from 1503 to 1513...
at the start of the century; a little later the story appeared as Un Singe et un Chat in Philippe Deprez's collection of a hundred verse fables, Le Théâtre des animaux (Paris, 1595). It is from one or other of these last two that La Fontaine is said to have adapted his story. Even before he popularised it, the earlier version had been used by two artists: the Roman painter Tommaso Salini
Tommaso Salini
Tommaso Salini was an Italian painter of the early-Baroque period, active in Rome. He is best remembered for defending his friend, Giovanni Baglione, in his libel suit against Caravaggio and other painters in his circle. Baglioni describes his still life paintings. He joined the Accademia di San...
and the Dutch animal painter Abraham Hondius
Abraham Hondius
Abraham Danielsz. Hondius was a Dutch Golden Age painter known his depictions of animals. He was the son of a city stonemason, Daniel Abramsz de Hondt....
. Both of these illustrate the detail that La Fontaine chose to modify, in which the monkey uses the cat's paw to poke out the chestnuts against its will. A third version of the story, yet again quoted as happening recently, was contained in Gemelli Careri
Gemelli Careri
Giovanni Francesco Gemelli Careri was a seventeenth-century Italian adventurer and traveler. He was among the first Europeans to tour the world using public transportation; his travels, undertaken for pleasure rather than profit, may have inspired Around the World in Eighty Days. Some suspected...
's Voyage round the world (1695) and related by 'the admiral of the Portugese fleet in India' as witnessed by him.
One of the channels through which the fable was taken to be Aesop's was its inclusion among the hydraulic statues in the labyrinth of Versailles
The labyrinth of Versailles
The labyrinth of Versailles was a maze in the Gardens of Versailles with groups of fountains and sculptures depicting Aesop's fables. André Le Nôtre initially planned a maze of unadorned paths in 1665, but in 1669, Charles Perrault, advised Louis XIV to include thirty-nine fountains each...
in 1669. These were accompanied by quatrain
Quatrain
A quatrain is a stanza, or a complete poem, consisting of four lines of verse. Existing in various forms, the quatrain appears in poems from the poetic traditions of various ancient civilizations including Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, and China; and, continues into the 21st century, where it is...
s by Isaac de Benserade
Isaac de Benserade
Isaac de Benserade was a French poet.Born in Lyons-la-Forêt in the Province of Normandy, his family appears to have been connected with Richelieu, who bestowed on him a pension of 600 livres. He began his literary career with the tragedy of Cléopâtre , which was followed by four other pieces...
, which subsequently appeared in Les fables d'Ésope, mises en françois, avec le sens moral en quatre vers, & des figures à chaque fable (Aesop's fables in French,with a verse commentary and illustrations, 1709). Here the initial quatrain refers to the version where force is used ('The monkey looks sprightly/ but the cat doesn't take lightly/ having its paw acquired/ to pull chestnuts from the fire') while the prose telling which follows is of La Fontaine's version. The statue accompanied by De Benserade's verse is described in Daniel Bellamy's 18th century description of the labyrinth: ‘Upon a shell composed of brass, and supported by a column erected in the antique taste with the same metal, the spectator is amused with the resemblance of a large fire, from whence issues a torrent of water. Here a monkey appears with a smiling countenance, grasping a cat’s paw with his own, whilst the latter is seemingly struggling to get loose.’
It was a version in which the monkey uses force that was painted by Edwin Landseer in 1824 and by his 19th century imitator (see the gallery below). When the former painting was put up for auction in January 2011, U.S. Christie's
Christie's
Christie's is an art business and a fine arts auction house.- History :The official company literature states that founder James Christie conducted the first sale in London, England, on 5 December 1766, and the earliest auction catalogue the company retains is from December 1766...
recorded that 'The subject of the present painting is taken from the ancient fable traditionally ascribed to Aesop'. While this is far from true, the fable had been appearing in collections of Aesop's Fables since the 17th century. Where the story is ascribed to Aesop, it is in the version where the monkey forcibly uses the cat's paw. La Fontaine's modified version of 1679 can only be regarded as original for the detail of persuasion rather than compulsion. It was translated by neither of La Fontaine's main 18th century English translators, Bernard de Mandeville
Bernard de Mandeville
Bernard Mandeville, or Bernard de Mandeville , was a philosopher, political economist and satirist. Born in the Netherlands, he lived most of his life in England and used English for most of his published works...
(1704) and Charles Denis (1754), but was ascribed to him in the verse Flowers of Fable in 1832. Charles H. Bennett
Charles Edwin Bennett
Charles Edwin Bennett was an American classical scholar and the Goldwin Smith Professor of Latin at Cornell University...
also included the story in his The Fables of Aesop and Others, translated into Human Nature (1857) under the title of "The Cat's Paw". Referring back to the plot of Oliver Twist
Oliver Twist
Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy's Progress is the second novel by English author Charles Dickens, published by Richard Bentley in 1838. The story is about an orphan Oliver Twist, who endures a miserable existence in a workhouse and then is placed with an undertaker. He escapes and travels to...
, Bennett's cat acts as thief's apprentice to the monkey.
Meaning and use
La Fontaine applies the fable to statecraft,- No more are the princes, by flattery paid
- For furnishing help in a different trade,
- And burning their fingers to bring
- More power to some mightier king,
and was later followed in this by political cartoonists. One English example, dating from 1766 and titled "The Cat's Paw", satirises a political alliance of the time and represents the Earl of Bute
John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute
John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute KG, PC , styled Lord Mount Stuart before 1723, was a Scottish nobleman who served as Prime Minister of Great Britain under George III, and was arguably the last important favourite in British politics...
as a monkey, using the paw of the feline Earl of Chatham
William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham
William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham PC was a British Whig statesman who led Britain during the Seven Years' War...
to extract chestnuts from a fire. Use of the idiom at this date is one of the earliest examples in English. A later caricature from 1804 and titled "The monkey and the cat’s paw, a fable from Esop", pictures yet another simian statesman manipulating a politician to pick out the flaming chestnut of Catholic Emancipation
Catholic Emancipation
Catholic emancipation or Catholic relief was a process in Great Britain and Ireland in the late 18th century and early 19th century which involved reducing and removing many of the restrictions on Roman Catholics which had been introduced by the Act of Uniformity, the Test Acts and the penal laws...
. The cat's paw title was to be used once again in a cartoon relating to the political maneuvering that preceded the passing of the English Reform Act in 1832
Reform Act 1832
The Representation of the People Act 1832 was an Act of Parliament that introduced wide-ranging changes to the electoral system of England and Wales...
. In this King William IV
William IV of the United Kingdom
William IV was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and of Hanover from 26 June 1830 until his death...
is the cat, being coaxed by the bewigged Lord Chancellor Henry Brougham
Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux
Henry Peter Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux was a British statesman who became Lord Chancellor of Great Britain.As a young lawyer in Scotland Brougham helped to found the Edinburgh Review in 1802 and contributed many articles to it. He went to London, and was called to the English bar in...
, depicted as a monkey seated at his side, to pull the hot iron of reform from a blazing fire. In this case the reference is to La Fontaine's version of the story.
In France the fable was often used to satirise the ambitious sacrificing the life of others for their own ends. The cartoon Bertrand avec Raton s'amusent à tirer les marrons du feu, dating from Napoleonic times, pictures a red uniformed monkey marshall guiding a blue-uniformed infantryman in the task. The theme reappeared in the broadside La Caricature with the title "The monkey and the cat: a military pastime". Another cartoon has a marquis urging a barefoot patriotic workman to take his place on a republican barricade, while chuckling to himself that soon the artistocratic exiles will return with their allies to impose a renewed feudalism. This too is titled "Bertrand et Raton".
The French dramatist Eugène Scribe
Eugène Scribe
Augustin Eugène Scribe , was a French dramatist and librettist. He is best known for the perfection of the so-called "well-made play" . This dramatic formula was a mainstay of popular theater for over 100 years.-Biography:...
gave the same title to his social comedy of 1833. Subtitled l'art de conspirer (the art of conspiracy), it has also been translated as 'The school for politicians' and is a reworking of a play of the same name by Louis-Benoît Picard
Louis-Benoît Picard
Louis-Benoît Picard was a French playwrightAfter having begun to study law, he first became an actor before producing his first play, Le Badinage dangereux, in 1789....
(1805). It is ostensibly based on an episode of Danish history and concerns a bourgeois dupe caught up in political intrigue. In reality it satirises the July Revolution
July Revolution
The French Revolution of 1830, also known as the July Revolution or in French, saw the overthrow of King Charles X of France, the French Bourbon monarch, and the ascent of his cousin Louis-Philippe, Duke of Orléans, who himself, after 18 precarious years on the throne, would in turn be overthrown...
of 1830.
In the Netherlands the words of Vondel's Den aap en de katte were set for a capella male chorus by Sem Dresden
Sem Dresden
Samuel Dresden was born in Amsterdam, April 20, 1881, and died at The Hague, July 30, 1957). He was a Dutch conductor, composer and teacher.-Life:...
to celebrate the centenary of the Royal Dutch Choir in 1953. In the aftermath of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, the closing moral that rulers are careless of the suffering of others in fulfilling their ambition had special resonance.