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The story relates how animals meet after the death of the lion to choose a new king and are so impressed by the capering of an ape that they crown him. The fox had been one of the contestants and now plays the part of courtier. Taking the ape aside, he says that he has found something to whet the
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in 1867. A prince has trained a troop of dancing monkeys to perform at court, "arrayed in their rich clothes and masks". However, a courtier disrupts their human pretence by scattering nuts on the stage, for which the monkeys immediately scramble. Formerly this had formed part of the oldest
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royal appetite and leads him to a baited trap. Caught in the trap, the ape accuses the fox of treachery. The latter replies that someone so gullible and greedy is unfit to rule. Some versions provide the moral that those who aspire to rule must first learn to govern themselves.
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of fruit. The print is accompanied by the explanation that "a high social position is not always matched by intelligence". Although such a sentiment matches the commentary in several fable collections, the actual scenario comes closer to that of "The
Dancing Monkeys".
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These key incidents are interpreted differently over the centuries. La
Fontaine's fable featured a scene in which various creatures unsuccessfully try on the dead lion's crown until the ape pleases them with its capering. 19th century prints by
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as "An
Aegyptian King and his Apes" and told by Roger L'Estrange with the reflection that "it is not in the Power of Study and Discipline to extinguish Natural Inclinations". That moral was put more directly in the German version set by
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accompanying the story is often a composite of incidents there. In the case of "The Ape and the Fox" these portray the ape dancing before an audience of animals on the left and on the right the crowned ape caught in a
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An alternative fable with the same implication that one's basic nature will ultimately betray itself was translated under the title "The
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condemns all the participants: the electors for their unthinking choice, the unqualified monkey for accepting the office and the envious fox for its malice.
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Illustrations of the fable begin with the fine Medici manuscript of 1480, which collects Greek versions of Aesop's fables. The
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picture this moment, in which the ape is balancing an impossibly large crown on its shoulders. In the previous century,
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ends with a similar reflection as the fox chides the monkey, "Do you aspire to govern us, unable to control yourself?"
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ceremony before the assembled beasts, when the ape causes consternation by diving from the throne in pursuit of a
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Instructive Fables from the Animal
Kingdom for the Improvement of Manners and especially the Instruction of Youth
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42:. However, the story goes back before Aesop's time and an alternative variant may even be of Asian origin.
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The fable is very old and may predate Aesop, since it seems to have been used by the 7th century BCE poet
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from about the 8th century CE. Papyrus fragments of the fable from this era have been discovered in both
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The fable of the ape and the fox began to appear in other
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Das Affen bleiben immer Affen, auch wenn man sie das Tanzen lehrt
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chose the final incident in which the ape's leg is caught in a
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Illustrations from books between the 15th–20th centuries
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Matteo
Compareti, "Aesop's fables in Central Asia",
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87:ostendit comissus honos, quam quisque probandus
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527:"The fable of the Monkey King", Plate XIII
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223:References
212:coronation
189:Grandville
110:John Byrom
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372:pp. 36–37
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216:platter
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64:Sogdian
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312:, VI.6
282:p. 132
68:Uyghur
177:snare
36:Aesop
187:and
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166:Art
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