Shakespearean fool
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
The Shakespearean fool is a recurring character type in the works of William Shakespeare.
Shakespearean fools are usually clever peasants or commoners that use their wits to outdo people of higher social standing. In this sense, they are very similar to the real fools, and jesters of the time, but their characteristics are greatly heightened for theatrical effect. They are largely heterogeneous. The "groundlings" (theatre-goers that were too poor to pay for seats and thus stood in the front by the stage) that frequented the Globe Theatre were more likely to be drawn to these Shakespearian fools. However they were also favoured by the nobility. Most notably, Queen Elizabeth I was a great admirer of the popular fool, Richard Tarlton. For the Bard himself, however, actor Robert Armin may have proved vital to the cultivation of the fool character in his plays.
List of Shakespearean fools
- Touchstone in As You Like It
- The Fool in King Lear
- Trinculo in The Tempest
- Costard in Love's Labours Lost
- Feste in Twelfth Night
- Launcelot Gobbo in The Merchant of Venice
- Lavache in All's Well That Ends Well
- A Fool in Timon of Athens
- Nick Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream
- Thersites in Troilus and Cressida
- Clown in Othello
- Dromio of Syracuse and Dromio of Ephesus in The Comedy of Errors
- Speed in Two Gentlemen of Verona
- Launce in Two Gentlemen of Verona
- The Gravediggers in Hamlet
- Citizen in Julius Caesar
- Pompey in Measure for Measure
- Clown in The Winter's Tale
- Grumio in The Taming of the Shrew
- The Porter in Macbeth
- Peter in Romeo and Juliet
- Cloten in Cymbeline
- Falstaff in Henry IV
Fools described
Trinculo
Trinculo is considered to be a jester, but as he is only seen with the Stephano and Caliban, he does not have the stage time to act out the qualifications of a traditional fool. At the end of the play, however, it is revealed that he works for both Stephano and the King of Naples. He is a domestic buffoon, and is outfitted accordingly.
Launce and Speed
Speed is a clever and witty servant, while Launce is simple and pastoral. There is no mention of specific dress, or any indications of the two being a domestic fool or jester.
Feste
Feste is a hired and domestic fool for Olivia. He is referred to as "an allowed fool," "a set fool," and "the jester, that the Lady Olivia's father took much delight in." Feste claims that he wears "not motley" in his brain, so even though he dresses the part of the fool, he is not an idiot, and can see through the other characters. There is no other mention of his dress, other than what can be deduced from this quote.
Pompey – Measure for Measure
While this clown is the employee of a brothel, he can still be considered a domestic fool.
Costard
This clown is referred to as a "fool" in Act V, scene ii, but the word in this context simply refers to a silly man. He is not simple enough to be considered a natural fool, and not witty enough to be considered an artificial one. He is rather just a man from the country.
Launcelot Gobbo
Nowhere in the play does Gobbo do anything that qualifies him as an official fool or jester. Still, he is considered as such, perhaps because he is called a "patch" and a fool, and also because of his (and his father's) malapropisms ("This is the very defect of the matter sir," "Tears exhibit my tongue"). It is possible that these terms refer rather to the idea of the clown. Either way, Gobbo is proof that Shakespeare did not necessarily constantly discriminate in his qualifications of clowns, fools, and jesters.
Touchstone
Touchstone is a domestic fool belonging to the duke's brother Frederick, and is a natural fool ("Fortune makes Nature's natural the cutter-off of Nature's wit", "hath sent this natural for our whetstone"). Accordingly, he is often threatened with a whip, a method of punishment often used on people of this category.
Lavache
He is a domestic fool, similar to Touchstone. He is considered by modern terms one of Shakespeare's least funny clowns, as his speech is bitter and his wit dark.
Clown – The Winter's Tale
He is simply a country booby.
The Fool – King Lear
The Royal Shakespeare Company writes of the Fool:
There is no contemporary parallel for the role of Fool in the court of kings. As Shakespeare conceives it, the Fool is a servant and subject to punishment ('Take heed, sirrah – the whip ' 1:4:104) and yet Lear's relationship with his fool is one of friendship and dependency. The Fool acts as a commentator on events and is one of the characters (Kent being the other) who is fearless in speaking the truth. The Fool provides wit in this bleak play and unlike some of Shakespeare's clowns who seem unfunny to us today because their topical jokes no longer make sense, the Fool in King Lear ridicules Lear's actions and situation in such a way that audiences understand the point of his jokes. His 'mental eye' is the most acute in the beginning of the play: he sees Lear's daughters for what they are and has the foresight to see that Lear's decision will prove disastrous.
Writes Jan Kott, in Shakespeare Our Contemporary,
The Fool does not follow any ideology. He rejects all appearances, of law, justice, moral order. He sees brute force, cruelty and lust. He has no illusions and does not seek consolation in the existence of natural or supernatural order, which provides for the punishment of evil and the reward of good. Lear, insisting on his fictitious majesty, seems ridiculous to him. All the more ridiculous because he does not see how ridiculous he is. But the Fool does not desert his ridiculous, degraded king, and accompanies him on his way to madness. The Fool knows that the only true madness is to recognize this world as rational.
See also
