CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE

"MOTLEY'S THE ONLY WEAR": SHAKESPEARE'S WISE FOOL

A thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in

English

by

Deborah Kay Dixon

May 1988 The Thesis of Deborah Kay Dixon is approved:

Arlene Stiebel

Rob~,rt Noreen

Lesley Johnstone, Chair

California State University, Northridge

ii TABLE OF CONTENTS

Table of Contents ...... • . iii Abstract ...... i v Introduction ...... 1 Chapters:

I. The Major Conventions of the Fool . • • • 3 II. A Definition of the Wise Fool • ...... 22 III. The Language of the Wise Fool • . . . • • • 4 3 IV. The Functions of the Wise Fool •• . . . . .72 Conclusion ...... • . 103 Works Cited...... • • 106 Works Consulted...... 110

iii ABSTRACT

"MOTLEY'S THE ONLY WEAR": SHAKESPEARE'S WISE FOOL by Deborah Kay Dixon Master of Arts in English

This thesis defines the character and function of the wise fool in Shakespearean drama. The opening chapter traces the major historical and literary conventions and functions on which Shakespeare was able to draw in order to create his fool characters. Chapter Two presents a definition of the wise fool, differentiating him from clowns and other comic characters. The four wise fools who are the subject of this thesis--Touchstone, Feste, Lavache, and Lear's Fool--are then individually described and a possible progression in the their development from the most clownish to the most wise is suggested. The analysis of the wise fool continues in the third and fourth chapters with a close examination of his language

iv as well as his dramatic and thematic functions, with particular emphasis on his function as a teacher.

v 0 noble fool!/A worthy fool! Motley's the only

wear." (As You Like It II. vii. 33-34)

INTRODUCTION

The fool is among the most fascinating of dramatic characters, and his appearance in both comedy and tragedy demonstrates his versatility and importance. "Although the various forms and modes of dramatic foolery change, the continuity of the type is unmistakable right down to

Shakespeare" (Weimann 11). Shakespearean drama abounds with fools as well as with their less sophisticated cousins, clowns; and often central to his plays is the question --sometimes paradoxically answered--of who is wise and who foolish. Shakespeare's wisest and saddest fools are an integral and unifying force within the dramatic and thematic structure of the plays in which they appear. Such fools reflect important aspects of the plays: you cannot take them out without damaging the plays' complex conceptual and emotional orchestration.

The fool is an archetypal spokesman for the Socratic irony: The only thing I know is that I know nothing. As

Shakespeare used the fool character in a succession of plays, increasingly he became a touchstone for the tone,

1 mood, atmosphere as well as for the themes of the plays, his function developing and expanding.

That the forms and functions of the fool do expand within the Shakespearean canon may be partially a result of Robert Armin's replacing Will Kempe, but may also result from Shakespeare's growth in dramatic artistry, and from the subtlety with which he used the fool in ways that his contemporaries never did. For Shakespeare's

"development as a comic playwright is consistently in the direction of complexity or depth of characterization ••• "

(Champion 9). The playwright moves from the clown and his comic interludes to the fool and his essential dramatic function; from the light-weight comic figure toward the philosophical or teaching fool who functions importantly in the play's dramatic structure, and who represents one or more themes explored therein; from interruption to integration. One can trace how Shakespeare changes the roles of his fools, from mere reaction to stimulation of others; from simple rustic humor to sophistication and depth; and from stock character to more rounded character with some positive symbolic importance. The wise fool's functions include dramatic ones (as chorus and as a unifying figure); thematic ones (as an ironist); and psychological ones (atavistic, expressing a part of the psyche).

2 "Foolery, sir, does walk about the orb

like the sun, it shines every where.

(Twelfth Night III. i. 39-40)

I. THE MAJOR CONVENTIONS OF THE FOOL

A long and varied history led to the major conventions and functions within whose bounds other

Elizabethan dramatists deployed their fools--conventions and functions which Shakespeare proceeded to enrich. In the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations, as well as in the Medieval and Renaissance European cultures, the fool performed the archetypal social and psychological functions of scapegoat, mascot, and objective outsider.

Within these roles he is empowered to express forbidden impulses and repressed knowledge, including regressive and infantile impulses; to exorcise demons; to symbolize the fallibility of reason; and to direct attention to, and illuminate, both the difficulties in communication and the difficulty of sustaining a detached ironic perspective.

3 As a scapegoat, the "natural" fool, the man truly witless, is allowed to say what must not be said, to do what must not be done, taking upon himself all the evil thoughts and silly actions of his community:

•.. the ritual clowning functions like an

extended theatrical performance, in

which the audience, through catharsis,

is released vicariously from its

burdensome fears and taboos. The ritual

clown acts out a forbidden social role

for the general good of the community.

(Charney Comedy 172).

He is then punished with his outcast and dependent status; but he is protected at the same time by his real or assumed innocence and ignorance in his transgressions.

Scapegoats in ancient ritual were subjected to death; however, later fools acting as scapegoats were adopted as permanent parts of prominent households. "But why rest contented with an occasional transference of this kind, why not employ a permanent scapegoat whose official duty it is to jeer continually at his superiors in order to bear their ill-luck on his own unimportant shoulders?"

(Welsford 74). So the sacrificial victim becomes the mascot or good luck charm, fending off divine wrath by abusing his master. "To praise oneself or be praised by others is a sure way of attracting this queer, cosmic jealousy of the gods, and conversely the surest way to

4 evade its unwelcome attention is to depreciate oneself or be mocked by other people" (Welsford 66).

In addition to his function as scapegoat and mascot,

the "natural" fool also assumed the role of the

"archetypal outsider": "the prototype of a primitive rebel" (Weimann 28). The scapegoat fool, cast out through death, banishment, or at least ostracism, suffers as a result of his acting out communal taboos; however, the fool is not always seen as needing commiseration. "On the contrary there is a widespread notion which is not yet quite extinct that the lunatic is an awe-inspiring figure whose reason has ceased to function normally because he has become the mouthpiece of a spirit, or power external to himself, and so has access to hidden knowledge-­ especially to knowledge of the future" (Welsford 76). For example, the ancients assumed that the fools are privy to the gods and speak for them, "a mouthpiece for their dark and inscrutable wisdom" (Charney Comedy 173). This lingering belief in the natural's relationship with the divine later fostered the professional fool's power as a social critic, underlying his license to speak as someone outside the social hierarchy and validating his perspective. One source of the "artificial" fool's power is the traditional tolerance for the natural one •

.•• the Middle Ages tended to tolerate

the fool's nonconformity; and, though he

might appear to mock the laws of

5 society and religion, men tended to

understand that the mockery was not

intentional, that the natural was

simply being his natural self.

He was therefore not expected to obey

any code, and in this respect medieval

tolerance gave the idiot considerable

freedom to speak and act in ways for

which others would have been summarily

punished. (Kaiser 7)

Another major source of the fool's power is his comic

function, because "To make others laugh is to assert one's

power over them, and to laugh oneself is to express an

ultimate freedom •.• '' (Charney Comedy 93). The origins of

the fool of folk plays as well as of Shakespearean drama

lie in the "native tradition of mimetic ritual" :

It i~ this background that explains the

relationship between the fool's motley

and the pagan tradition of vegetation

magic, and throws .•• light on some of

his most enduring accoutrements,

such as calf's hide ••• the ubiquitous

coxcomb or cock's feather, the

antlers ••• the horns, donkey's

ears, and the foxtail ••.• " (Weimann 31)

In ancient drama, descended from ritual whose original function had been clouded by time, a fool might still 6 reflect or parody the solemn momentousness belonging to cult or myth. By Shakespeare's time, solemn convictions of all kinds--about human nature, about familial roles, about the efficacy of the law, about the orderliness and justness of the world--had become the secular focus of the fool's mimicry and challenge, which he carried out by ironically substituting a play or fantasy world, or a nonsensical world, for reality, and conversely by substituting realism for his listeners' blindly idealizing faith or tunnel vision. As Weimann observes, the fool can thus neutralize the solemnity and faith of myth through

"the unmasking and debunking potential of mimesis" (11).

Yet he can also paradoxically generate an intensely solemn response, arresting his listeners' attention, and stimulating reflection or some new conviction in them, through the very challenge of his "fantasy and madness of his topsy-turvydom" which inverts values and transforms

"reality into something strange, sad," or absurd (Weimann

11). By virtue of his special social position and his licensed verbal juggling, the fool was thus able to dramatize both the startling parallels between his own supposedly "play" or "absurd" world and the real one around him, and the discrepancies between his employer's or listeners' falsely-perceived world and the reality. As

C. L. Barber rightly notes, "The cult of fools and folly, half social and half literary, embodied a ••• polarization of experience'' (5). Thus, the fool's power to delight and

7 teach is rooted deep within the Western psyche and culture as " .•• the survival of some kind of mimetic magic, which, after having lost its ritual function, became alienated from its original purpose and hence misunderstood as a comic attribute'' (Weimann 31). As the fool undergoes his

series of transformations through time, the character of the "natural" fool in ritual becomes that of the

"artificial" fool in drama.

The conventions and functions available to Shakespeare included this distinction between the natural and the artificial fool which began to be made in the twelfth century. They also included literary, philosophical, and religious conceptions of the fool, and the European and

English dramatic traditions of the fool as a stock character. From the wicked fool exemplified in Brant's

Ship of Fools (1494), the fool was slowly transformed into the "Wise Fool" through the literature of folly that

followed. In his influential work of 1509, In Praise of

Folly, Erasmus attempted to correct social ills through his satire. "Unlike Brant, who assumes that man's folly is ridiculous indeed but sinful too, and absolved only

through divine grace, Erasmus takes man's situation with gaiety and assumes that he has sufficient vitality himself

to digest all his experience eventually into some useable form" (Swain 8). And, although the Wise Fool had existed

in literature since the time of Socrates, Erasmus may be

credited with giving Europe that oxymoronic concept, the

8 wise fool (Kaiser 21). "Both [England and France] had shared the literature of didactic folly, and both had liberally supplied examples of court jesters and folk fools" (Swain 158). Fool-societies, organizations of young men who would dress in the fool's motley in order to comment freely on their neighbors' business and to engage in social satire,

were founded on the idea of the court­

jester as the "sage-fool" who could see

and speak the truth with impunity. From

this point of view, the fool was the

truth-teller whose real insight was

thinly disguised as a form of insanity.

(Welsford 239)

And in this guise the fool became a popular vehicle for comedy and satire in literature and theater.

The fool-societies contributed directly to the

Elizabethan dramatists' conception of the fool.

Preoccupied with social criticism, these groups led to the creation of the Sottie, "a type of comedy in which the fool provided both the dramatis personae and the theme"

(Welsford 220). Another contributor to the fool's characterization was The Vice, the traditional allegorical character who was usually responsible for most of the action and the comedy in the medieval morality plays. "His name brands him as a personification of the Seven Deadly

Sins, and since to the medieval mind vice and folly were

9 much the same, he often dressed in a court jester's cloak, cap, and bells, and brandished a wooden dagger" (Swortzell

28). The Vice functioned as an instrument of "insult and derogation," representing a satirical view of the world, a sense of the nullity and provincial narrowness of worldly views (Davenport 42). "Comic Latin, doggerel rhyming and repetition, spiced with nitwittery and lavatorial humour," characterize the language of the Vice in a way that would continue to affect the language of fools, including

Shakespeare's, in Elizabethan drama (46). The

"saturnalian pattern" reached the Elizabethan playwright from many sources, both social and literary, appearing finally in "the theatrical institution of clowning":

••• the clown or Vice, when Shakespeare

started to write, was a recognized

anarchist who made aberration obvious by

carrying release [catharsis] to absurd

extremes. (Barber 5)

Thus as the "energetic buffoonery" of Vice began to dominate comedy, the medieval theater "drifted rather far away from its religious origins," and the evolution of the fool proceeded. Soon, "Vice was no longer a manifestation of human folly and mortal sin; in fact, he had taken on several different names and become a very likable jester" (Swortzell 28). "In 1614 ••• Jonson classes

Dogberry with the Vice riding in on the Devil's back"

(Bradbrook Growth and Structure 35). This derivation from

10 Vice to clown which was so clear to Jonson has also been noted by many critics such as Davenport: "One can see .•• how Gratiano and Launcelot Gobbo grew •.• from the earlier disruptive Vl.ces• .•• II (45). Later I will show how the clownish Launcelot Gobbo becomes a fool, completing the evolution from archetype to ritual scapegoat to "the old Vice" (Twelfth Night), and then from Vice to satirist and clown, and on to something at least approaching

Shakespeare's wise fool. Clearly the evolution of the medieval Vice to satirist, as well as clown, contributed to the worldly wisdom and the asperity of Shakespeare's wise fools.

The development of Shakespeare's fools also benefited from another convention: the social institution of the court-fool or jester. Although some "natural" fools continued to be kept as a source of entertainment, by the late medieval period, the jester was a professional or

"artificial" fool the most part.

The vogue of the court-fool seems to

have steadily increased during the

fourteenth century and to have

culminated in the fifteenth century and

in the early sixteenth century, when he

because a highly significant figure not

only in social life, but still more in

art and literature; indeed it may be

that the widespread and effective use of

11 the fool as an imaginative symbol

reacted at that time on the actual

social institution. (Welsford 115)

The traditional costume of the court-fool derived partly from ancient pagan magic, partly from the dress worn by the King of Fools in the Feast of All Fools:

••• a hooded cap down to his shoulders, with asses'

ears attached--sometimes bells or a cockscomb--and

an oval cut from his face. His jacket of motley-­

a patchwork on brightly colored cloth--reached to

his waist; below that, snugly fitting tights,

sometimes complete with tail. His soft shoes or

slippers allowed him freedom of motion, sometimes

he even went barefoot. Another set of bells at

the ankles •.•• (Swortzell 32)

In addition, the jester carried a "marotte, a stick with a miniature fool's head carved at the top" (Swortzell 32).

These professional jesters took advantage of the license traditionally given the natural fool to entertain the court with their own social satire:

••• the fool was permitted to do or say

pretty much what he pleased--a freedom

other subjects must have envied. The

fool spoke his mind with embarrassing

frankness; empty flattery and tedious

ritual were favorite targets for his

pointed wit. (Swortzell 31)

12 Although "the court buffoon's principal duty was to garnish the king's supper with pranks and practical

jokes ••• " many were well-educated and displayed other talents in addition to their wit, including storytelling, music and poetry (Swortzell 30). For example, Will

Somers, the fool of Henry VIII, had not only "a gift for phrasemaking and face making" (Swortzell 32), but he was also able to engage the intellectual monarch in battles of wit as well as in philosophical arguments, often topping his master.

The role of actual court fools shaped the drama's characterization of the fool. Moreover, the relationship and occasional fleeting kinship between the court fool and his king was also reflected on the stage. The apparent affection linking Lear and his fool is more easily understood when the historical monarch/jester relationship is reviewed. For

••• the more absolutist the monarchy

grew, the more it needed the fool as an

accompanying institution. (Zijderveld 99)

Of course, the court-fool's original and main function was entertainment; however,

..• after the fifteenth century, the

court fool began to attract other

functions which gradually superseded the

primary function of entertainment .••• The

13 latter never disappeared totally, of

course, but the growing absolutism of

the monarchs caused other and quite

different functions to emerge in this

institution and profession. They

brought the court fool to the centre of

society ••• [resulting in his]

institutionalization and

professionalization. (Zijderveld 116)

The social isolation of the absolute prince created the need for a truth-telling confidant. "In this respect, the court fool presented an ideal solution: being marginal and thus isolated from the rest of the court, dependent solely and totally on the monarch, the fool could be allowed to come close to the throne and taken into confidence without any danger'' (Zijderveld 117). This interdependence sometimes created a devoted affection between the monarch and his fool as it did for Henry VIII and Will Sommers.

Shakespeare had yet another contemporary paradigm for the rapport linking monarch and fool in Elizabeth and the court player Dick Tarleton:

••• he teased and bullied Elizabeth with

remarkable effrontery, and the Queen

accepted his taunts with the same ease

and affection as her father had endured

the jibes of this fool, Will Sommers.

Elizabeth was fond of Tarleton; she

14 recognized a genuine wit and talent over

the more common buffoonery and indulged

the clown by intimate attention to and

appreciation of his efforts. (Luke 398)

Thus the contemporary domestic fool "added a visible personality to be built into the literary figure of the fool" (Swain 2). And as these monarchs' indulgence encouraged their fools', so the fools' sardonic dissent from conventional postures found more daring, verbal expression: an outcome mirrored in the frequent biting relevance of stage fools' rhetoric.

Undoubtedly, the stage fool satisfied an Elizabethan audience's desire for "satirical commentary on the life and events of the times, now largely supplied by Punch and his lesser brethren, but then impossible except under the protection of the cap and bells" (Busby 6). And, from the prominence of the court fool in Elizabethan society, one might expect him to be strongly represented in the contemporary theater; however, as Enid Welsford points out, if Shakespeare's plays are excluded from consideration, the court fool as a dramatic character is infrequently and inadequately portrayed, (Welsford 245), although this character allows for rich dramatic possibilities. The combination of the humor he provided and the impunity he enjoyed--his "beguiling, childlike appeal," which "guaranteed hi.m the sympathy of the audience," adding to his "traditional freedom from

15 punishment, which made it possible for the author to have him speak out boldly" --should have encouraged his frequent appearance in the contemporary drama (Kaiser 7).

However, although he was extremely popular with audiences between 1598 and 1605, Marston, Jonson, and Dekker, for example, created few fools, and those were strictly presentations of the stock character. A more significant influence on Shakespeare's fools may have been a real-life model, that very successful comic--Robert Armin.

Armin's style may be deduced from the

roles which Shakespeare created for him;

but there is other evidence, for Armin

was himself quite a prolific writer,

though not of any permanent

significance. (Bradbrook Shakespeare the

Craftsman 51)

The form of Armin's book Snuffe, the clown of the

Curtain Theater, puts him in the tradition of the learned fools, "descending from Thomas More, patron of players, and from Erasmus, rather than from the boisterous clowns of the countryside and the playing palace" (Bradbrook

Shakespeare the Craftsman 52). A "vivid, peppery, stimulating jester," Armin, like Erasmus, "saw the whole world as Folly's subjects: he opens his book with a return to the origins of man, his first question being

'who first began to live i' the world?': this little book--rather in the manner of Lear's fool later--"parodies 16 academic disputations by the method of question and answer, the answer being itself deflated by a concluding

~" (Bradbrook Shakespeare the Craftsman 52). Through both his writing and his performing, Armin contributed not only to the Elizabethan conventions of the stage fool, but also more specifically and significantly to Shakespeare's conception of the fool, when he joined the Chamberlain company in 1599 as a replacement for Will Kempe.

To read Armin's books and to recall

Shakespeare's Fools is to be

immediately aware that both men had come

to inhabit a country of the imagination

in which the notion of comedy as a mere

laughter-maker had been put aside.

Armin's conception of the subtlety of

true folly and his sensitivity to the

language of fooling--one moment a broad

quip, then a nerve-jolting pun, then a

mordant comment, all interwoven with

strands of strange verbiage and

occasionally decorated with a sad

lyricism--is of the same order as

Shakespeare's. What is more, his sense

of the wisdom in folly is absolutely in

line with Shakespeare's, not merely in

conception--but in its form of

expression. (Evans 152)

17 That Shakespeare's "transformation of the vernacular fool tradition into high art," from Speed to Touchstone or

Feste, is "the result of Armin's replacing Kempe as

Shakespeare's comic actor and of the new roles written with Armin especially in mind" is a critical commonplace

(Lippincott 252). Shakespeare wrote his plays keeping in mind the dramatic talent available to him.

Prior to 1599 he created roles which

would allow Kempe to make the most of

his popular tricks of clownish drollery

and slapstick ••• For Armin, on the other

hand, he created roles which would allow

full scope to another type of humor--a

more melancholy "philosophical"

clowning, characterized by song rather

than dance •••• (R. Frye 46)

Shakespeare and Armin ''came together in a working relationship at a time when the timbre of Shakespeare's dramatic imagination was changing, becoming more complicated. For the kind of comedy he was about to begin writing at this particular time he needed the kin¥\of ( ~' / conception which, it is claimed, Armin instinctively and sensitively understood" (Evans 150).

But what Armin seems to have provoked in

Shakespeare (and membership of the

company in Armin) was the integrated

comic vision of an Erasmus ••• of the 18 world of fools; the idea of what

Erasmus had first termed the

"foolosopher" ..•• (Bradbrook

Shakespeare the Craftsman 57)

It would be foolish, of course, to imagine Armin guiding

Shakespeare's pen as he wrote his plays; but it would be unwise not to consider the possible influence Armin had on the creation of Touchstone, Feste, Lavache, and Lear's fool.

Thus, with Armin in mind, one can recognize the shortcomings or half-truths in Ben Jonson's poetic translation of Stultitia's [The Fool's] words. This passage provides a simplistic footnote to the public perception of the fool's role as the comic entertainer on the Elizabethan stage:

Fooles, they are the onely nation/Worth

mens envy, or admiration;/Free from

care, or sorrow-taking,/Selves, and

others merry-making:/All they speake, or

\ doe, is sterling./Your Foole, he is your x~; '~ ---great man's dear ling. /And your ladies

sport, and pleasure;/Tongue, and bable

are his treasure./Ene his face

begetteth laughter,/And he speakes

truth, free from slaughter;/He's the

grace of every feast,/And, sometimes,

the chiefest guest;/Hath his trencher,

19 and his stoole,/When wit waites upon the

foole./0, who would not bee/Hee, hee,

hee?

Certainly, this epitaph cannot be allowed the final word on the fool, especially as he is portrayed by

Shakespeare, often with the dangerous function of truth­ teller. Shakespeare's fools are not always happy, "Free from care", nor completely free from restraint. Among his most striking fools are those who are paradoxically wise and sad, like Touchstone, Feste, Lavache, and Lear's Fool.

Such paradoxes are revealed and developed by the fool's special use of language, through which he performs his important function as teacher and critical truth-teller.

20 "Lady, cucullus non facit monachum:

that's as much to say, as I wear not

motley in my brain." (Twelfth Night I. v. 53-55)

II. A DEFINITION OF THE WISE FOOL

When Enid Welsford defines the fool as "a man who falls below the average human standard, but whose defects have been transformed into a source of delight, a mainspring of comedy, which has always been one of the great recreations of mankind and particularly of civilized

i mankind" (xi)", she 1i'$ ;referring to the "natural" fool. \~.--/ Later, she also discusses the "artificial" fool, "the Fool proper, the man whose real or assumed infirmities have detached him from his fellows and marked him out as predestined for comedy" (xiii). However, for the purposes of this study the fool may be differently defined as the professional fool character of Shakespearean drama, one who is paid to assume a mental deficiency and who uses the license of the "natural" to say and do things otherwise forbidden in polite society. This assumption of the outward manner or trappings of the "natural" leads to the 21 paradox of wisdom underlying the folly of the professional jester. The opinion could be argued, but Shakespeare's fools, I think, are all "artificial", i.e., they are wise enough to play the role of fool without themselves being actual idiots. The audience's knowledge of their playing a role is a large part of the joke, and much of the comedy in the plays comes from the fools' ability to exist simultaneously in two worlds, that of the wise and that of the foolish. (Lippincott 246) This is certainly true of the four fools previously named. In addition to an inherent intuitive wisdom, these four wise fools--Touchstone, Feste, Lavache, Lear's Fool-- possess several otb.ei')attributes in common. They are all . --~~/ attached to a powerful person, either at court or in a noble household. Existing outside the social hierarchy, although treated with affection by their employers, each of them is integral to the play's action and theme, his witty contributions being diffused throughout the play. And they all express important truths which are both revealed and made cryptic or ambiguous by their wit. Unlike the stereotypical simple fool of Ben Jonson's verse who is "Free from care, or sorrow-taking," Shakespeare's fools tend to be a little morose or sad,

22 both because of the truth they perceive and because of their position as outsiders. Ironically, the paradoxical sadness of the fool springs out of the same archetypal roles as scapegoat and outsider which have made him wise.

There is a discrepancy between the outer fool--the mad and merry jester--and the inner fool who perceives the folly, dishonesty, or cruelty of his fellow men and who accepts the unpleasant and unrewarding task of pointing it out: his comic function overlaps, at times uneasily, with his teaching one. The very appearance of folly which gives him his place at court also deprives him of rights and responsibilities, putting him in the unfortunate position of utter dependence on the support of the social group which he entertains but also criticizes. A fool was often mistreated, or at the very least treated more as a pet than as a human being. F:o;r example, although Will Sommers \ \/ '"-----'/' was evidently loved by h±s master, he slept with the hounds. Furthermore, the validity of Jonson's cheerful characterization of the fool as completely licensed for free speech--"And he speakes truth, free from slaughter"-- is questionable. Fools are obliged to speak even though their words may be unpalatable to their superiors, and, in spite of their supposed license, often find it necessary to be politic under the threat of punishment:

••• you'll be whipped for taxation one of

these days." (As You Like It I ii 78-79)

23 " •• my lady will hang thee for thy absence." (Twelfth Night I v 3-4) " ••• or to be turned away--" (Ibid. 16) "Take heed, sirrah--the whip (King Lear I iv 113) The fool is certainly in a difficult position: he may be whipped either for telling the truth, or for fabricating, as when Lear threatens "And you lie, sirrah, we'll have you whipped" (King Lear I. iv. 185). So the fool must constantly perform a balancing act, telling the truth but camouflaging it with jests. Viola's description of the fool's duties and hazards sums up this balancing act: This fellow is wise enough to play the fool;/And to do that well craves a kind of wit; /He must o&'cirve their mood on whom he ) jests,/The quality of persons, and the time, I And, like the haggard, check at every feather/ That comes before his eye. This is a practice/As full of labour as a wise man's art:/For folly that he wisely shows is fit;/But wise men, folly-fall'n, quite taint their wit. (Twelfth Night III

i 61-69) This description of the fool expresses the paradox of the wise fool which--as old as Socrates and given fresh energy by Erasmus--coincides with my own definition and is

24 embodied in the four Shakespearean fools whom I have chosen as particular subjects of this study.

Other fools, so named in the dramatis personae or within the text of a play, I have chosen to omit because they are not the sophisticated or wise fools of my definition, lacking not just intelligence but also dramatic and, especially, thematic importance. For example,

••• it is not clear that Trinculo is the

court-jester, and the Clown in Othello,

like the Fool (a brothel-fool) in Timon,

has but trivial part. Neither humorists

like Launce and Launcelot Gobbo, nor "low"

characters, unintentionally humorous, like

the old peasant at the end of Antony and

Cleopatra o~~~he young shepherd called I "clown" in The Winter's Tale, are Fools

proper. The distinction is quite clear,

but it tends to be obscured for readers

because the wider designation "clown" is

applied to persons of either class in the

few lists of Dramatis Personae printed in

the Folio, in the complete lists of our

modern editions •••. (Bradley, Misc. 207)

A complete definition of the fool must include a distinction between him and other comic types found in

25 Shakespeare's drama, such as the clown, the bombast, the

cynic and the railer.

The wise fool can be distinguished from the clown by

his professionalism, self-awareness, and wit. Unlike the

former, the latter has no underlying perceptiveness or

worldly-wisdom, but is merely amusing because he really is

naive, bumbling, stupid. Although the true fool adopts a

pose of feckless stupidity, wit and perception underlie

this pretense. Thus the fool fulfills a deeper comic

function than the clown since his pretense contributes

irony to the humor, and complicates his presentation of

things.

The early plays have clowns (either ~ustics or shrewd,

jesting servants) who are clearly an answer to the

public's appetite for amusing entertainment; later fools

- ) have a more integral,~_~art and purpose in the play. As

Bradbrook observes,

Shakespeare's early clowns have a family

likeness--Launce, Gobbo, and Dromio appear

for their special comic turns, but the wit

of the later Court Fools is diffused

through the whole play and affects all the

other characters. (Growth and Structure 80)

And she points out that

When about 1599 Armin replaced Kempe as

the company's chief comedian, the jesters,

26 Touchstone, and Feste, appear: they are

witty professionals masquerading as

"fools natural" and therefore motley is

for them a specie of disguise. (Growth

and Structure 80)

Unlike the fool, the clown usually does not possess or convey any sentiment such as sympathy, compassion, empathy. In addition, the fool and the clown differ in the significance of the laughter they provoke. The clown's humor arises from his ignorance; the fool's from his wisdom, his superior perception.

The clown sometimes shares the fool's

dramatic function of provoking laughter,

but his is a different social type and has

no professional sanction .•• the dramatic

roles were usually distinct, the subtlety

and wit of the fools marking a

professional function, set apart from the

bumbling and blundering comedy of the

clowns. (R. Frye 230)

Moreover, whereas the clown typically performed "bits"--in modern show-business parlance, schtick --which had little or no relationship to the plot or the theme, the fool became essential, if not to the movement of the plot, then to the tone, mood, or theme of the play.

Finally, the fool and the clown differ in

the relative importance each is given in

27 the play's structure. The fool is usually

detached from the main action, but he is

not irrelevant to the theme of the play.

That Shakespeare could add Touchstone,

Feste, Lavache, and Lear's Fool to the old

plays or stories upon which his dramas

were based is proof of the fool's

relative detachment. That he did add them

immeasurably enhances the meaning and the

beauty of these plays. (Goldsmith Wise

Fools 41)

The beginnings of Shakespeare's exploration of the fool's possibilities as a more integrated character can be found in Merchant of Venice • Gobbo's promotion from

clownish servant to motley fool suggests the general development of the fool out of the clown tradition into

that of the wise fool. Gobbo makes his first appearance as a bumbling clown in a scene with his father which holds more slapstick than wit. However, in Act II scene ii he

is promoted to professional fool; his wit now becomes more

subtle, his word-play more ingenious. His battle of wits with Jessica using the question-answer format, is reminiscent of the type of catechism game played by Feste and Olivia, Feste and Viola, Lear's Fool and the King,

Touchstone and Carin. An examination of Gobbo's promotion in Bassanio's retinue illustrates the difference between fool and clown. Bassanio gives orders that Launcelot 28 Gobbo be given "a livery/More guarded [braided] than his fellows" (II. ii. 147-148). According to the Arden notes, braiding is:

a common means of ornamenting clothing,

but there is probably a special allusion

to the fool's "long motley coat guarded

with yellow." (Hotson 57-62)

His audition joke (II. ii. 142-4), quoting an old proverb, is well received by Bassanio : "Thou speak'st it well" (II. ii. 145). Stage directions for Act II scene v call Gobbo Shylock's man "that was the clown," indicating that he is no longer a mere clown, but now Bassanio's fool in motley. He is explicitly called "fool" in Act II scene v. 43, and in Act III scene v. 40. In Act III scene v.' as he talks to Jessica, the license of his speech is that of the "allowed" fool. Lorenzo calls Gobbo "the fool," and describes him as offering the typical word-play associated with fools:

The fool hath planted in his memory/An

army of good words, and I do know/A many

fools that stand in better

place,/Garnish'd like him, that for a

tricksy word/Defy the matter. (III. v.

60-64)

The fools must be distinguished not only from clowns but also from other humorous characters, such as bombasts, cynics, railers. Like the professional fool, the bombast 29 descends from the Vice, remaining truer to his ancestor

than the fool does since he retains the disreputable

ebullience and excess of the old stock figure. Attached to

a noble entourage, and the source of humor, he

nevertheless differs from the fool because the bombast's

is not a professional nor required wit; his foolishness is not put on, and no profound purpose underlies it. For

example, although Falstaff is "a foolish knight," his

folly is expressed as bombast and braggadacio, stemming not from any special insight or true wit, but from

ignorance and arrogance. A bombast like Falstaff is usually the butt of both his own jokes and those of others. "I am not only witty on myself, but the cause that wit is in other men" ( 2 Henry IV, I. ii. 8-9). If he expresses any truth through his buffoonery, it is unintentional, and he is unaware of it.

Jacques comes closer to the role of fool, entertaining

the Duke with melancholy pronouncements, speaking truth which could potentially help others achieve insight. A man apart, outside the group, treated with a patronizing affection, he has the outsider's special perception of everyone else's folly. Yet, he is not a true fool. There is never any question of his being in his right wits, as there is with Touchstone. Furthermore, he doesn't epitomize the Socratic irony, not having the humility of spirit required of the professional fool. His behavior is absurd, but unlike the fool he cannot see his own folly,

30 cannot laugh at himself. When he begs to be invested in his motley, he is anxious to gather to him the fool's license with which he intends to physic the world. He is not a "jester", but a cynic--he doesn't hide his truth under folly, but would give people their medicine without the sweetening jests to make it more palatable. His operatic and melancholic posturing reveals an ego unsuited to the special role of fool.

Like Gobbo, though of a different moral and intellectual weight, Thersites is another transitional character, this time between a railer and fool. At first glance this professional jester attached to a noble retinue, seems a wise fool. "Thersites is more like a court fool, for he is attached to the entourage of Ajax as a kind of licensed jester" (Campbell 105). However, his jesting soon degenerates into mere railing: truth-telling turns into derisive criticism whose purpose is only to wound or gall others, not to improve others by sharing his insights. Unlike the wise fools, he does not use wit or truth for constructive criticism; he doesn't try to teach anyone. On the contrary, he enjoys the weaknesses and misfortunes of others. "Thersites differs from these conventional figures [the fools] in making opprobrious speech an end in itself. He is a railer, a detractor, and a buffoon ••. "(Campbell 106). Unprincipled and malicious,

Thersites's perspective is warped and not to be trusted.

31 Whether the wise fool appears in comedy or tragedy, he is professionally mad and merry, yet touched with sadness, and exposing others' folly through his fooling. "He uses his folly like a stalking-horse, and under the presentation of that he shoots his wit" (As You Like It

V. iv. 105-106). Touchstone, Feste, Lavache and Lear's

Fool are all licensed critics, the embodiment of the

Socratic irony that knowledge of one's own folly or absurdity provides a special perception and a sense of proportion. Each of these wise fools has an individuality which serves the atmosphere and theme of the play in which he appears.

These four fools possess in common their wit and wisdom, their acute observations on the folly of others, and their special license to speak. However, each is especially adapted to his dramatic context and individualized to meet the needs of his world. The forest of Arden, the Twelfth Night festival, the French court, the stormy heath--each requires a new delineation of the fool character, giving us the courtly Touchstone, the melancholy Feste, the satirical Lavache, and the bitter, worried fool of King Lear.

According to the Arden edition of As You Like It,

Touchstone's name has been seen as a symbol of his function in the play as critic, testing the value of the

"golden world of the pastoral" (Arden lxxiv); his criticism, however, cannot mar the beauty of forest life

32 or of romantic love, serving only to put them in perspective. Early in the play, Touchstone is called the

"clownish fool" (I. iii. 126) and the "roynish clown"

(II. iii 8); however, later he is called "fool" by

Jacques. Yet although

Touchstone opens as a comic interpolater,

[he] develops into a character whose wit

is the envy of Jacques. There has been

considerable discussion as to whether or

not the part was begun with Kempe in mind

and then adapted for Robert Armin.

Touchstone's dress is described as

"motley" which covers a multitude of

possibilities. (Billington Social History 48)

Does he change, or does he merely reflect his surroundings? "Among courtly persons he appears awkward and among country people he appears courtly'' (Arden lxxv).

This ability illustrates the astuteness of the professional fool in satisfying his audience. He gives himself airs, taking advantage of his knowledg~ of the court and of his wit to lord it over the rustics. With

Rosalind and Celia, however, he pretends to have less wit than he possesses; and with Jacques he performs the elaborate set-pieces which he expects. This chameleon­ like quality enables Touchstone to embody the comparison

33 between court and country which is the source of various themes of the play.

Of all the fools, he has more of a personal life than the others, including a determined, if somewhat embarrassed, pursuit of Audrey. He plays at being a courtier, but, at the same time, he continues to joke about the manners and foibles of the court, thereby deriding his own ambitions.

If any man doubt that, let him put me to

my purgation. I have trod a measure, I

have flattered a lady, I have been politic

with my friend, smooth with mine enemy, I

have undone three tailors, I have had four

quarrels, and like to have fought one. (V.

iv. 43-47)

His display of pseudo-scholarship is part o£ his professional skill as a court jester, although his humor focuses on worldly knowledge rather than on universal or philosophical knowledge.

Many a man has good horns and knows no end

of them. Well, that is the dowry of his

wife, 'tis none of his own getting." (III.

iii. 47-49)

Touchstone reflects the happy and wholesome atmosphere of As You Like It because his criticism is not serious satire but lighthearted parody, which conveys his enjoyment of the folly of others and of the incongruities

34 of the meeting between country and court. Since the play's movement is toward regeneration, reconciliation and reformation, his criticism need not be sharp or malicious.

Therefore, his humor is made up of harmless wordplay and jests, irritating but inoffensive, since he has little to work upon but the lover's folly and the rustic's naive ignorance.

Feste's name, which alludes to celebration, joy and gaiety places him firmly in the festival world of Twelfth

Night, and certainly he possesses the myriad talents needed at a party. A highly polished entertainer, he jests, sings, and plays musical instruments. Feste is, as

Leslie Hotson declares,

.•• the Fool refined of all clownish alloy.

To be sure, the bigoted prompt-book

continues to repeat the now meaningless

speech-prefix "clown", but the text, both

in letter and in spirit, is free of it.

The artificial Fool has at length shaken

off all rustic humour and memories

bucolic. For us Feste in the idiot's

motley robe of privilege stands as the

quintessential high-comedy jester, the

triumph of Shakespeare and Armin in this

kind. His wit is courtly, his admirable

fooling scholarly, his singing exquisite.

35 The delight of wise foolery is his whole spring of being. (90)

Yet Feste is a shameless beggar; unlike his fellow fools, he asks for money in recompense for each display of his talents. A. C. Bradley plausibly explains why: He is fully justified, and he begs so amusingly that we welcome his begging; but shameless it is. But he is laying up treasures on earth against the day when some freak of his own, or some whim in his mistress, will bring his dismissal, and the short summer of his freedom will be followed by the wind and the rain. And so, finally he is as careful as his love of fun will allow to keep clear of any really dangerous enterprise. (Misc. 214) His concern with his livelihood is understandable considering the circumstances of his position; no one is much in the mood for his fooling, except Viola who appreciates him more than anyone. The Puritanical Malvolio's frowning disapproval, Olivia's mourning, Orsino's lovesick depression: all make a poor audience for his fooling. Even the comic trio of Maria, Sir Toby, and Sir Andrew do not seem to want his wit either, for they have their own jokes which are cruel and crude compared to Feste's subtle witticisms. Thus his preoccupation with money and his care to stay out of 36 trouble reflect the precariousness of his position.

Because of his eventual, albeit delayed, delivery of

Malvolio's letter, the bitterness of his remarks to the ill-used steward seems surprising; however, Malvolio's threat to his profession is an adequate motive for the fool's vitriolic reminder that he brought upon himself the revenge of the comic conspirators.

Such occasional bitter thrusts apart, Feste with his humor and music contributes to the "good life" of Twelfth

Night. However, rather than reflecting the play's festival atmosphere directly, he acts as an ironic counterpoint which represents the underlying truth that the festival is transient--the good life, like real life, is short. The sombre note which Feste sounds from within the fun and frolics is a call for moderation and common sense.

Rustic servant cum ribald jester, Lavache or Lavatch is a "shrewd knave and an unhappy" (All's Well That Ends

Well IV. v. 60). According to Leslie Hotson, his name is related to the "scullion's Lavages (Ital. Lavaccio)" which means "Dishwater, Hogwash, Swilling •••• In Lavatch the rustic serving man clown has not yet dropped out of sight •.• " (88-89). The scatological nature of much of his humor appropriately reflects the low origins of his name; however, his low humor is a vehicle for this objective and acute point of view. At first he appears to be the simple woodland clown; however, he soon reveals the biting

37 wit which satirizes love, marriage, courtly manners and war in a way that his listeners' can seldom refute.

In the text we find him repeatedly called

"fool" or "knave" (that is, rascal, boy),

but never "clown"; and to the fool's

privilege of jesting is joined more than a

suggestion of the fool's punishment for

"going too far" .•• The Countess's father

had encouraged Lavatch to play the jester.

(Hotson 88)

Like Touchstone, he parodies the manners of the court and pokes fun at romantic love; but they differ in their connection to the heroine of the play and her viewpoint:

The relationship between Touchstone and

Rosalind makes it clear that the satiric

wit of the clown is directed from much the

same point as the joyous wit of the

heroine. Lavatch is as contemptuous of

Parolles as Touchstone is of Jacques, but

his view does not ally itself in this play

to the witty common sense of the

heroine •••• The pretensions of the good no

less than those of the wicked or foolish

are exposed here ••• to continuous

criticism. (Arden xxxiv)

Unlike Touchstone's and Feste's wit, that of Lavache rarely finds its outlet in light-hearted humor; rather,

38 his satire is heavy and unalloyed, revealing his own

jaundiced view of society. In this way his darker humor

and sour critical commentary reflect the darker comedy of

All's Well That Ends Well.

Lear's Fool (he doesn't even have a name) epitomizes

the alienation of the fool's position, as well as the

painful necessity of his teaching role, which results from

this fool's tragic venue as compared to the fools who

exist in the comic realm. Unlike Touchstone and Lavache, who desire women, and Feste, who desires money, Lear's

Fool is completely devoted to his master's welfare and, hence, to his necessary schooling. Stripped clean of all

personality outside his function as king's jester, he is

the job he performs, acting most like a ritual scapegoat; the reader has no sense of a man beneath the belled hat.

Just as the tragic hero overshadows the comic, Lear's Fool overshadows his brother fools in wit and perception. Less of what he says can be taken for mere foolery; all has a point, and many echoes of the antic Hamlet's language may be heard in his. As unpolitic as Thersites in the truth he tells, Lear's Fool, like Hamlet, covers it with fooling

so that his truth may be dismissed by the powerful as madness.

Lear's Fool is the least absurdly frivolous or full of foibles, and the most compassionate and wise, of all the

Shakespearean fools. He possesses many of the qualities of the other fools, but is given a philosophical value and

39 psychological impact deeper than any other; however, his appearance is prepared for through various steps visible in other plays toward this apotheosis of the fools who came before him.

As early fools are shown devoted to the

good things of life, especially food and

drink ••• so the practical, beggar's cunning

of Lear's Fool makes his fidelity more

heroic. As he stands locked outside the

castle gate he achieves what Erasmus had

regarded as the singular blessedness of

fools, a kind of contentment, in his

piteous echo of Feste's song. (Bradbrook

Shakespeare the Craftsman 69)

Although their personalities and circumstances differ, all four--Touchstone, Feste, Lavache, Lear's Fool--possess the fool's fa~ility with language and his special kind of rhetoric and of imagery which is a means of his characterization and a token of his function as critical truth-teller and teacher.

40 "I am indeed not her fool, but her corrupter of

words." (Twelfth Night III. i. 39-40)

III. THE FOOL'S SPECIAL LANGUAGE USE

The wise fool is characterized by a special kind of

rhetoric, a style of speech that is both a means of

characterization and a means of ironic interplay. The

fool is a master of language, his speech odd, and

unpredictable, yet erudite and eclectic: "The Fool's

language is fantastic, yet inspired by a logic hovering

between elegant paradox and outright nonsense" (Swortzell

62). This mastery of language is yet another distinction

between the clown and the fool, because the latter is one who plays with words, who is "sufficiently [master] of the

English language to make fun out of it", whereas the

former is one who is mastered by language so as "to give

fun unconsciously" (Gordon 64). For example, Feste is a

conscious and significant "corrupter of words," while

Dogberry remains unconscious of the confusions which

result from his ignorant misuse of language. In addition,

the fool's intelligence gives him a profound sense of

41 life's ironies and paradoxes. With his mastery of ironic perception he achieves his tongue-in-cheek or

significantly ambiguous command of language.

The fool's word-games reflect the general interest of

Elizabethans in their flexible and rapidly changing language: word-games are "a way of dealing with a real social issue; the problem of the English language was part of the general problem of the new secular education"

(Bradbrook 34). Wordplay delighted the Elizabethans, not only in their drama, but also in their daily conversations:

In the exchange of conversation, their

technique, their principal and expected

contribution--as you may see from the

comedy of Shakespeare--was (consciously)

to extract fun from words. It was a

foible of the age, which Shakespeare

thoroughly and unaffectedly shared, to be

everlastingly excited and amused over the

forms, shapes, sounds and meanings of

words: and a foible easy to understand,

for the language was bubbling over with

new inventions. (Gordon 64)

Hence, probably, the tolerance of and popularity of jesters and fools, who professionally carried the arts of quibbling, punning and so on to their highest and most fanciful fulfillment. The popular clowns and jesters of

42 the day, like Dick Tarleton, exploited "nonsense songs,

strings of impossibilities, prophecies, ragman's roils; as well as street cries, medleys, parodies, and the like"

(Weimann 24).

Richard Tarlton, the greatest folk actor

of the pre-Shakespearean theater, was a

master of the jest that turned on a riddle

or wordplay. And there is a direct line

to Shakespeare through Tarlton's pupil

Robert Armin. (Weimann 138)

Wordplay as used by the fool has an obvious comedic value; however, it has dramatic as well as psychological functions, too. Ironic interplay between the fool and other characters not only creates humor, but also develops plot and/or theme. Often the fool possesses some knowledge about situations or personalities which he shares via irbny with other characters and/or the audience. Clearly much of the power of the fool to affect others stems from his often playful use of language.

This wordplay allows him to make certain critical statements hidden by his language manipulation, so that others may learn some truth from his pronouncements if they will, or may remain ignorant of them, shrugging them off as the ravings of a simpleton. For example, when

Lavache describes Parolles as a worthless knave, the braggart can shrug it off as nonsense.

43 To say nothing, to do nothing, to know

nothing, and to have nothing, is to be a

great part of your title, which is within

a very little of nothing.

Away! Th'art a knave.

You should have said, sir, "Before a knave

th'art a knave"; that's "Before me, th'art

a knave". This had been truth, sir.

Go to, thou art a witty fool; I have found

thee. (II. iv. 23-31)

Furthermore, the fool's kind of language embodies the essential qualities of comedy itself:

The comedy is a form of display for all

kinds of madness, irrationality, and

eccentricity .•.• Repetition in all of

its forms is crucial to the structure--and

also the metaphysics--of comedy, since

comedy revels in overemphasis and

exaggeration. (Charney Comedy xi)

Seeming irrationality, and eccentricity, repetition, exaggeration--all typify the fool's word-play, and become most prevalent and forceful in King Lear:

The Fool's sudden quips, one line jokes

and staccato sentences, often hide or

contain a significance beyond their

apparent meaning, and the jingles, like

44 nursery rhymes, reverberate in the head

and heart. (Evans 156)

For example, the Fool's seeming lighthearted rhyme--"He that keeps nor crust nor crum,/ Weary of all, shall want some"--has deep significance in that it is a precise statement of Lear's situation (I. iv. 203-204). The King weary of his reign, gives his power to his daughters, realizing too late that he has kept nothing on which to live or with which to protect himself. In keeping with his function as a comedic safety-valve, the fool's verbal wit often " ... afford[s] a safe outlet for repressed impulses" (Mahood 29). Most often members of the audience benefit from this outlet, especially when the Fool expresses his frustration with the King's stupidity: "Now thou art an 0 without a figure. I am better than thou art now: I am a Fool, thou art nothing" (I. iv. 198-200). In addition, wordplay, particularly in tragedy, provides

" ••• relief from a state of emotional tension" (Mahood 32).

The fool's zaniness, his "handy-dandy," his gibing parody of the language of others defensively clouds his true knowledge and observations from the unfriendly ear, yet, at the same time, suggests to the receptive his sense of superior knowledge and cleverness.

The poet and the psychologist both know

that madness is full of meaning, that the

puns ••• are the outer verbal evidence of a

45 strong underlying association of ideas.

(Mahood 40)

So, like Hamlet's methodical madness, the fool's prophetic

fantasies and scurrilous jests reveal truths which cannot

safely be spoken straight out in conventional language,

but only revealed through crazy word-games and bizarre

logic. Shakespeare drew on the clowning tradition of the

English theater "when he combined riddle and wordplay and

placed them mainly in the mouths of plebeian characters.

Such utterances can be highly pertinent to the play's

serious message: the riddling, punning, obscene Porter in

Macbeth turns a critical eye to the world around him,

reminiscent of the equivocation that has preceded and anticipating the disorder that is to come" (Weimann 138).

Another such serious use of comic wordplay occurs in

Hamlet when the prince puts on his "antic disposition"

(I. v. 172). Hamlet adapts the fool's wordplay to create a disguise and to be able, like the true fool, to be able

to tell disturbing truth with relative impunity. In his appropriation of a court jester's rhetorical stance via riddles and ironic quibbles, which do contain relevant and

profound moral or philosophical meaning for all their apparent irrelevance or madness, Hamlet provides "a full

feast of the word-corrupting, the privileged mockery, the

traditional ribaldry and railing with bitter gibes as amusing as they are insolent, and the lightning-rod nonsense to distract anger ••• " typical of an intelligent

46 fool with allegedly diseased wits. "Clearly, the prince doubles as Fool" (Hotson 92).

Hamlet. "All which, sir, though I most

powerfully and potently believe yet I hold

it not honesty to have it thus set down;

for you yourself, sir, should be old as I

am if, like a crab, you could go

backward."

Polonius. [Aside] "Though this be madness,

yet there is method in't." (II. ii. 202-208)

Many critics have seen the " ••• closest likeness between the method of Lear's motley innocent in masking his keen thrusts, and that of the antic Hamlet" (Hotson 95). Like

Lear's Fool, Hamlet confuses his hearers with seemingly digressive allusions and with nonsense rhymes:

One fair daughter, and no more,/The which

he loved passing well.( II. ii. 416-17)

As by lot, God wot,/and then, you know,/It

came to pass, as most like it was. (II.

ii. 425-427)

When he mocks Polonius with a nonsensical catechism on the shape of a cloud--weasel or whale--the old man is willing to go along with the "mad" prince's play. He keeps

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern off balance, while they try to find out what he's up to, by turning their words upon themselves:

47 Hamlet. "Ay, sir, that soaks up the

King's countenance, his rewards, his

authorities. But such officers do the

King his best service in the end ••• When he

needs what you have gleaned, it is but

squeezing you, and, sponge, you shall be

dry again."

Rosencrantz. "I understand you not, my

lord."

Hamlet. "I am glad of it: a knavish

speech sleeps in a foolish ear." (IV. ii

15-24)

Who is the fool and who the knave? Hamlet uses his nonsense to tell his two old friends that he is aware of their motives, that their characters and assigned roles are clear to him. To direct attention away from himself, he plays upon every word, thereby diverting anger, suspicion, and retribution. In the midst of Hamlet's tragedy, the prince finds an emotional safety-valve in

"playing the all-licensed fool in Claudius' court and making tormented fun out his shocking realization of the horror of life" (Barber 261). This mixture of comedy with tragedy, of " ••• sense and nonsense," of "bold criticism and mad impertinence," is not contradictory nor based on elements mutually exclusive; and it occurs frequently in

Shakespearean drama. Often it is only when a tragic hero such as Hamlet or Lear assumes his "strange range of

48 madness'' that his vision of injustice achieves its most

"penetrating vitality" (Weimann 127-8).

Like the "mad" Hamlet, the fools use language both to expose truth and to hide or soften it, defensively. Their facility with language is such that they can both reveal and obscure simultaneously. Lear's Fool uses ironic double-talk to tell the King that he will find comfort with his daughter Regan, while below the surface meaning, he conveys his true belief that she will treat him in the same cruel way that Goneril has. "Shalt see thy other daughter will use thee kindly; for though she's as like this as a crab's like an apple, yet I can tell what I can tell" (I. iv. 14-16). Communication experts, the fools' ability to use various forms of language allows them to function both as mere jesters and as serious critical commentators. Although the wise fools speak in prose for the most part, they easily switch to doggerel verse and song. They are also versatile in their use of two types of diction, adopting one or the other depending on their purpose and their audience. They are equally at ease in coarse vernacular and in a grandiloquent style. For example, Touchstone uses high-flown phrases and mock-logic to confuse and impress the rustics; however, he displays more prosaic diction with the lovers, thereby moderating and implicitly criticizing their high romantic language; and in still another aspect of his mastery of verbal decorum, he entertains the intellectual Jacques with

49 elaborate set pieces. Other fools show a similar versatility and verbal facility. Mock-logic, clever aphorisms such as, "Better a witty fool than a foolish wit" (I. v. 34), and song characterize Feste's language, while Lavache's speech is laced heavily with proverbs,

sometimes twisted to his own purpose, including " ••• he must needs go that the devil drives" (I. iii. 27-8),

" ••• indeed I do marry that I may repent" (I. iii. 34-5),

"He that ears my land spares my team, and gives me leave

to in the crop" (I. iii. 42-3), "I will show myself highly

fed and lowly taught" (II. ii. 3). Lear's Fool chants doggerel rhyme, or confounds Lear with riddles and poignant snatches of song. Jan Kott describes his

language as "abounding in Biblical travesties and inverted medieval parables." He finds in it "splendid baroque

surrealist expressions, sudden leaps of imagination" as well as many "condensations and epitomes" (291) such as

He's mad that trusts in the tameness of a

wolf, a horse's health, a boy's love, or a

whore's oath. (King Lear III. iv. 18-9)

Thou shouldst no have been old till though

hadst been wise." (I. v. 44-45)

The Fool sums up in a few words or phrases the essence of whole scenes, the cruel truth of Lear's situation. When

Lear asks, "Who is that can tell me who I am?", the Fool answers concisely: "Lear's shadow" (I. iv. 236-7). He can be brutal in his frankness: "I am better than thou

50 art now; I am a Fool, thou art nothing" (I. iv. 199-200). And, as Kott further points out, the Fool can be vulgar and scatological: She that's a maid now, and laughs at my departure,/Shall not be a maid long, unless things be cut shorter." (I. v. 48-9) The cod-piece that will house/Before the head has any,/The head and he shall louse;/So beggars marry many. (III. ii. 27-30) Kott quite rightly compares his rhymes to limericks: That lord that counseled thee/To give away thy land,/Come place him here by me,/Do thou for him stand./The sweet and bitter fool/Will presently appear;/The one in motley here,/The other found out there.

(I. iv. 144-151)

The success or failure of the fool's verbal acrobatics depends very often upon the willingness of others to enter into his game by making like responses and by allowing themselves to be led to the inevitable conclusion that their wit is no match for the fool's. Some characters have neither the time nor the patience for the fool's elaborate games. Orsino listens willingly to Feste's song, but politely disengages himself from the fool's opening jest: "Give me leave to leave thee" (Twelfth 51 Night II. iv. 72). Later in the same play, a man obsessed by worry, Sebastian fends off the fool's several attempts at fooling: he offers him money, but threatens him with physical violence if he does not stop venting his folly

(Twelfth Night IV. i). Other characters have got neither the wit--Audrey, William--nor the humor--Parolles,

Malvolio--to participate. Of the rustic recipients of

Touchstone's wit, Gorin alone is able to keep up the quick badinage, and even he soon gives up, not having the leisure to spend the day jesting with the fool who seems loath to stop, having time on his hands in Arden, away from his duties as court jester. Audrey and William, on the other hand, understand little of what Touchstone says; however, the fool seems to amuse himself with them out of boredom. He feels unappreciated in the forest, and complains accordingly: "I am here with thee and thy goats as the most capricious poet, honest Ovid, was among the

Goths" (As You like It III. iii. 5-6).

In the comedies, the chara~ters who are most willing to play word games with the fool are also the ones who have the most wit and humor, the ones who take themselves least seriously. Although they have serious values, principles, ideas, and emotions, they are not solemnly given to tunnel-vision and to self-righteousness. In other words, they are serious but intelligent enough to have some ironic perception of life, including the self.

Consequently, Rosalind and Celia, Gorin, Jacques and the

52 banished Duke; Olivia and Viola; the Countess Rossillion and Lafew are the ones we like best. Each of these characters enters willingly and wittily into the fool's wordplay, welcoming the diversion and the intellectual stimulation: Celia. " ••• who ••• hath sent this natural for our whetstone; for always the dullness of the fool is the whetstone of the wits." (As You like It I. ii. 50-53) Olivia. "Well sir, for want of other idleness, I'll bide your proof." (Twelfth Night I. v. 62-63) Countess. " ••• I will be a fool in question, hoping to be the wiser by your answer." (All's Well That Ends Well II. ii. 36-37) In King Lear both Lear and Kent listen carefully to the Fool and also participate in his wordplay: Lear patronizing, but attentive 'to his boy; Kent impatiently, but with a growing awareness of the sense underlying the nonsense. Because different characters and different situations require different kinds of wordplay, the fool is versatile and practiced in all forms of his oral art, which range from crude and simple jests to complex and intense ones with serious underpinnings of meaning. As "a corrupter of words," the fool uses various comedic rhetorical devices,

53 including simple play on words, mock-logic, rhetorical figures and paradox, riddles and catechisms, parody and satire. Simple wordplay such as nonsense patter and puns can range from the meaningless, to the trivial, to the profoundly meaningful. At times the fools speak nonsense that has no relevance in the context in which it is said or which has no meaning in any context: Touchstone: "According to the fool's bolt sir, and such dulcet diseases." (As You Like It V. iv. 63-64) Feste: "Yes, by Saint Anne, and ginger shall be hot i' the mouth too." (Twelfth Night II. iii. 116-117) Lear's Fool: "Cry to it, Nuncio, as the cockney did to the eels when she put'em i' th' paste alive. She knapped 'em o' the coxcombs with a stick and cried, "Down wantons, down! 'Twas her brother that, in pure kindness to his horse, buttered his hay." (King Lear II. iv. 120-125)*42 Such nonsense serves two purposes: it is funny and it defensively makes unthreatening anything sensible and meaningful that occurs nearby. In addition, there may be for such gabbling some archetypal function, springing out of the ancient ritual and affective on the subconscious level only: something to do with a "the non-

54 representational element of festive release11 (Weimann

118).

Among the many word games in the fool's repertoire, the pun appears most often. Puns may be the simplest form of humor, but they are not necessarily simple-minded.

Making a pun entails a sensitivity to words and their meanings, both denotative and connotative; and, in the fool's profession, he also requires the ability to make these double meanings clear extempore.

As we might expect, the licensed

Fools •.. have a generous share of the puns

in the comedies. Feste utters a quarter

of those that occur in Twelfth Night, and

Touchstone an equal proportion of the

wordplay in As You like It, while the

clown [Lavache] is the most punning

character in All's Well That Ends Well II

(Mahood 167)

The fool seems to feel a professional obligation to pun on every word that suits the purpose, and so some puns are made only for their immediate comic effect or, like my first example below, with only a modicum of relevant personal criticism:

Touchstone: 11 For my part, I had rather

bear with you than bear you; yet I should

bear no cross if I did bear you, for I

55 think you have no money in your purse." (As You Like It II. iv. 9-11) Feste: " ••• I do live by the church, for I do live at my house, and my house doth stand by the church." (Twelfth Night

III. i. 5-7) Lavache: "She is not well, but yet she has her health; she's very merry, but yet she is not well. But thanks be given she's very well and wants nothing i' th' world; but yet she is not well." (All's Well That Ends Well II. iv. 2-5) Other puns have a more serious function. For example, Lavache puns indirectly on the sexual connotation of "die", in the sense that when men "stand to", they will "die"; his point being that there is little danger for Bertram in battle since he runs away from his wife. --if he run away, as I hear he does; the danger is in standing to 't; that's the loss of men, though it be the getting of children. For my part, I only hear your son was run away. (All's Well That Ends Well III. ii. 39-43) Lear's Fool plays on the two senses of the word "kindly": "Shalt see thy other daughter will use thee kindly," using it ironically in the sense that Regan will not use Lear with kindness, as it would be natural for a daughter

56 to use an old father, and literally in the sense that she will use him in accordance with her nature, after her kind, or like her sister (I. v. 14).

Another type of wordplay in which the fools engage combines their sensitivity to the many choices available in the English language with their obvious relish in demonstrating this knowledge to others. For example, the playful Touchstone astonishes William with a voluble display of various levels of diction.

Therefore you clown, abandon--which is in

the vulgar leave--the society--which in

the boorish is company--of this female-­

which in the common is woman. Which

together is abandon the society of this

female, or clown thou perishest; or to thy

better understanding, diest; or, to wit, I

kill thee, make thee away, translate thy

life into death, thy liberty into

bondage. I will deal poison with thee, or

in bastinado, or in steel. I will bandy

with thee in faction; I will o'er-run thee

with policy; I will kill thee a hundred

and fifty ways. (As You like It V. ii. 45-56)

Feste shows the same enjoyment of his mastery of language with Viola when he explains his choice of "welkin" over

"element":

57 I will conster to them whence you come;

who you are and what you would are out of

my welkin. I might say "element", but the

word is overworn. (Twelfth Night III. i.

59-60).

Later, he makes fun of Sebastian's word choice, informing him that he has made an error in diction since the word

"vent" is too high to be used by a sensible man and to be wasted on a fool (IV. i. 12-15). Again, when thanking Sir

Andrew, Feste reveals his sportive attitude toward words: instead of saying "I pocketed the gratuity," he Latinizes his thanks into "I did impeticos thy gratillity" (II. iii. 27). In fact, Feste uses a sprinkling of Latin or ersatz Latin throughout his speech, revealing a knowledge of that language in the former case and a willingness both to pretend to greater knowledge of it and to play with it in the latter case: "cucullus non facit monachum" (I. v.

53-54); "pia mater" (I. v. 116); "Bonos dies" (IV. ii.

13); "Primo, secundo, tertio" (V. i. 34); "vox" (V. i. 29 5).

Less polished and courtly than Touchstone or Feste, both Lavache and Lear's Fool use a more humble diction, the vulgar vernacular. Instead of classical allusions,

Lavache, the "woodland man" as he calls himself, appropriately uses more homely proverbs and inverts old saws.

58 Service is no heritage •.• (All's Well That

Ends Well I. iii.21)

I am driven on by the flesh, and he must

needs go that the devil drives. (26-27)

••• and indeed I do marry that I may

repent. (34-35)

As Keir Elam notes,

It is an especially compact and colourless

"proverbial" idiom that generates an

entire scene of clowning in All's Well

That Ends Well, 56 lines of insistent

comic business dedicated to Lavatch's

three-word response for all

conversational seasons" "Oh Lord, sir"

"The chief point of Lavatch's ironical

pride in his stratagem lies in the true

sociolinguistic connotations of the simple

by-word used in place of a considered

answer, connotations that are by no means

always courtly (279)

Lear's Fool, consistent with the rough-and-ready world in which he lives, speaks in a less polished, cruder fashion made up of old sayings, ballads, fables and rhymes.

The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so

long/That it's had its head bit off by it

young. (I. iv. 213-214) Whoop, Jug! I love

thee. (221)

59 The fool's verbal dexterity, his ability to create humor out of the malleable English language, is the chief component of his speech. However, in addition to this skill with words, the fools perform exercises in mock logic which include merry quibbling, silly syllogisms, clever aphorisms, handy-dandy, simple riddles and playful catechisms, which are central not only to their role as entertainers but also, as I will show later, to their function as critics and teachers.

The fools delight in lighthearted argument or quibbling, often for its own sake, to show off their cleverness, but sometimes to evade a question or to confuse their interrogator.

Touchstone: "Truly shepherd, in respect

of itself, it is a good life; but in

respect that it is a shepherd's life, it i

naught. In respect that it is solitary, I

like it very well; but in respect that it

is private, it is a very vile life. Now

in respect it is in the fields, it

pleaseth me well; but in respect it is not

in the court, it is tedious. As it is a

spare life, look you, it fits my humour

well; but as there is no more plenty in

it, it goes much against my

stomach •••• "(As You like It III. ii. 13-21)

60 Feste: "I would therefore my sister had

had no name, sir ••• her name's a word, and

to dally with that word might make my

sister wanton. But indeed, words are very

rascals, since bonds disgraced them •.• I

can yield you none without words, and

words are grown so false, I am loath to

prove reason with them.'' (Twelfth Night

III. i 16-25)

While the fool's quibbling usually has no point to it beyond humor, their syllogisms or chop-logic are attempts to prove a point, albeit a trivial one as a rule. Learn of the wise and perpend. Civet is of a baser birth than tar, the very uncleanly flux of a cat. (As You Like It III. ii.

64-66)

To have is to have: for it is a figure in

rhetoric that drink, being poured out of a

cup into a glass, by filling the one doth

empty the other. For all your writers do

consent that ipse is he. Now you are not

ipse, for I am he. (As You Like It V. i.

39-43)

••• Anything that's mended is but patched:

virtue that transgresses is but patched

with sin, and sin that amends is but

patched with virtue. If but this simple

61 syllogism will serve, so: if it will not, what remedy? (Twelfth Night I. v. 44-48) "That that is, is: so I, being Master Parson, am Master Parson; for what is "that" but "that"? and "is" but "is? (Twelfth Night IV. ii. 15-17) Y'are shallow, madam, in great friends; for the knaves come to do that for me which I am aweary of. He that ears my land spares my team, and gives me leave to in the crop; if I be his cuckold, he's my

drudge ••• " (Al~' s Well That Ends Well I. iii. 40-53)

Fools often coin clever aphorisms, either their own or those they attribute to some philosopher. The more pity that fools may not speak wisely what wisemen do foolishly. (As You Like It I. ii. 80-81) The fool doth think he is wise, but the wiseman knows himself to be a fool. (As You Like It V. i. 30-31) Better a witty fool than a foolish wit. (Twelfth Night I. v. 34) These pithy phrases all express the polarity which epitomizes the fool's most basic premise: that the world is confused about who is wise and who foolish.

62 In King Lear the Fool's speech is characterized by what Danby calls "handy-dandy," that is, by deliberately confusing or challenging ironic reversals and by surprising equivalencies/equations between things.

He sees everything as a see-saw.

Whichever end of the see-saw anyone

chooses, the Fool's job is to be

counterweight. (Danby 378)

There is a pattern in most of the jester's

jokes. It is the pattern which is common

to all humor throughout the ages:

opposites, contraries, which are,

logically speaking, mutually exclusive,

are peacefully put together, while a

certain train of thoughts or events is

sent into an unexpected, highly impossible

yet feasible direction. (Zijderveld 108)

In yet another favorite gambit, and one which sometimes has an illuminating critical or thematic function, the fool performs ritualistic questioning through riddles and catechisms, easily leading his partner in the game to respond in such a way as to lead to the fool's point, which usually proves the fool to be wise, others foolish. Touchstone questions William with the intention of showing off his own wit and the rustic's ignorance (V. i.). To some extent, Feste is also showing off his own wit when he poses a paradox for Orsino,

63 demonstrating that the Count's logic is at fault when he supposes the fool in error for saying:

Duke: "How dost thou, my good fellow?"

Feste: "Truly, sir, the better for my

foes, and the worse for my friends."

Duke: "Just the contrary: the better for

thy friends.

Feste: "No, sir, the worse." Duke: "How

can that be?"

Feste: "Marry, sir, they praise me, and

make an ass of me. Now my foes tell me

plainly I am an ass: so that by my foes,

sir, I profit in the knowledge of myself,

and by my friends I am abused." (Twelfth

Night V. i. 9-20)

As usual the fool turns out to have a reason behind his seemingly illogical statement. But here, in addition,

Feste may have a general teaching purpose which relates to the invalid but commonplace polarity between the wise and the foolish that I mentioned earlier. The catechism type of questioning is a favorite teaching device for conveying more specific and essential truths. Touchstone quizzes

Gorin on the virtues of rustic life as opposed to the courtly life, in a way that on the surface seems to poke fun at the country, but which really shows the artificiality and superficiality of the court (As You like It III. ii. ). Feste has a more serious purpose when

64 he catechizes Olivia about her prolonged mourning: "I must catechise you for it, madonna. (Twelfth Night I. v.

60). And when he does so, he proves her a fool

"dexteriously." The Fool questions Lear in a series of riddles which serve two purposes: to take the King's mind off Goneril's cruelty, and to hammer home Lear's foolishness in giving away his crown (King Lear I. v.).

Thou canst tell why one's nose stands i'

th' middle on's face? (19-20)

Canst tell how an oyster makes his shell?

(26) ..• but I can tell why a snail has a

house. (28-9)

The reason why the seven stars are no moe

than seven is a pretty reason. (35-37)

If thou wert my Fool, Nuncle, I'd have

thee beaten for being old before thy

time.

And when Lear's Fool asks the King if he knows the difference "between a bitter Fool and a sweet one," he has a very serious purpose indeed (King Lear I. iv.

141-142).

The Shakespearean fool consistently uses a special thematic kind of imagery, clustering around sex, violence, animals, death and decay. His imagery can be harsh and jolting even in the humorous context of most of his speeches. Since the fool's costume of asses' ears, coxcomb, and bauble has sexual and bestial connotations,

65 it is not surprising that sexual and animal images occur in his figurative speech as well. Touchstone's speech has many references to animals and sex which serve to bring the romantic lovers down to earth: "cow's dugs" (II. i v. 46), "copulation of cattle" (III. ii. 76-83), "As the ox hath his bow sir, the horse his curb, and the falcon her bells ••• " (III. iii. 71-73), "horn-beasts" (III. iii. 45-55). This kind of earthy implication is especially clear in his extempore rhymes, which mock Orlando's: If a hart do lack a hind,/Let him seek out Rosalind./If the cat will after kind,/So be sure will Rosalind./Winter'd garments must be lin'd,/So must slender Rosalind./They that reap must sheaf and bind,/Then to cart with Rosalind./Sweetest nut hath sourest rind,/ Such a nut is Rosalind./He that sweetest rose will find/Must find love's prick, and Rosalind. This rhyme is a series of obscene equivocations which contrast strikingly with the more idealized romantic verse that comes before. Like Touchstone, Lavache engages in bawdy double-talk: "And I would give his wife my bauble, sir, to do her service" (IV. v. 27-28). Earlier, the fool expresses his loss of interest in Isbel in a startlingly violent image: "The brains of my Cupid's knock'd out ••• " (II. ii. 14-15). Lear's Fool also uses many violent

66 images, from that of the hedge-sparrow that has its head bitten off (I. iv. 221) to that of the great wheel which will break the neck of followers ( II. iv. 70-71). Death, too, is often reflected in the fools' speech, as they remind their listeners of life's brevity: "Come away death" (Twelfth Night II. iv. ) , "Thou worms-meat in respect of a good piece of flesh indeed!" (As You Like It III. ii. 63-64). The frequent appearance of somber, grim, or even morbid suggestions in the imagery employed by Shakespeare's fools comfirms the range of their dramatic or even thematic functions, and the volatility of their moods. For the professional court jester as well as the dramatic fool character, language is the tool of his trade, sometimes a shield, sometimes a weapon, which he employs skillfully and meaningfully. Not only does the fool's speech provide humor and develop his character; it also serves to reveal his function as critic and teacher, enabling him to serve as a symbol for some themes and a spokesman for others. Mahood's conclusion seems entirely valid, that Nearly every play in the canon is concerned with some aspect of revelation or discovery. A character, and we with him, finds the truth beneath the appearance of things, both in his own nature ••• and in outward circumstance. Shakespeare's wordplay contributes much to

67 this theme of appearance and reality •••• (54)

68 Is not this a rare fellow, my lord? he's

as good at any thing and yet a fool. (As

You Like It V. iv. 109-110)

IV. THE FUNCTIONS OF THE WISE FOOL

The wise fool of Shakespearean drama is fully

interwoven into the fabric of the play's plot and its

themes. Like the clown and comic servant, he also

provides comedy or, in tragedy, comic relief; but his

dramatic integration enables him to transcend the stock

character in his capacity to perform so many more dramatic

and thematic functions. Through his position as an

objective outsider, privileged speaker, and adept

manipulator of language, he can not only provide humor,

,but also facilitate plot and character exposition; he can,

moreover, embody certain themes and voice others. His

dramatic functions may include acting as a link between

the sub-plot and the main plot, as well as between the

audience and the play by performing as a chorus; and they

may also include revealing the character of others through

parody, or as a foil.

69 The most obvious function of the fool is to make the audience laugh. In a comedy, his witty jests are only a part of the humor enacted on the stage, but his humor has its own quality in language, subject matter and purpose, as we have seen. Less clear is the fool's function in tragedy, which in critical circles has been named comic relief. There have been times during the history of

Shakespearean criticism when this comic intrusion into tragedy has been considered a pandering to the poor taste of the groundlings; but more often it is considered necessary "relief" for the audience from the tension of watching a series of tragic events.

Laughter was used to restore and maintain

the emotional balance of the audience, in

the very situations in which the emotional

balance of the tragic protagonists was

being subjected to the most severe

strains, and at the same time it was used

with such aptness that it underscored and

restated basic tragic themes and

relationships. (R. Frye 117)

Furthermore, like the porter's sour jokes in MacBeth and

Hamlet's "antic disposition," the presence of Lear's Fool within the tragedy allows the juxtaposition of the comic with the tragic which Kenneth Burke in his essay

"Psychology and Form" terms a natural emotional relief needed by the audience.

70 •.• if an author managed over a certain

number of his pages to produce a feeling

of sultriness or oppression, in the

reader, this would unconsciously awaken in

the reader the desire for a cold, fresh

northwind--and thus some aspect of a

northwind would be effective if called

forth by some aspect of stuffiness. (Burke 446)

In addition to providing a change of pace, the Fool thus provides a "safety-valve" for the audience's highly emotional state. As Lear acts more and more ridiculously, his madness is perhaps "apt to arouse more laughter than sympathy" although that laughter is partly grounded in apprehension or censure and because the Fool expresses these mixed emotions for us, his commentary provides an outlet for the audience's appropriate emotions, including but not limited to laughter, thereby allowing Lear to retain his dignity (Arden Edition,

Introduction lvii). William Hazlitt, quoted in the Arden

Edition of King Lear (page lvii), stated that

the contrast would be too painful, the

shock too great, but for the intervention

of the fool, whose well-timed levity

comes in to break the continuity of

feeling when it no longer can be borne,

and to bring into the play again the

71 fibres of the heart just as they are

growing rigid from over-strained

excitement (Characters of Shakespeare's

Plays, 1926, 121).

Roland Frye agrees with this estimation of the importance of the Fool's function:

•.• laughter at the poor old king would

have destroyed the tragic effect.

Shakespeare therefore provided the Fool,

whose "natural" madness and professional

jesting served to attract laughter away

from the mad Lear •••• (l17)

Few now would agree with the decision of Victorian editors to excise the Fool from the play as a tasteless intrusion of comedy into Lear's tragedy. All who value the Fool's presence agree that it is required by the psychology of the audience, as providing either a change of pace or as a distraction from uncomfortable laughter evoked by Lear's foolish behavior and later mental disintegration.

Although the primary function of most fools is comedy, he has several subordinate functions as well, such as providing a link between various plot elements. Touchstone in As You Like It moves easily between the rustic community and the noble outcasts, drawing together these groups through his interaction with representatives from each. His comic wooing of Audrey is a sub-plot which parallels Orlando's courtship of Rosalind. In Twelfth

72 Night, Feste travels between Olivia's household and

Orsino's court, entertaining both the nobles and Sir Toby and his cronies. He moves the plot along when he brings

Olivia to Sebastian's aid and to meet Orsino, and again when he delivers Malvolio's letter. Lavache acts as a liaison between Rossillion and the court in All's Well

That Ends Well, carrying messages, letters, and news between the two.

Another function of the fool which has been suggested by some critics is "as an intermediary between the stage and the auditorium" (Welsford xii). His proximity in status and in temperament to the audience bridges the gap between them and the "aristocratic or romantic main characters ... " (Weimann 238). This familiar relationship has its source in the historical development of the fool from the communal ritual: as Robert Weimann says, "no actor stands so clearly on the threshold between the play and the community occasion" such as the Fool Festival, where he "became a kind of M. C.", and the morality plays, in which "his processional and organizational functions live on in the Vice."

These functions are still reflected in the

frequent songs and asides of the

Shakespearean fools or clowns who, like

the Fool in Lear, retain, for example, a

heightened awareness both of the audience

and of their own role ••.• (Weimann 43-44)

73 These theatrical traditions, plus his position as objective outsider and licensed commentator, allow the

Shakespearean fool to take on a choric role as well, as

" .•. a means of conveying necessary information to the audience--an important function which was formerly part of the Vice's role'' (Busby 31). A real-life source of this choric function springs from the license of the domestic fool to comment with impunity on events and discussions, so that the stage fool also takes on "the minor but effective part of commentator--a role compared by

Coleridge with that of the chorus in the ancient classic drama" (Busby 38). In King Lear especially the Fool acts

"as a sort of chorus, making the central situation clearer by commenting on it more intelligently than the other characters .... "

His jokes, riddles,and scraps of rhyme,

and his endless digs at Lear's high-minded

folly, ranging from mere derision to a

sort of melancholy poetry •.. are like a

trickle of sanity running through the

play, a reminder that somewhere or other

in spite of the injustices, cruelties,

intrigues, deceptions and

misunderstandings that are being enacted

here, life is going on much as usual.

(Orwell 157)

74 Welsford claims that Lear's Fool is "a commentator whose

words furnish important clues to the interpretation of a

difficult play" (256). Keats agrees, noting in the margin

of his copy of Hazlitt's book

And is it really thus? Or as it has

appeared to me? Does not the Fool by his

very levity give a finishing-touch to the

pathos; making what without him would be

within our heart-reach nearly

unfathomable. The Fool's words are merely

the simplest translation of Poetry as high

as Lear's. (Arden lvii)

Gareth Evans explains that the Fool's choric role is a natural development of his character:

Simply because no true Fool is completely

committed to the world within which the

actions of the plays are placed. The

Fool, in a way, is an ideal us ; he

represents that part of us which does not

identify with characters or situations,

but sits back and is able to see behind

illusion. But it is the uncommitted part

of us in an idealized form which the Fool

represents. His is the wisdom we would

like to have, and if we had it not only

would we be able to deal clearly with the

actions of a great play, but, perhaps more

75 pertinently, we would be able to deal more

certainly with our own real infected

world, and purge ourselves of our own

folly. (154)

Feste's final song, Lavache's satirical comments between major scenes, the Fool's prophecy--all these exemplify the fool's role as chorus.

As part of this role, the fool can often make some very revealing statements about other characters, or, by acting as a foil, can cause them to reveal themselves,

... as Feste provides occasional choric

commentary on the whole pattern of

character hypocrisy, so Lavache, albeit

less consciously, performs this service in

All's Well That Ends Well. (Champion

109)

A certain character's reaction to the fool can tell us something about him. For example, Touchstone and Jacques complement each other in their incongruous appearance in the forest and their temperament. Jacques' favorable reaction to the fool causes us to like the melancholic-­ his sense of humor, his appreciation of Touchstone's wit, his interest in his welfare are all positive qualities.

Feste's lively exchange of pleasantries with Viola reveals her wit and her good nature (III. i.), with Olivia, her patience and affectionate nature (I. v.). The fool acts as a foil to Malvolio: the Puritan's reaction in Act I,

76 scene v, demonstrates his lack of humor, his self­ importance, and his role as kill-joy in the play's festival atmosphere. Elsewhere, the natures of other characters may be revealed by the fool's commenting about them. Lavache makes some very telling remarks about both

Bertram and Paroles, revealing the former as a coward and a lecher (III. ii. 39-43 and IV. v. 97) and the latter as a fool and a knave (II. iv. 33-34 and V. ii. 6).In King

Lear the Fool plays an vital role in pointing out Lear's lack of insight, his selfishness, and his misjudgment.

Thus in various ways, the chorus-like fool provides perspective on the action and on the other characters, helping to reveal their natures, attitudes, values as well as providing humor.

Humorous juxtaposition is one method which affords the kind of new perspective on events and on characters associated with the fool, who habitually attacks the basic assumptions of his audience. The ironic interchanging of seeming opposites lies at the heart of verbal comic technique, and because all comedy is a manipulation of deceptive appearances, these juxtapositions are central to the plays' comedy itself. In King Lear, too, the Fool's way of juxtaposing and reversing polarities provides a darker humor, thereby intensifying the tragedy of Lear's downfall in a world turned topsy-turvy. In general, the fools embody or overtly discuss three important polarities

77 of which the Elizabethan audience was fond: fool/wiseman, fool/madman, fool/king.

The antithesis of the wiseman and the fool is an often-repeated joke; seemingly neither the fool nor his audience ever tired of this paradox, which all four fools represent. Moreover, Touchstone, Feste, and Lear's Fool voice this paradox in several maxims:

The more pity that fools may not speak

wisely what wise men do foolishly. (As

You Like It I. ii. 80-81)

Better a witty fool than a foolish wit.

(Twelfth Night I. v. 34)

Fools had ne'er less grace in a year,/For

wise men are grown foppish. (King Lear I.

iv 170-171)

This antithesis is reiterated many times in King Lear , emphasizing the actual exchange of roles between the Fool and Lear. In fact, often when the Fool poses this polarity, the identity of the fool and the wiseman is unsure or is deliberately left ambiguous:

.• the Fool will stay,/And let the wise man

fly. (King Lear II. iv. 81-82)

Here's a night pities neither wise man nor

fools. (King Lear III. ii. 12-13)

Marry, here's grace and a codpiece; that's

a wise man and a fool. (40-41)

78 The paradox of the wise fool and this continual turn about

between the fool and the wiseman cue us, just as they urge

the characters, to question our often erroneous

assumptions about who is wise and who foolish.

When the fool, who professionally acts "mad," is

juxtaposed with a madman, still more confusion about roles

results. Feste's scene with the "mad" Malvolio is a

multi-layered paradox: a "fool" who is wise counsels an

alleged "madman" who is actually sane but very foolish.

This puzzle is foreshadowed in Feste's jest on

drunkenness: "He is but mad yet, madonna, and the fool

shall look to the madman" (Twelfth Night I. v. 138-139).

The scene between Feste and Malvolio allows the fool to

play with assumptions about the polarity between

appearance and reality, wit and folly, sanity and

madness.

Malvolio: "I am as well in my wits, fool,

as thou art."

Feste: "But as well? Then you are mad

indeed, if you be no better in your wits

than a fool." (IV. ii. 91-93)

Despite Feste's jest, Malvolio would be better off if his

wits were as well-ordered as the fool's. The festival world of Twelfth Night has reached its final absurdity when the line between sanity and madness disappears:

"Look to be well edified, when the fool delivers the madman" (V. i. 289-290).

79 In King Lear, absurdity becomes tragic in the Fool's final scenes in which all three polarities are combined, calling into question the stability of individual identity, the social hierarchy, and the boundaries between wisdom, folly and madness. The mad and seemingly merry

Fool hides his wisdom beneath an "antic disposition" which allows him, like Hamlet, to speak the truth; and while he is worldly wise, Lear, who should be wise, acts the fool.

Then when the Fool comes together with the ersatz lunatic

"Poor Tom" and the genuinely mad Lear, his own antic madness disappears. When contrasted with the madmen, he is clearly sane. "This cold night," the Fool says, "will turn us all to fools and madmen" (King Lear III. iv.

78-79). But although the horror of the wild night on the heath has driven others insane, it has made his wisdom and sanity spring forth from behind his guise of folly.

The third antithesis--the fool and the king--is developed from the Fool's first appearance when the special relationship between this fool and this king is established. The Fool soon makes us aware that the king has unwittingly changed places with him: "That such a king should play bo-peep/And go the fools among" (King

Lear I. iv. 180-181). Then, when the king is forced outside his normal context, as an outcast among the mad and the foolish, and when he finally crosses that boundary, himself becoming one of them, the dramatic power of these three polarities reaches a crescendo (III. iv.

80 and vi.). The interchanging of the wise, the foolish, and the mad, the king's victimization, and the breakdown of the social hierarchy--all these shocking conditions are manifestations of the world gone terribly wrong, thereby reflecting the unnaturalness of the events elsewhere in the play. The startling role-changes provide a learning experience for the king and for us, asking that we reexamine our assumptions about the structure of the world and about the stability of our own identities.

In addition to drawing attention to these evocative polarities, the wise fool's function as truth-teller lends him the power to reveal truth about the world by making people laugh at their disordered selves, making him a lightning-rod for the development of various themes, including the theme of self-knowledge. Because the fool stands slightly outside the action, he has an ability to see the truth objectively and to tell what he sees.

Whether in comedy or in tragedy, the intelligent fool's chosen tool, (available to him as an outsider and a privileged critic) is irony. His ironic word play and sardonic criticism not only provide humor, but also make a peremptory claim on his listeners' intelligence. In his role as critical truth-teller, using irony, deflation and parody, the fool exposes the self-importance, affectation, hypocrisy or delusion of the world around him.

Hence, the fool unmasks vanity, punctures the inflated ego, and ridicules boastfulness. For example, Feste

81 suggests that Malvolio shake off his self-satisfied sanctimony: "God send you, sir, a speedy infirmity, for the better increasing your folly! (Twelfth Night I. v.

76). And Lavache mercilessly shows Parolles the exact worth of his character and his service:

Marry, you are the wiser man; for many a

man's tongue shakes out his master's

undoing. To say nothing, to do nothing,

to know nothing, and to have nothing, is

be a great part of your title, which is

within a very little of nothing. (II. iv.

22-26)

It is unlikely, however, that Parolles can benefit from the fool's truth, since he is able to reassure himself that his critic is only a fool: "Go to, thou art a witty fool; I have found thee" (II. iv. 31). But Lavache adeptly turns this appellation back onto the braggart:

Did you find me in your self, sire, or

were you taught to find me? •.• The search,

sir, was profitable; and much fool may

you find in you, even to the world's

pleasure and the increase of laughter.

(32-35)

That criticism, however apt, comes from a fool protects both the fool and those unwilling to hear the truth.

Touchstone's extempore rhyme pokes fun at the romantic affectation (as well as the jogging meter) of Orlando's

82 poetry (III. ii.). Later he refers to the contemporary argument that poets are liars, taking a serious literary debate and translating it into simple jesting:

.•• for the truest poetry is the most

feigning, and lovers are given to poetry;

and what they swear in poetry may be said

as lovers they do feign. (III. iii.)

Both Touchstone and Lavache parody court etiquette, revealing the foppery and artificiality inherent there.

The former reduces the elegant and mannered life at court to a list of trivial achievements:

I have trod a measure; I have flattered a

lady; I have been politic with my

friends, smooth with my enemy; I have

undone three tailors; I have had four

quarrels, and like to have fought one.

(As You Like It V. iv 43-46)

The latter, too, derides the level of accomplishment needed to be successful at court:

Truly, madam, if God have lent a man any

manners he may easily put it off at

court: he that cannot make a leg, put

off's cap, kiss his hand, and say

nothing, has neither leg, hands lip not ' cap; and indeed such a fellow, to say

precisely, were not for the court; but for

83 me, I have an answer will serve all men.

(All's Well That Ends Well II. ii. 8-13)

While Bertram and Parolles expect to climb the court's social ladder and to achieve great heights, "Lavache bluntly proclaims that the key to success at court is fashionable time-serving .•. " (Champion 110). Lavache sees courtliness "as a verbal trick" which he demonstrates with his all-purpose comment "0 Lord, sir!" Affectation proliferates among the comic villains as well as the misguided heroes, and the fool's laughter helps to show how easily affectation becomes hypocrisy, which Charney rightly calls the most serious character flaw in comedy

(Shakespeare's Comedy 60). Hypocrisy and dishonorable behavior--at court, within the church, and between friends--provide suitable grist for the fool's comic mill.

But if you swear by that that is not, you

are not forsworn. No more was this

knight, swearing by his honour, for he

never had any; or if he had, he had sworn

it away before ever he saw those pancakes

or that mustard. (As You Like It I. ii. 70-74)

Whether Touchstone is talking about a particular individual or not, his comment clearly indicts the court of Old Frederick. Like comedy, tragedy has its share of

84 pretenders, and the Fool tries to impress this truth upon

Lear:

That sir, which serves and seeks for

gain,/And follows but for form,/Will pack,

when it begins to rain,/And leave thee in

the storm. (II. iv. 77-80)

Feste makes a similar indictment both of those churchmen who do not fulfill their obligation, and of hypocritical friends who lull others into a false sense of self.

Well, I'll put it on, and I will dissemble

myself in't, and I would I were the first

that ever dissembled in such a gown.

(Twelfth Night IV. ii. 4-6)

Marry, sir, they praise me, and make an

ass of me. (V. i. 16)

Thus the fool, through wit that does not lessen the impact of his criticism, explodes the self-satisfaction, pretense. and hypocrisy of others, and in doing so voices the critical need for self-knowledge.

In fact, as Northrop Frye states: the purpose of comedy is "not to condemn evil, but to ridicule a lack of self-knowledge" ("Argument" 81). And this certainly seems to be true of Shakespearean comedy. Self-knowledge is a great virtue in Shakespeare's plays, and the progression from self-deception to self-knowledge is an important theme in many of them.

85 Shakespeare's comic perspective posits an

ideal of humility, self-knowledge, and

forgiveness •... Shakespearean comedy tries

to lead the inevitably flawed characters

through exposure and humiliation to a

humble awareness and acknowledgement of

their common folly. Such treatment

suggests that folly is not reprehensible

but forgivable, not monstrous but

universal. The bondage to be escaped in

Shakespearean comedy is not folly, which

is inescapable, but the refusal to

acknowledge it. Acknowledging his folly

liberates the wise fool from excessive

reason, complete self-determination, and

arrogant self-righteousness. (Hassel 3)

The heroes in the comedies as well as in the tragedies often do not know themselves, and the movement of the plays follows their progress from ignorance to full self­ knowledge. Bradbrook calls this "the great comic theme of

Growing Up" (Growth and Structure 79). In tragedy, a lack of self-knowledge becomes evil when the results bring about the destruction of an individual or upset the natural social order. The fools' favorite paradox of the wise fool is a perfect vehicle for expressing the crucial need for self-knowledge. A fool with his double vision emblematizes the Socratic irony: "The only thing I know

86 is that I know nothing." Touchstone has his own version of this ironic aphorism: "The fool doth think he is wise,

but the wiseman knows himself to be a fool" (V. i. 30-31).

Characters such as Malvolio, Bertram, and Lear suffer from a lack of self-knowledge, an inability to see their faults, and an inflated sense of their own importance or power. The plays in which they appear are lessons in growing up which force them to see their folly. In comedy, they are given an opportunity to change; in tragedy, the epiphanic achievement of self-knowledge is an end in itself. Of all the characters in the plays, the fool has the greatest degree of self-knowledge because he recognizes that he, like all human beings, is foolish and vulnerable; hence, he has taken the first step toward wisdom. Feste expresses his own clear sense of self in an apostrophe to his muse:

Wit, an't be thy will, put me into good

fooling! Those wits, that think they have

thee, do very oft prove fools; and I that

am sure I lack thee, do very oft pass for

a wise man .••. (Twelfth Night I. v.

30-34)

When, disguised as Sir Tapas, he tells Malvolio that

" .•. there is no darkness, but ignorance," he could well mean ignorance of self, since the steward's suffering is caused by this fault (IV. ii. 42-43). Lavache shows his own devotion to self-knowledge by making sure everyone

87 knows the truth about themselves and others--truth often

voiced in the most bitter and unpalatable denunciations

spoken by any of the comic fools. This "shrewd and

unhappy knave" seems the least worried of the fools I deal with here about protecting himself and his position in the

Rossillion household: "A prophet I, madam; and I speak

the truth the next way" (I. iii. 56-57). According to the

Arden text, "the next way" means "the nearest way"; he is

perhaps claiming to be inspired by "direct contact with

the Divine Author of truth." Another possible

interpretation, especially since the Countess has just accused him of being " a foul-mouth'd and calumnious knave" (54), is that he speaks brusquely and concisely, without bothering to soften or obscure his point. Like the fools in the comedies, but even more insistently and ungently, Lear's Fool emphasizes the need for self­ knowledge; he is, in fact, a self-appointed guide for

Lear's journey toward enlightenment.

Sometimes bitter, sometimes gentle, the fools teach even as they make others laugh--or wince. In comedy and tragedy alike, teaching is their forte. Not only does the fool provide a model for emulation with respect to self-knowledge, but he also tries to help others discover the truth about themselves or about the world in which they move. Under the guise of entertainment, the fool has latitude to express truth in an effort to educate his superiors. He understands human nature; the recognition

88 of his own folly facilitates his perception, and he pursues his teaching vocation in the face of obtuseness, indifference, and threats.

Touchstone, an sham teacher, provides Gorin and

William with an education in pretension and pomposity as he spouts mock-learned phrases: ''Learn of the wise and perpend" (As You Like It III. ii. 64-65). Unlike the fool of Arden, Feste teaches worthwhile lessons with compassion and concern for individuals. Olivia, Orsino, and Malvolio receive his teaching with varying degrees of responsiveness. Feste shows Olivia the error of her self-imposed, exaggerated mourning for her brother by proving her a fool to sorrow for a brother in heaven, and she accepts the lesson and comes to understand her own foolishness (I. v.). Later Feste attempts to persuade

Orsino out of his persistent, even stubborn, pursuit of

Olivia.

Now the melancholy god protect thee; and

the tailor make thy doublet of changeable

taffeta, for thy mind is a very opal. I

would have men of such constancy put to

sea, that their business might be every

thing and their intent every where; for

that's it that always makes a good voyage

of nothing. (II. iv. 73-78)

The Duke is constant in his love and, consequently, miserable, so Feste tries to tell him to be more flexible.

89 One cannot hope, Feste implies, to make a successful enterprise when there are no prospects. However, Orsino is not receptive to the lesson. The fool sympathizes with both Olivia and Orsino, but he knows that their very human persistence is unhealthy, and tries to educate them. It is clear from Malvolio's final words that, despite Feste's best efforts, his humiliating lesson has not changed his perception of himself. He overreacts to the practical joke with vows of vengeance which make him look ridiculous still. Unlike Feste, Lavache teaches without emotional attachment to anyone, and, like Thersites' carping,

Lavache's critical remarks are very sharp and bitter.

Lavache's is a generalized teaching through satire which is not directed at any individual, but at the audience, reiterating the play's themes such as self-deception and cowardice.

Although an actual progression in the development of the fool from Touchstone to Lear's Fool cannot be documented, the traditional qualities of the fool, from the ancient ritual to the contemporary court fool, combined with the multiple functions which occur in the comedies, blend, creating in Lear's Fool the ultimate critic and teacher. This Fool possesses the qualities of the others, but in him they are amalgamated and intensified into a quintessential example of the fool character. Lear's Fool, appearing in a tragic venue and prominent in the psychological action, necessarily

90 transcends his comic brethren. Like Touchstone, whose devotion to his mistress causes him to follow her into banishment, Lear's Fool follows his master into the brutal world. Feste's gentle counselling is turned by Lear's

Fool into insistent lessons in the dangers of self-deception and the insensibility of the world by adopting Lavache's kind of moral relativity, refractive irony, and negative view of mankind. Combining all these qualities, the Fool becomes a devoted servant, moral instructor, and bitter social critic •

.•• Lear looks for the Fool as an anodyne

to the unpleasantness with Oswald. Like

the audience .•• Lear expects to be diverted

and entertained. But Shakespeare sends

Lear a fool of a different sort .•. a

speaker of truth--who specifically

counters the expectations of both Lear and

the audience. And it is clear from Lear's

reaction that the Fool plays a new and

unwelcome role ••.. Kent reminds both Lear

and the audience that "this is not

altogether fool"--that is, that there is a

disparity between expectation and

realization, between the fool who

mindlessly entertains and the fool who

speaks the truth. (Lippincott 249)

91 This new role for the fool is essential to the development of King Lear because its major psychological themes include emotional immaturity and self-deception.

King Lear is not only the story of political upheaval--the destruction of a society--but also one of psychological upheaval--the destruction and regeneration of Lear's ego. The drama examines Lear's loss of identity, his discovery that the"universe is harsh and indifferent, and the reconstruction of Lear as a new, more fully developed personality. A study of Lear's learning experience facilitates a deeper understanding of the character and function of the Fool and the special quality of his relationship to Lear as his teacher.

Danby's claim about him seems to me valid: "The Fool, I think, stands for the unillumined head--the intellect--as

Lear is the soul, and Cordelia the spirit" (388). The

Fool schools Lear through a series of lessons, using refractive irony to teach the king about himself and about the true nature of the world and the uncaring universe.

He is both an instrument of Lear's learning experience and a commentator on lessons he receives from others.

Because the Fool possesses the exact qualities the

Lear lacks and needs, he is well-qualified to educate the king. Lear's character flaws are completely revealed in

Act I, scene 1: he is ego-centered, aggressive, violence-prone, autocratic, irrational and subjective, immoderate, unwise. All these faults are clearly

92 demonstrated in Lear's reaction to Cordelia's betrayal and then to Kent's reproach. Lear loses his temper violently, irrationally; and, in an outburst of passion and reckless as well as ill-advised actions, he jeopardizes his kingdom and his happiness. His favorite daughter and his faithful servant banished, his unnatural daughters favored: all this because his will was crossed. The qualities which

Lear so evidently lacks and desperately needs--logic, rationality, objectivity--these are the very traits which the Fool tries to teach him.

Lear should be wise, thoughtful, farseeing, but in the first part of the play, it is the Fool who possesses these qualities. Although Lear is knowledgeable in the sense of being well-read, he has not developed his potential for analysis of himself and of the world. He has not reached the level of emotional maturity and of knowledge about human nature which might be expected of a man his age. As the Fool tells him, "Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise" (I. v. 44-45). As Lear gains his wisdom through a painful process which causes him to lose even his sanity, the Fool helps him through this process, and, though unable to lessen the pain, forces him to see the truth.

The truth the Fool tells, although obscure and satirical, hidden in jests and obscene puns, is reliable.

In songs and riddles, he points out Lear's errors and predicts the outcome, accurately. He warns Lear many

93 times and tries to teach him to see the world objectively.

For example, after Lear has given away his kingdom, his crown, his wealth, his power, the Fool gibes: "I can tell you why a snail has a house ••. Why to put's head in; not to give away to his daughters, and leave his horns without a case" (I. v. 24-27). Lear wishes to abdicate his responsibilities to this kingdom, yet, at the same time, retain the honor and power to which he is accustomed. The fool, understanding human nature and viewing the world realistically, knows this will be impossible. A professional victim, he has suffered from a lack of power, existing on the sufferance and whim of others, so he can easily foresee the vulnerability of a king without power and explain why Lear's daughters behave unnaturally:

Fathers that wear rags do make their

children blind/But Fathers that bear bags

shall see their children kind,/Fortune

that arrant whore, ne'er turns the key to

the poor. (II. iv. 46-51)

Through this refractive irony the Fool explains that materialism is the real value of society, not love and familial respect. While Lear held the wealth and power, he received the proper respect and professions of love from his two elder daughters; however, after they gain their inheritances, Goneril and Regan no longer need to maintain their pretense of filial affection. (In fact, they reason that Lear's foolishness in believing their protestations

94 and in rejecting his favored daughter proves that he is unfit to rule and needs their restraint and their guidance.)

The Fool can also explain why Lear is deserted by his followers:

••• there's not a nose among twenty but can

smell him that's stinking. Let go thy

hold when a great wheel runs down a hill,

lest it break they neck with following.

But the great one that goes upward, let

him draw them after .••

That sir which serves and seeks for

gain,/And followed but for form,/Will pack

when it begins to rain/And leave thee in

the storm. (II. iv. 67-77)

Again using refractive irony, he conveys the actual expedient and remorseless values of society: follow the successful and abandon the powerless. In warning Kent against loyalty, the Fool is teaching Lear what he may expect from others.

In Act III, scene vi, the Fool makes his last appearance. In this scene Lear has begun to understand the Fool's teachings, and, despite his despairing rage, shows a potential for self-revelation and objective insight. And, although he is insane, his perception of the world and himself is "saner" than when he had his wits. As Edgar puts it, Lear's words--like the Fool's

95 earlier--are "Reason in madness" (IV. vi. 172). Lear now perceives the society's selfishness and lack of compassion: "0, I have ta'en/Too little care of this!

Take physic, pomp;/Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,/That thou mayst shake the superflux to them/And show the heavens more just" (III. iv. 32-36). Confronted with

Edgar, disguised as the naked, shivering beggar Poor Tom, he also understands the true nature of man:

Is man no more than this? Consider him

well./Thou ow'st the worm no silk, the

beast no hide,/The sheep no wool, the cat

no perfume .•• /Thou art the thing itself;

unaccomadated man is/no more but such a

poor, bare, forked animal as thou art.

(III. iv. 97-102)

Surrounded all his life with the accoutrements of wealth and power, Lear remains ignorant of his own humanity until, in Poor Tom, he sees himself stripped of everything and cast out: "Go to, they are not men o' their words: they told me I was everything; 'tis a lie, I am not ague-proof" (IV. vi. 105-107).Lear has becomes his own fool, calling himself "the great Fool of Fortune," performing on "this great stage of fools." According to

Welsford, "Lear's tragedy is the investing of the King with motley" (271). And with an assumption of the Fool's

"antic disposition," Lear also assumes his language and his teaching role.

96 In his amazing encounter with the blind

Gloucester, the mad Lear has something of

the wit, the penetration, the quick

repartee of the court-jester. From the

realistic point of view it is no doubt a

dramatic flaw that Shakespeare does not

account more clearly for the fate of the

real man in motley; but his disappearance

was a poetic necessity, for the king

having lost everything, including his

wits, has now himself become the Fool. He

has touched bottom, he is an outcast from

society, he has no longer any private axe

to grind, so he now sees and speaks truth.

(Welsford 266)

That he does this is evidenced both in Lear's assumption of the fool's language and his treatment of the blind

Gloucester on the heath where the mad king picks up the

Fool's "handy-dandy" in his lesson on the world's injustice:

A man may see how this world goes with no

eyes. Look with thine ears; see how yond

justice rails upon yond simple thief.

Hark, in thine ear: change places, and,

handy-dandy, which is the justice, which

is the thief? (IV. vi. 152-156)

97 Like the fool, Lear's speech is a mixture of irrelevancies and social criticism which achieves a sort of rational consistency, and his new position as victim and outsider, mirroring the Fool's vulnerability, allows him the perspective with which to see the degraded depths to which men and society can sink. When Lear attains this insight into the world and himself, the vehicle for the learning process--the Fool--becomes superfluous.

98 Ducdame, ducdame, ducdame'' (As You Like

It II. v. 51)

CONCLUSION

In King Lear the fool reaches his apotheosis

(Welsford 271): as the King loses his crown, the Fool attains his. The rich complexity of this ultimate delineation of Shakespeare's wise fool is made possible by contributions from many sources: the antic creature who acted out the inhibitions of his community; the social institution of the polished court entertainer; the literary and the dramatic conventions of the Elizabethan age; and, most significantly, from Shakespeare's own development and his maximum use of the character, exhausting the interesting possibilities, and exploiting fully its potential for integration and dramatic-thematic function. Thus, I agree with Enid Welsford's conclusion that

•.• the fool in cap and bells ••• survives in

our imagination because Shakespeare

numbered him among his dramatis personae

99 and used him as a vehicle for his

profoundest reflections on the nature of

human pain and human beatitude. (273)

These profound reflections find their greatest embodiment in the sophisticated and complex character of Lear's

Fool. After King Lear, Shakespeare creates very few fools, and those have little importance to the development of the play in which they appear. In fact, after the

Renaissance, characterization of the fool virtually disappears from the drama for many years.

I began this study because of the great appeal that

Shakespeare's wise fools have for me, both intellectually and emotionally. Their seemingly universal appeal stems from our psychological need for us to have someone tell the truth and take the blow, and also from a sociological need for the "stand-up comic" who "physics the world" with social and political satire. These two needs find expression in the drama, where the fool fulfills still another constructive function as spokesman for the feelings of his audience. When I tire of Orlando's love prate, Touchstone leavens it. When Orsino's lovesick depression irritates me, Feste speaks my mind. When Lear behaves irrationally, trusting his untrustworthy daughters, his Fool cries out my warning. Thus the fools speak not only to me, but for me. The fool's keen insight empowers him to shake our preconceived ideas about ourselves and the world; his playful way of expressing

100 these truths enables us to accept with some equanimity our reality turned topsy-turvy. Because the fool is a symbol and advocate of self-knowledge, he is a joy to those willing to laugh at their own folly, an anathema to the self-satisfied. Those who wish to learn, the fool can teach: as Shakespeare demonstrates, through folly comes wisdom.

Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit?

There is more hope of a fool than of him.

(Proverbs 12)

101 WORKS CITED

Barber, C.L. Shakespeare's Festive Comedies. Princeton,

New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1972.

Billington, Sandra. A Social History of the Fool. New

York: St. Martins Press, 1984.

--"Suffer Fools Gladly' the Fool in Medieval England

and the Play Mankind." Williams 36-54.

Bradbrook, M. C. The Growth and Structure of Elizabethan

Comedy. Berkeley: University of California Press,

1965. --Shakesoeare the Craftsman. London: Chatto & Windus, 1969.

Bradley, A. C. "Feste the Jester." A Miscellany.

207-217. London: Macmillan, 1929.

--"King Lear." Kermode 83-117.

Burke, Kenneth. "Psychology and Form." Criticism: The

Major Statements. Ed. Charles Kaplan. New York: St.

Martin's Press, 1986.

Busby, Olive Mary. Studies in the Development of the Fool

in Elizabethan Drama. Folcroft, PA: Folcroft Press,

1969.

Campbell, Oscar. J. Shakespeare's Satire. New York:

Oxford University Press, 1943.

Champion, Larry S. The Evolution of Shakespeare's Comedy.

Cambridge: Harvard Universtiy Press, 1970.

102 Charney, Maurice. Comedy High and Low. New York: Oxford

University Press, 1978.

--Shakespeare's Comedy. New York: New York Literary

Forum , 1 9 8 0 •

Danby, John F. "The Fool and Handy-Dandy." Dean

335-344.

Davenport, W. A. Fifteenth Century English Drama: the

early Moral Plays and their literary relations.

Totowa, N. J.: Rowan and Lillefued, 1982.

Elam, Keir. Shakespeare's Universe of Discourse:

Language-games in the Comedies. Cambridge

University Press, 1984.

Evans, Gareth Lloyd. "Shakespeare's Fools: The Shadow

and the Substance of Drama." Bradbury 142-159.

Frye, Northrop. "The Argument of Comedy." Dean 79-89.

--"K"~ng Lear: The Tragedy of Isolation." Kermode

265-269."

Frye, Roland Mushat. Shakespeare: The Art of the

Dramatist. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1970.

Goldsmith, Robert. H. "Touchstone: Critic in Motley."

PMLA (1 9 53 ) : 8 8 4 - 8 9 5 .

--Wise Fools in Shakespeare. Michigan State

University Press. 1955.

Gordon, George. Shakespearean Comedy and Other Studies.

Ed. Sir Edmund Chambers. Oxford University Press,

1965.

103 Hassel, R. Chris, Jr. Faith and Folly in Shakespeare's

Romantic Comedies. Athens: University of Georgia

Press, 1980.

Hotson, Leslie. Shakespeare's Motley. London: Rupert

Hart-Davis, 1952.

Kaiser, Walter Jacob. Praisers of Folly: Erasmus,

Rabelais, Shakespeare. Cambridge: Harvard

University Press, 1963.

Kott, Jan. "King Lear, or Endgame" Kermode 270-292.

Lippincott, H. F. "King Lear and the Fools of Robert

Armin." Shakespeare Quarterly 26 (1975): 243-253.

Luke, Mary M. Gloriana: The Years of Elizabeth I. New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghigan, Inc., 1973. Mahood, Molly Maureen. Shakespeare's Wordplay. London:

Methuen, 1957. Orwell, George. "Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool." Kermode

150-168.

Shakespeare, William. All's Well That Ends Well. Ed. G.

K. Hunter. The Arden Shakespeare. London: Methuen

& Co., Ltd., 1967.

--As You Like It. Ed. Agnes Latham. The Arden Shakespeare. New York: Methuen & Co., Ltd., 1957. --Hamlet. Ed. Edward Hubler. The Signet Classic

Shakespeare. New York: New American Library, 1963.

--King Lear. Ed. Kenneth Muir. The Arden Shakespeare. New York: Methuen & Co., Ltd., 1964. --Merchant of Venice. Ed . .John Russell Brown. The

104 Arden Shakespeare. New York: Methuen & Co., Ltd.,

1955. --Twelfth Night. Ed. J. M. Lothran and T. W. Clark.

The Arden Shakespeare. New York: Methuen & Co.,

Ltd., 1975.

Swain, Barbara. Fools and Folly During the Middle Ages

and Renaissance. Folcroft, PA: Folcroft Press,

1969.

Swortzell, Lowell S. Here Come the Clowns. New York:

Viking Press, 1978.

Weimann, Robert. Shakespeare and Popular Traditions in

Theater. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,

1978.

Welsford, Enid. The Fool: his social and literary

history. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1961.

Zijderveld, Anton C. Reality in a Looking-glass:

rationality through analysis of traditional folly.

Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982.

105 WORKS CONSULTED

Armin, Robert. Fools and Jesters. London: Shakespeare

Society, 1842.

Barton, Anne. "As You Like It and Twelfth Night:

Shakesperae's sense of an Ending." Bradbury 160-180.

Bradley, A. C. "King Lear." Kermode 83-117. Charlton, M. B. Shakespearian Comedy. London: Methuen & Co., Ltd., 1938.

Chute, Marchette. Shakespeare of London. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1957. Dean, Leonard F., ed. Shakespeare: Modern Essays in

Criticism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1957.

Empson, William. "The Fool in Lear." Swanee Review 57

(1949): 177-214. French, Carolyn S. "Shakespeare's Folly": King Lear."

Shakespeare Quarterly 10 (1959): 523-529.

Hume, Robert D. "Individuation and Development of

Character Through Language in Antony and Cleopatra."

Shakespeare Quarterly 24 (1973): 280-300.

Jenkins, Harold. "As You Like It." Dean 114-133.

Kermode, Frank. Shakespeare: King Lear. London:

Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1969.

Knight, G. Wilson. "Great Creating Nature": An Essay on

The Winter's Tale." Dean 423-455.

--"King Lear and the Comedy of the Grotesque."

Kermode 118-136.

106 Nevo, Ruth. "Shakespeare's Comic Remedies." Charney,

Shakespeare's Comedy, 3-16.

Nuttal, A. D. "Two Unassailable Men." Bradbury 210-240.

Salinger, Leo. "Falstaff and the Life of Shadows."

Charney, Shakespeare's Comedy 185-205.

Siegal, Paul N. "Malvolio: Comic Puritan Automaton."

Charney, Shakespeare's Comedy 217-229.

Stroup, Thomas B. "Cordelia and the Fool." Shakespeare

Quarterly 12 (1961): 127-132.

Summers, Joseph H. "The Masks of Twelfth Night." Dean

134-143.

Weiss, Theodore. The Breath of Clowns and Kings

(Shakespeare's Early Comedies and Histories). New

York: Atheneum, 1939.

Willeford, William. The Fool and His Scepter.

Northwestern University Press, 1969.

Williams, Paul V. A., ed. The Fool and the Trickster:

studies in honour of Enid Welsford. Totowa, N.J.:

Rowan and Lellefued, 1979.

Winslow, Ola Elizabeth. Low Comedy as a Structural

Elements in English Drama. Folcroft PA: The

Folcroft Press, Inc., 1969.

107