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Shakespeare's Wise Fool 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).
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