Dead Parrot sketch of "Death in Paradise". A joke dated AD 400, recently translated from Greek, shows similarities to the Parrot sketch. It was written by Hierocles and Philagrius and was included in a compilation of 265 jokes titled "Philogelos: The Laugh Addict". In the Greek version, a man complains to a slave-merchant that his new slave has died. The slave-merchant replies, "When he was with me, he never did any such thing!" In Mark Twain's humorous short story "A Nevada Funeral", two characters use a series of euphemisms for death including 'kicked the bucket' and 'departed to that mysterious country from whose
Master with the Parrot is no certainty about the exact period during which the Master with the Parrot was active. It must have been in the first half of the 16th century and probably during the 1520s and 1530s. It is generally believed that the workshop was based in Antwerp but it is possible it was in fact located in Bruges. Most of the works attributed to the Master with the Parrot are portraits and religious compositions, especially of the Virgin with Child, playing with a parrot, as well as of Mary Magdalene and the suicide of Lucretia. Despite the uneven quality of the