[In the essay below, Videbœk explores the dimensions of the Fool's character and states that the Fool understands the "human condition" and pities the characters in the play who suffer under the harsh conditions of Lear's world. Furthermore, Videbœk contends that the function of Lear's Fool is extended further than that of the clowns in Shakespeare's other plays.]

In Troilus and Cressida, Thersites' continuous exertions to create and maintain distance between house and stage through caustic commentary shows us a clown whose lack of compassion and empathy makes the comedy work. The audience needs this distance not to become distracted from the main points of the play. In King Lear, the Fool's biting jests result from the very opposite. Lear's Fool is a creature whose whole being is founded on understanding of the human condition and pity for those who cannot cope with the harsh realities of Lear's world. Where Thersites willingly isolates himself from human contact and does his best to ensure that bonds are broken and illusions rent, Lear's Fool, though biting, is always loyal, caring, and compassionate.

Lear's Fool in is the only clown in a major part found in a tragedy, and this fact adds new dimensions to him. Apart from this instance, Shakespeare has employed clowns only in minor parts in tragedies, and mainly used them to illuminate a turning point in the action. Lear's Fool certainly helps focus our attention on crucial turning points, but he has a much more expanded function, if not easy to pinpoint. In the great comedies where we find the other court jester clowns, their function is straightforward and not far different from that of the minor clowns. The mere sight of the clown is a signal to the audience, and we are ready to laugh before we even know what the jest will be, or at whom it will be directed. The nimble tongues of these clowns never bring them trouble more serious than a remote threat of banishment. Their mobility is great and fascinating, and they are welcome and enjoyed anywhere.

Not so Lear's Fool. He is so glued to Lear that he becomes an added dimension of Lear himself, and both he and Lear seem aware that this is so, if only unconsciously. Nimble though the Fool may be in body and tongue, his is not an unproblematic existence, and he is repeatedly threatened with whipping.¹ On the background of these repeated threats and his worsening circumstances, our laughter becomes constricted and may even disappear. Indeed, the Fool more often than not has to labor to extract laughter even from his master. Yet there is no doubt of Lear's attachment to him and our need for his presence. Lear's Fool is a court jester, and his essential function is no different from that of the court jesters in the comedies; he too brings forth the aspect of human folly and holds it up to ridicule. In the comedies, however, the target is broad and includes general ideas, but in the tragedy of King Lear the King's folly is the main target, and our involvement with the King becomes so close that laughter at him will be perceived as directed at ourselves also. Growing old and being unable to sound the depths of our fellow human beings are both conditions common to us all. Our understanding of these plights, and our involvement in Lear's fate which stems from it, can easily make us incapable of objectivity. Though we may feel uncomfortable about the Fool, we need him to keep our perspective on King Lear. The Fool as mediator between stage and audience is not always welcome to us, and though he is loved, the Fool's comments are not always welcome to Lear either; but as the real world fades from Lear's view and his sight is directed inwards in madness we come to see the Fool in a different light.

It can be debated whether the Fool is present in the first scene of the play, where Lear divides his kingdom and banishes Cordelia. The Fool does have many periods of silent presence on stage throughout the play, and it may be argued that this whole scene is one of them; if so, the bond between Lear and his Fool can be forged from the very beginning. But the Fool can serve a better purpose as a voice of reason rather than as an outcropping of Lear only, and therefore should not come on stage until he is called for. In the first scene, Cordelia herself serves the purpose of distinguishing reasonable from unreasonable and truth from lies, a function the Fool will take over once she departs for France. The clown-as-truth-teller is no new thing with Shakespeare, but the genuinely and deeply sad clown is.

The Fool is mentioned before we meet him: "Did my father strike my gentleman for chiding of his Fool?" asks Goneril, and labels this as another "gross crime" of her father's (I.iii.1-2, 5). Again in I.iv the Fool is mentioned before he appears. He is called for no less than four times, and the link between him and Cordelia is strongly pointed out:

Lear. But where's my Fool? I have not seen him this two days.

Knight. Since my young Lady's going into France, Sir, the Fool hath much pined away.

Lear. No more of that; I have noted it well.

(I.iv.69-73)

Apparently the mention of dinner triggers Lear's wish to see his Fool, presumably to be entertained during the meal, but the skirmish between Kent and Oswald makes both him and us forget the Fool momentarily. Therefore the effect is one of great surprise once the Fool comes up and makes himself "visible." Lear praises Kent and makes a kingly gesture of bestowing his favors on him and hiring him, but the Fool puts things back in perspective:

Lear. Now, my friendly knave, I thank thee: there's earnest of thy service.

Fool. Let me hire him too: here's my coxcomb.

Lear. How now, my pretty knave! how dost thou?

Fool. Sirrah, you were best take my coxcomb.

Kent. Why, Fool?

Fool. Why? for taking one's part that's out of favour.

(I.iv.91-97)

The Fool glides up unnoticed and, ignoring Lear and his friendly question, proceeds to demonstrate the lie of the land for Kent. Only when this is accomplished does he do the same for Lear:

How now, Nuncle! Would I had two coxcombs and two daughters!

Lear. Why, my boy?

Fool. If I gave them all my living, I'd keep my coxcombs myself. There's mine; beg another of thy daughters.

Lear. Take heed, sirrah: the whip.

Fool Truth is a dog must to kennel.

(I.iv.103-109)

The Fool implies, not untruthfully, that he has more to give away than Lear, if only his one coxcomb. Lear has decided to keep the outward show of kingship, but has given away the regal power to his daughters. The Fool offers to give away only the mark of his profession, his hood, and yet will keep his essence. The same sentiments are voiced later (189-191), when the Fool says: "[N]ow thou art an O without a figure. I am better than thou art now; I am a Fool, thou art nothing." He also keeps a firm grasp on the necessity to remain frugal in order to prosper, a piece of advice suited equally well to a pauper and a king:

Have more than thou showest,
Speak less than thou knowest,
Lend less than thou owest,
Ride more than thou goest,
Learn more than thou trowest,
Set less than thou throwest;
Leave thy drink and thy whore,
And keep in-a-door,
And thou shalt have more
Than two tens to a score. . . .
Can you make no use of nothing, Nuncle?
Lear. Why no, boy, nothing can be made out of nothing.

(I.iv.l16-130)

These three uses of "nothing" clearly recall the exchange between Cordelia and Lear in I.i (85-89). The echoes of Cordelia's speech in the Fool's lines serves to forge a bond of continuity between the two. The truly loving daughter is no longer with her father; his Fool, whose love is also great, has taken it upon himself to try to save Lear. The Fool's advice comes belatedly, however, as Lear has already sinned against all the commandments of rationality set up therein.

During this whole scene the Fool, in spite of threats of the whip, continues to press up to the fine line of Lear's tolerance. He calls Lear "Nuncle" and "my boy" (134), the same terms of endearment Lear uses for him, but in the same breath he also indirectly calls him a fool in one of the jingling rhymes he uses to get his points across (137-144). There is no doubt that of the two, Lear is the bitter fool.

The Fool also implies that Lear has entered into second childhood. He has "mad[e his] daughters [his] mothers" (168-169), and in the parallel of the egg and its two crowns (152-162) the Fool equates Lear with the meat of the egg, that which would become the chicken, but which is eaten here before its fulfillment. Lear's "bald crown" which used to bear the golden one, is the home of nothing; he has "pared [his] wit o'both sides and left nothing in the middle" (183-184). This continual prodding of Lear apparently pains the Fool: "I had rather be any kind o'thing than a fool; and yet I would not be thee, Nuncle" (181-183).

When Goneril enters, the Fool waxes daring and exploits her comments to further stress his point. Goneril is "the cuckoo" (213) which bit off the hedge-sparrow's head when there was no more need of food, and she is the one who blew out the light and left them "darkling" (215). She is also "the ass" (221), who sees the cart draw the horse. And to Lear's question: "Who is it that can tell me who I am?" the Fool replies: "Lear's shadow" (227-228). None of these parallels are flattering ones, and by his prodding the Fool fans the tempers of both father and daughter. Lear, insulted, leaves her house, and he forgets his Fool, both when he storms from the stage and finds half his knights gone and when he finally leaves in anger. Goneril sends him away:

You, sir, more knave than fool, after your master.
Fool. Nuncle Lear, Nuncle Lear! tarry, take the Fool with thee.
A fox, when one has caught her,
And such a daughter,
Should sure to the slaughter,
If my cap would buy a halter;
So the Fool follows after.

(I.iv.312-320)

When present, the Fool easily dominates the business on stage, making himself the center of the audience's attention because of the truths he delivers, and certainly also because of his physical agility.² This is the only Shakespearean court fool who stays attached to one master, and it would be a mistake not to let him make use of the court fool's traditional acrobatics, at least while he is still at court. Many of his speeches, particularly the rhymed ones, can be underscored by nimble skipping and jumping, especially once Goneril comes on stage, when he can hide behind Lear or Kent and pop out for a quick verbal salvo. His power of repartee is strongly linked to this physical aspect of his stage presence. When Lear and Goneril have their thunderous confrontation, the Fool has a span of almost one hundred lines of silence before he is literally thrown out. He could make use of this time by gradually becoming immobile as the confrontation sharpens, finally to cower in real fear when Lear leaves him, and then regain his mobility when he exits.

The short doggerel he uses as his exit line is a theatrically interesting thing. The Fool makes the entire action freeze while he steps out of the play, but not of his role, and addresses the audience directly. He has a similar effect in III.ii, where he ends the scene alone with the audience and delivers Merlin's prophecy (81-96). In both instances he serves as a lull, an eye of the storm, and creates an instance of breathing space before the next onslaught. In the third act we are in the midst of the actual storm scenes, but the tempest of tempers in the first act is a necessary prelude, an end to the Fool's comfortable existence and the beginning of his efforts to keep together the tattered remnants of Lear's reason.

The Fool of the first act is still a court jester, but the storm Goneril and Lear create between them forges him so close to Lear as to make them almost one. William Willeford says of the court fool:

The fool enriches the king as a symbol of the self by making a constant game of our tendency to take the symbol for granted. And when the king loses his power to symbolize an experience of the self, that experience is available by way of compensation through the fool and the dissolution of consciousness that he effects.³

Such is the expected relationship between king and jester, and that is what we encounter in King Lear when we first see the Fool in action. But after Lear's fortunes truly begin to slide, the change is obvious. This must be very clear from the Fool's bearing. His court jester nimbleness may surface from time to time, but the audience has to see the change between Lear the King and Lear the husk of the King, and one efficient way to make this come across is in the physical behavior of the Fool. The Fool will disappear from the play when the question of Lear's kingship is no longer as urgent as that of Lear's fundamental humanity, that is at the true turning point, the lowest point of Lear's fortunes, where he takes over from the Fool and begins to make fundamental discoveries about himself and his relationship to his world. Therefore the Fool may describe a downward curve like his master's, may dwindle before us like Lear's reason, and finally fade from the play when Lear's madness takes him over.

I.v is a short scene of transition. Lear is preoccupied and has begun to fear for his sanity. The Fool labors mightily to keep his attention fixed, but has so little success that he changes tactics, only to find Lear even less cooperative. At the beginning of the scene the daughters are still the focus of the Fool's jibes (14-24), and his first reference is directed at Goneril and Regan, but Lear does not rise to the bait; the second one is more subtle, but Lear does not even hear. It is as if his responses are triggered more by the Fool's tone of voice than his actual words. Lear should move about the stage in thought, and the Fool try to engage his attention by following close, sometimes even blocking his way only to be brushed absentmindedly aside. When he finally gets a true response from Lear, it is no credit to his fooling; the King steals the Fool's punch line from him:

The reason why the seven stars are no mo than seven is a pretty reason.
Lear. Because they are not eight?
Fool. Yes, indeed; thou would'st make a good Fool.

(I.v.34-36)

The Fool exits on another of his little vignettes to the audience: "She that's a maid now, and laughs at my departure, / Shall not be a maid long, unless things be cut shorter" (48-49). He reminds the audience forcibly that though he is still trying to wring a smile from Lear by his jesting, he is cruelly aware of the seriousness of the situation, and the tragic implications of Lear's journey. The Fool has few of these moments completely devoted to the audience. Though he is our teacher and the clown of the play, his teaching is much less pleasant than that of the other court jesters. He teaches us much as he teaches Lear, and that can be caustic at times.

When Lear and the Fool come upon Kent in the stocks (II.iv), we see the same pattern. The Fool again attempts to catch Lear's attention, but now he gets even less response. We see a declining curve; Lear hears the Fool's words subconsciously, and reacts with a comment about his daughters, then about his impending madness, and finally not at all:

Fool. Ha, ha! he wears cruel garters. Horses are tied by the heads, dogs and bears by th'neck, monkeys by th'loins, and man by th'legs: when a man's overlusty at legs then he wears wooden nether-stocks.

Lear. What's he that hath so much thy place mistook To set thee here?

Kent. It is both he and she, Your son and daughter.

Lear. No.

Fool. Fathers that wear rags
Do make their children blind,
But fathers that bear bags
Shall see their children kind.
Fortune, that errant whore,
Ne'er turns the key to th'poor.
But for all this thou shalt have as many dolours for thy daughters as thou canst tell in a year.
Lear. O! how this mother swells up toward my heart;
Hysterica passio! down, thou climbing sorrow!
Thy element's below.

Lear. O me! my heart, my rising heart! but, down!

Fool. Cry to it, Nuncle, as the cockney did to the eels when she put 'em i'th'paste alive; she knapp'd 'em o'th'coxcombs with a stick, and cried 'Down, wantons, down!' 'Twas her brother that, in pure kindness to his horse, buttered his hay.

(II.iv.8-14; 46-56; 118-123)

The Fool tries his best but never reaches his master, who probably does not even notice his presence. In all three cases the Fool makes use of traditional techniques: he equates man with animals; he delivers a bit of doggerel and puns; finally he ridicules human stupidity. But no matter how pointed the Fool's observations may be to the audience, Lear is oblivious to them. It should come as a relief to the Fool when Kent reacts to his joking in the expected manner and answers him in prose as a contrast to Lear's verse (61-83). But during Lear's absence and his bout with Kent, the Fool also manages to express his unswerving loyalty to Lear (79-82). It is to the Fool, all he has left, that Lear cries: "O Fool! I shall go mad" (284).

During Lear's confrontation first with Regan, then both daughters, we have another of the Fool's long periods of silent presence. He is given no Exit in the Folio, but Quarto Two gives him one with Lear between lines 284 and 285, leaving him on stage without speaking for about 160 lines. His behavior now should echo that of the first act, where he was in a similar situation. We have just seen him hard at work to reach Lear, and it has been a sad affair for the Fool. More than ever he is predisposed to shrink back behind the fighting giants and finally cower close to Lear, probably even cling to his robe, as the Folio's Storm and Tempest is heard at line 282. Shakespeare employs the traditional and moving image of the fool cowering under the mantle of the defiant king, which shows us, as it were, two aspects of the same thing simultaneously, but Lear and his Fool are no mere image. The mighty clashes between Lear and his daughters, and between Lear's inner and outer man, leave less and less room for the Fool as jester, even the Fool as critic. The Fool is becoming more a symbol than a clown; he always was a symbol of Lear's court that was, now he begins to signify Lear's dwindling powers of reasonable action and reaction.

There is little room for laughter in King Lear, and what there is, is different from our unrestrained response to the comedies. The nature of the tragic mode prevents us. In a comedy we are interested in the outcome, but we remain in a position from where we may regard the proceedings with some superiority. In tragedy, however, we easily lose such a perspective because of our great personal involvement in the target of the jokes, here Lear himself. The stage clown in the guise of the Fool does trigger some amused response in the audience periodically, but when he first comes on stage the tragedy has already advanced too far to allow him free play. Even his remarks directed to the audience alone are more moralistic than amusing. We have been prepared for such behavior in the Fool, who has "much pined away" and is not his true self even when we first meet him. From the beginning of our relationship with this clown, he comes to stand as a mirror for Lear's decline; but where Lear's outward show and just cause for anger may periodically divert us from the downward curve, the Fool's behavior helps refocus our attention. The mirroring becomes ever more significant as we move into the third act. While the storm is raging, we are prepared for our next encounter with Lear and his Fool. Lear is alone in the storm, striving "in his little world of man to out-storm / The to-and-fro-conflicting wind and rain," and with him is "None but the Fool, who labours to out-jest / His heart-strook injuries" (10-11, 16-17). The pattern we have become used to will continue.

Not until III.ii does the Fool truly begin harping on sexuality:

The cod-piece that will house
Before the head has any,
The head and he shall louse;
So beggars marry many
. . . . For there was yet never fair woman but she made mouths in a glass.

Kent. Who's there?
Fool. Marry, here's grace and a cod-piece, that's a wise man and a Fool.

(III.ii.27-41)

Sexuality, indeed, becomes greatly important later in the play, when Lear in his madness confronts the blinded Gloucester:

What was thy cause?
Adultery?
Thou shalt not die: die for adultery!
No: The wren goes to't, and the small gilded fly
Does lecher in my sight.
Let copulation thrive;

(IV. vi. 109-114)

Sexuality and the resulting issue is the strongest link between Lear's and Gloucester's tragedies. Gloucester is first to draw attention to a sexual transgression. In I.i he presents his bastard son Edmund to Kent, and freely admits that he was begotten out of wedlock. Lear has committed no such violation, but his view of love is clearly warped; he accepts his daughters' professions that they love him above everything else, but Cordelia is aware that something is wrong: "Sure I shall never marry like my sisters, / To love my father all" (I.i. 102-103). The Fool's sexual allusions are comparatively few; but like every remark the Fool makes, these comments reach out to encompass a large problem within the play and create echoes of things past and hints of things to come.

When Kent comes to offer Lear shelter in a hovel, Lear becomes truly aware of his Fool for the first time since I.iv, but as a fellow human being rather than his jester. The Fool answers with a song to fit them both:

Lear. My wits begin to turn.
Come on, my boy. How dost, my boy? Art cold?
I'm cold myself. . . .
Poor Fool and knave, I have one part in my heart
That's sorry yet for thee.

Fool. He that has and a little tiny wit,With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,Must make content with his fortunes fit,Though the rain it raineth every day.

(III.ii.68-77)

Lear's anguish in combination with the storm has finally opened his eyes to the misery of the Fool, the one being more miserable than himself because he is more aware of Lear's decline. Lear's wits are slowly becoming extinguished, and when we meet him again after the storm is over, he must make do with what fortune has left him, nothing.

Merlin's prophecy, with which the Fool ends the scene, points in the same direction. When the world is turned upside-down, England shall "[c]ome to great confusion" (92). There is much truth to this prophecy. Lear's England, as well as Lear the microcosm, are both in great confusion, and the cause is to be found within Lear himself. Lear's idea that the essence and the show of kingship can be divided is as absurd as most elements in the prophecy "Merlin shall make" when his time comes. Only for Lear there is no hope of an Arthur to put things to rights. Though the Fool has this moment alone with the audience, he does not make use of it to solicit our laughter. Much of the prophecy can be seen as ridiculous and amusing when separated from its context of the storm scenes, especially the bits of social criticism and the fantastically Utopian ideas presented. But though the Fool steps out of the play and plot proper and creates an anachronism by drawing in Merlin, the prophecy is so well related to Lear's condition and its conclusion so apt to become true that the effect is one of sadness rather than mirth.⁴ The Fool may not be a bitter fool, but he is a miserable one, and his handling of his misery does him credit.

The Fool as an extension of Lear is even more an object of our pity in III.iv. His court jester image has undergone a complete change. Though his jokes were unsuccessful, he constantly tried to amuse Lear in the past, but in this scene we hear no word from him till line 39. Lear is still concerned for him above himself: "In, boy, go first. You houseless poverty,—/ Nay, get thee in" (26-27), and it is a measure of the Fool's misery that he does go in first. What he meets is not shelter, however, but Edgar disguised as Poor Tom. Edgar already has created a close intimacy with the audience, who has witnessed his transformation into Poor Tom. Our closeness with him allows him to put on and use several of the clown's characteristics, though he is no clown himself.⁵ In certain ways his antics as Poor Tom are not unlike the Fool's efforts, but the underlying tragedy, which provokes most of the attempts at clowning, is an overwhelming presence and turns possible laughter into deep pity.

The Fool's first reaction to Edgar is fright: "Come not in here, Nuncle; here's a spirit. / Help me! help me! . . . A spirit, a spirit: he says his name's Poor Tom" (39-42). Lear's first reaction to this "spirit," however, is identification, not fright:

Dids't give all to thy daughters?
And art thou come to this?

What! has his daughters brought him to this pass?
Couldst thou save nothing? Wouldst thou give them all?

(III.iv.48-63)

In Edgar-as-Poor-Tom, Lear sees a mirror image of himself, a being reduced to nothing except what he was born with, and his indentification will progress so far that he strips himself in order also to become "a poor, bare, forked animal" (105-106). But the Fool's courage and control rise for a moment as Lear's wane. When Lear sees Tom as another who has given his daughters "all," the Fool replies to Lear, but certainly more to the audience: "Nay, he reserv'd a blanket, else we had all been sham'd" (64-65), and shortly afterwards: "This cold night will turn us all to fools and madmen" (77). The first comment has an ironic distance, which the audience needs at this point not to become totally overwhelmed; we see a glimmer of the traditional stage clown in action. The second comment has great truth to it. The horror of the night has been created mainly by Lear's madness, which is pitifully real. Poor Tom's madness is an act put on to save life itself. Of the three, the Fool is the most rational-seeming creature, though he too has felt his world slipping away from under him. They are all three suspended in the storm with no well-known frame of reference; the storm itself has taken over the world as we know it, raging within Lear as well as outside of him. Neither Lear nor Edgar has anything left of what they formerly used to define themselves. The Fool, however, still has his coxcomb, though the rest of his old life is lost. The Fool's remnants of control surface again when Lear strips himself. The Fool gentles him as if he were a little child, a "fool": "Prithee, Nuncle, be contented; 'tis a naughty night to swim in. Now a little fire in a wild field were like an old lecher's heart; a small spark, all the rest on's body cold. Look! here comes a walking fire" (108-111). The Fool still does his best to help Lear and make his way smoother, but his misery is growing as can be seen from another of his long silences. His jester's function becomes suspended when Lear and he are not more or less alone together. When anything even remotely threatening occurs, he fades into the background and into his sorrow. When Lear walks off with Edgar he excludes the Fool, who feels it keenly. At this point in the action, where the Fool's role is almost played out, his physical action should be limited to an absolute minimum. There should be no sprightliness left; in its stead we should see the Fool shivering, hugging himself to regain a little of the warmth a house and friendship provides man with, except when he attempts to comfort Lear; then he should become almost protective. But by now he is his own greatest resource, and he is almost spent.

The Fool, however, does not represent the element of sanity the audience needs to cling to; Kent provides this point of stability and calm. All his attempts at comforting and calming Lear, however, come to nought. In III.vi, the Fool's last scene, Lear passes judgment on his daughters with the help of Tom and the Fool. In this company the Fool resumes his joking, but he is still more the commentator than the court jester, and his subject is still Lear's problematic kingship:

Prithee, Nuncle, tell me whether a madman be a gentleman or a yeoman?

Lear. A King, a King!

Fool. No; he's a yeoman that has a gentleman to his son; for he's a mad yeoman that sees his son a gentleman before him. . . . He's mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf, a horse's health, a boy's love, or a whore's oath.

(III.vi.9-19)

Even now, when the Fool gets Lear's full attention as he jokes, his jest goes awry. Lear, always afraid of madness, now readily sees it in himself. The true madman here is indeed a King, but that was not one of the original choices. Still the Fool, mostly to the benefit of the audience, goes through with first his joke, then his bit of moralizing. It seems as if the Fool gradually becomes separated from Lear after their meeting with Poor Tom; Lear in his present state identifies more readily with him. The Fool feels deeply that he is cut adrift. However, when the trial of Goneril and Regan is to commence, the Fool is probably the one Lear addresses as "most sapient sir" while Tom is the "most learned justicer" (22, 21). As the trial progresses, Tom is the one in close contact with the audience, and the one who diverts Lear when total breakdown threatens:

[Aside] My tears begin to take his part so much, They mar my counterfeiting.

Lear. The little dogs and all, Tray, Blanch, and Sweetheart, see, they bark at me.

Edgar. Tom will throw his head at them. Avaunt, you curs!

(III.vi.59-63)

During the whole trial Kent hovers in the background, but his attention is riveted on Lear, and he has none to spare for the audience. When Lear has reached a point of exhaustion he persuades him to rest, and Lear lies down:

Lear. Make no noise, make no noise; draw the curtains: so, so.

We'll go to supper i'th'morning.

Fool. And I'll go to bed at noon.

(III.vi.81-83)

This is the Fool's last remark before he leaves with the party bearing Lear from the stage. Poor Tom is left to address the audience. Seven more or less credible meanings have been read into this one line,⁶ but when we consider how the Fool's role has developed in relation to Lear, the meaning must be very simple. Lear, in need of sleep more than food, decides to sleep now and eat Gloucester's promised supper later. In the Fool this sparks one last remark about his topsy-turvy world: if Lear can eat supper at breakfast, the Fool can end his day at high noon and go to bed.

Of course there must be connotations of ending and death connected with the Fool's idea of going to bed, especially since the Fool has dwindled so drastically before our very eyes, but at this point there has been no warning that this is his last appearance. Lear himself disappears from our sight for a long time, and when he reappears his conditions are so changed and so many things have happened to shake us fundamentally that we most likely will have forgotten about the Fool. The triangle of Lear, Tom, and the Fool in the storm is appropriate for its place in the play, but the Fool would have made an awkward third at Dover Cliff, where none of the connotations he must carry with him qua his stage clown status would be appropriate. Moreover, his counterpart Cordelia will shortly reappear at Lear's side and take the Fool's place as truth-teller and healer of her father.

There may be one more reference to the Fool in the play. In V.iii.304 Lear says: "And my poor fool is hang'd! No, no, no life!" We know from line 273 that Cordelia was hanged. Lear is desperately and unsuccessfully trying to find the tiniest sign of life in her, so it seems most likely that the "fool" referred to is Cordelia, not the Fool, even though Lear's thoughts may also encompass the other person who truly loved him. This is very appropriate. The Fool, the court jester, is an intrinsic part of Lear-the-King, and his main focus concerns issues of kingship and Lear's wrongful idea that its outward show can be divided from its substance. In this connection the Fool becomes almost symbolic, the way the King's crown is. The crown stands for the totality of kingship, but the only one Lear has left is bald (I.iv.159), the "meat" itself is gone. The Fool comes to represent the idea of rationality, that which binds society together and gives meaning to existence, and his voice is always harping on the foolishness of deviating from the accepted patterns of human life and organization. His bauble and coxcomb are, after all, a mocking copy of the king's scepter and crown. Once Lear has left these patterns completely, he enters another dimension of existence and proceeds to examine his inner man, and there is no more need for the Fool's voice. The Fool as symbol disappears when his purpose is served.

Lear's Fool is a creature apart from the ordinary stage clown we encounter in Shakespeare's plays. He is bound to one other character, and therefore bereft of the volatility, freedom, and mobility lent the others of his kind. In Shakespeare's source play, King Leir, there is no court fool, and the conclusion of the play is happily romantic. Shakespeare changed his source into a tragedy, and the addition of the character of the Fool makes a great contribution toward this transformation. The Fool as an aspect of Lear's own tragedy makes many restrictions on his clown character, but the gain is immense in terms of the audience's understanding of events and characters. Where the stage clown usually remains personally aloof and unaffected by the other characters in the play, Lear's Fool is deeply touched by Lear's tragedy and shares in it himself. The stage clown will usually appear with a certain unexpectedness and say and do surprising and delightful things, but here we are prepared for the arrival of Lear's Fool as well as for his sadness. Still he is the audience's teacher and interpreter, possibly to a degree that surpasses any other stage clown, but his teachings are single-minded. He may be seen as more critic than clown, and the amusement he provides is always tinged with sorrow.⁷ The Fool is the only major clown's part in a Shakespearean tragedy, and his function is eminently fitting to his role.

Thersites and the Fool share the role of the critic in a noncomedy, and they have much to say about the shortcomings of their respective worlds, but the way in which they use the critic's tools is widely different. Thersites is aggressive to the point of disgusting the audience, and this makes us doubt his value as truth teller. We tend to believe in likable people and go along with their ideas more readily. He is still our interpreter, though, only we have to interpret him as well as his comments, and our final views of the play may well be colored by our doubt of Thersites. Lear's Fool, on the other hand, is a lovable creature, and the failure of his efforts in his court jesterly role only endears him to us further. We soon recognize that his caustic comments spring from his deep love of Lear, and so his critical attitude serves to convince us of his value as commentator. He is a true guide and interpreter, whom we readily trust, and we feel for him all the more because his actions often go against his comments. He sees Lear's shortcomings and is critical of him, but his love prompts his every action.

Thersites and the Fool are both bitter fools, and their environments are hostile to human life and human feelings and therefore inviting of criticism, even satire; but where Thersites creates distance, the Fool invites closeness; where Thersites' bitterness is all-encompassing and inimical, the Fool's serves to deepen our understanding of Lear, indeed, he creates sympathy and even love from bitterness. Still, both clown characters are eminently well suited for the play in which we find them, and in both cases the audience stands well served by their commentary.

Notes

¹ Marvin Rosenberg, in The Masks of King Lear (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), makes much of these threats.

² I am aware that the Fool has often been played by an old man. The effect desired is the creation of Lear's Doppelgänger, old and wise beyond Lear himself.

³ William Willeford, The Fool and His Scepter (Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1969), 173.

⁴ "Albion" could well be used to mean Lear; in Hamlet, Claudius and the Elder Fortinbras are referred to as Denmark and Norway respectively.

⁵ It is interesting to see that, in the facsimile of the Quarto, the title page of King Lear (page 663) mentions "the unfortunate life of Edgar, sonne and heire to the Earle of Gloster, and his sullen and assumed humor of Tom of Bedlam. ." The Fool is not mentioned.

⁶ See note to III.vi.83 in the Arden Edition of the play.

⁷ The combined Quarto edition of King Lear has fewer lines for the Fool than the Folio; the Quarto play reads as if the Fool is more of a clown and less of a critic, but he is certainly no fountain of laughter and merriment in the Quarto either.