# The Frolic explained — The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen

> Chapter companion for The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen by Rudolph Erich Raspe.

## What happens

The Baron describes his use of a giant balloon and a magical sling to perform various tricks, including moving houses and temporarily relocating Windsor Castle. His most notable prank involves lifting the entire College of Physicians into the air for three months, which inadvertently causes a drop in deaths and financial hardship for undertakers and sextons.

## Themes in this chapter

### The Marvelous and the Absurd

The Baron's balloon and sling enable impossible feats, such as moving buildings and suspending an entire college in the air for months.

### Satire of Politics and Society

The prank satirizes the medical profession and the funeral industry, highlighting the absurd consequences of the physicians' absence.

## Character check-ins

### Baron Munchausen

Narrator and protagonist of the frolic, using his balloon and sling to perform elaborate tricks.

### College of Physicians

The entire college is lifted into the air by the Baron's balloon, causing a three-month suspension.

## Key lines

> I made a balloon of such extensive dimensions, that an account of the silk it contained would exceed all credibility; every mercer’s shop and weaver’s stock in London, Westminster, and Spitalfields contributed to it.

The Baron claims his balloon was so large that it required all the silk from every fabric and weaving shop in London and its surrounding areas.

_Exaggeration of the balloon's size to emphasize the scale of the frolic._

> On the 30th of September, when the College of Physicians chose their annual officers, and dined sumptuously together, I filled my balloon, brought it over the dome of their building, clapped the sling round the golden ball at the top, fastening the other end of it to the balloon, and immediately ascended with the whole college to an immense height, where I kept them upwards of three months.

On September 30, during the College of Physicians' annual feast, the Baron used his balloon and sling to lift the entire building and its occupants into the air, keeping them suspended for over three months.

_Key event of the chapter, blending the marvelous with social satire._

> it is a well-known fact, that during the three months the college was suspended in the air, and therefore incapable of attending their patients, no deaths happened, except a few who fell before the scythe of Father Time, and some melancholy objects who, perhaps to avoid some trifling inconvenience here, laid the hands of violence upon themselves

During the three months the physicians were aloft, almost no one died, except from natural old age or suicide, implying that doctors were responsible for many deaths.

_Satirical jab at the medical profession's competence._

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/the_surprising_adventures_of_baron_munchausen_se/chapters/volume-i-xii-the-frolic
- Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/the_surprising_adventures_of_baron_munchausen_se
- All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/the_surprising_adventures_of_baron_munchausen_se/chapters