Look above the balcony and you’ll spot three particularly perverse figures bringing a rather… uninhibited energy to the room. These are the drollities.
These goblin-like figures were inspired by a 1565 book called Les songes drolatiques de Pantagruel (pardon my French), loosely translated to “The Funny Dreams of Pantagruel”. Attributed to François Rabelais long after his death, the book features bizarre, unexplained illustrations with no captions—just a foreword from the publisher stating:
“...I hope that many people will be satisfied with the present little work, because those who are of a dreaming nature will find here enough matter to their dreams, the melancholic will find what to cheer him and the merry to laugh, due to the great variety to be found in it. And I also ask all of them to accept this in a good soul, assuring them that by giving this work to light I had no intention to insult or to scandalize anyone, but only to offer it as a pastime for the youth…”
It’s no surprise they stuck around in the popular imagination: 17th century designer, Inigo Jones created costumes for the theatre based on the drollities. Three hundred years later, the daddy of dada, Salvador Dalí reimagined them in a series of prints.
Keep an eye out for a fourth drollitie near the tower exit. His codpiece? Lost to time—or possibly to taste. You decide.