SOURCE: "Armin's Foolish Parts with Shakespeare's Company 1599-1607," in Robert Armin, Shakespeare's Fool: A Biographical Essay, Kent State University, 1961, pp. 39-68.

[In the following essay, Felver describes the fool roles in the plays of Shakespeare's middle period (1599-1607) that were likely performed by the versatile comedic actor Robert Armin.]

This fellow is wise enough to play the fool,
And to do that well craves a kind of wit.

Twelfth Night

The only Shakespearean part which Armin directly alludes to as his in any of his works, as I have remarked earlier, is that of Constable Dogberry, and yet it is clear that this was a part fashioned originally not for Armin but for Kempe. In the Ql edition of the play, which appeared in 1600, the names of Kempe and Cowley still occur in IV.ii in place of Dogberry and Verges. The evidence for Armin's appearance in this part comes from his dedication of the Italian Taylor and his Boy (1609) to the Viscount Haddington and his wife, Lady Elizabeth Fitswater. Armin asks pardon of the Lady for

the boldnes of a Beggar, who hath been writ downe for an Asse in his time, & pleades under forma pauperis in it still, not-withstanding his constableship and Office.

(A3r)

A note in the "Chamber Accounts" records that in 1612-3 Much Ado was still being played by the King's Men,¹ which suggests, along with Armin's reference, that the play enjoyed continuous popularity. Although there is no evidence to show whether Armin played this role as one of his first with the Chamberlain's Men, it could have been his first role and we do know from this reference that later in his career he achieved a considerable success in it.

Shakespeare's audience, then, found in the company a new comedian, who was capable of handling older roles in the Kempe tradition like Dogberry and Launcelot Gobbo, but who had at the same time demonstrated in his own play and in his own observations that he had some new ideas for clowns. If such a versatile clown were available, one cannot help but wonder why the Company should wait a full year before signing Armin, as T. W. Baldwin suggests they did, in the hope that Kempe would come back. A man who could play Dogberry, could easily toss off the comic bits in Julius Caesar, which Platter saw in September of 1599, apparently shortly after the opening of the new theater season. And in the meantime, Armin's fellow player, Shakespeare, who could be observing his abilities in older roles and perhaps saw him as the versatile Tutch, was probably writing As You Like It as a vehicle in part for the special talents of the new clown.

Now such a sequence of events is clearly not demonstrable. But it does nevertheless seem remarkable, as I have pointed out elsewhere (SQ, VII, 1956), that Shakespeare should name his first fullfledged Fool, Touchstone, shortly after Armin had appeared in his own play as Tutch, a name formed from a shortened form of the word Touchstone. The aptness of the name to Armin's vocations, both old and new, is equally remarkable. A close analysis of Touchstone should reveal some other evidences of Armin's influence on the character. But first a word about the date of this play, and others that are of interest in this study.

It did not seem to me that it was a concern of this study to rehearse the hundreds of discussions of the dating of Shakespeare's plays in order to arrive at what are, in many cases, only conjectural conclusions. So I have, instead, accepted the conjectural dating of the plays by James G. McManaway, which he arrives at by analyzing respectable recent scholarship on the subject.² The general consensus is that As You Like It dates from 1599-1600, at the earliest sometime after June of 1599.

Although the editors of As You Like It customarily assign Touchstone the clown's part which begins I.ii.44, it should be remembered that the name Touchstone is not mentioned until II.iv.21. Exactly why Touchstone's name is mentioned so late is not clear, though it is possible that the play had been written in part before Armin joined the company and was then changed a bit to accommodate the new clown. What is clear, however, is that this clown is not an unknown minor official like Dogberry, wasting the time of his betters, but a known and affectionately regarded servant who provokes wit in others so that they may hear his own witty ripostes. On his first appearance Touchstone stands quietly but no doubt expressively for some eleven lines of dialogue before rising to the challenge of Celia's assertion that Nature

hath sent this
Naturall for our whetstone for alwaies the dullnesse

of the foole, is the whetsone of the wits. How now
Witte, whether wander you?

(I.ii.53-56)³

Celia's facetious mixing of the terms "Naturali" and "Witte" suggests that she is trying to stir him into jesting rather than describing him accurately, for Touchstone soon convinces her and the audience that his wit is not an accident, as with Armin's natural fools, but the product of an active intelligence. At first, however, he speaks straightforwardly, persuading one for a moment that he has a clownish incomprehension of difficult words:

Clo. Mistresse, you must come away to your father.

Cel. Were you made the messenger?

Clo. No by mine honour, but I was bid to come for you.

(I.ii.57-59)

But his wit soon shows itself upon further provocation, for when Rosalind questions his trivial use of an oath on his honor, he proves that his use is no more trivial than that of a knight's; and he proceeds to show his ability to follow a quibble to its ultimate end, which is, for a witty fool, a jest. Asked to prove that neither he nor the knight were forsworn, he asks the ladies to stand forth, stroke their beards, and swear by them that he is a knave:

Cel. By our beards (if we had them) thou art.

Clo. By my knaverie (if I had it) then I were; but if you sweare by that that is not, you are not forsworn.

(I.ii.70-73)

Touchstone has succeeded, by the end of this colloquy, not only in making fun of the great roaring oaths of his betters, but also in making fools of the ladies. Indeed, his general keenness about the political climate, for example, becomes clear when he replies to Celia's query as to the identity of the foolish knight that he is one whom her father loved. Celia thereupon warns him away from further criticism:

My Fathers love is enough to honor him enough; speake no more of him, you'l be whipt for taxation one of these daies.

(I.ii.77-79)

That his privilege is not merely an occasional license exercised upon encouragement by a member of the family, but a general privilege to jest with his betters is shown when Touchstone joins the ladies in teasing Le Beau about the "sport" in wrestling. His sensitivity to the world about him comes out in his questioning, for he does not accept the view that any kind of wrestling is sport. He first wishes to test the qualities of things before he makes decisions about them. Therefore when Le Beau replies that the sport the ladies have missed is the brutal wrestling that he has already described, Touchstone answers for the ladies and himself:

Thus men may grow wiser every day. It is the first time that I ever heard breaking of ribbes was sport for Ladies.

(I.ii.130-132)

A rustic clown like Dogberry reacts to his betters by becoming even more the pompous ass than he was with his inferiors, or a Bottom reacts by being ignorantly at ease to the amusement of his betters, but Touchstone, unlike the rustics, is never out of countenance. He is haughty and elegant with William and Audrey, a superior in discussions with Corin, a privileged servant-equal with Rosaline and Celia, and the respectful professional fool with Jacques, who fails to recognize as he laughs at the fool that Touchstone has been laughing at him. Now some of this social ease is clearly discernible among Armin's fools, notably Jemy Camber and Will Summers, both fools of royalty, and some of the cheekiness of Touchstone is found in the character of Tutch; but the full development of this cheeky social ease as a dramatic quality of the fool must be accredited to Shakespeare.

A love of material comfort is another notable aspect of the fool. Self-denial comes hard to Touchstone and he is always a reluctant stoic, one who feels that when he was at home he "was in a better place" (II.iv. 18), and knows that an empty pocketbook is only a prelude to poor fare. Later Lear's Fool will suggest with some seriousness that court holy water in a dry house is better than wandering about bareheaded in a storm. Armin's fools, too, show their love of good food and good drink, as some of the verses quoted earlier attest, and many other stories bear out: whether Jack Miller was climbing into a red-hot oven after pies, only to be badly burned, or Jack Oates was standing in the moat dipping his master's quince pie in the muddy water to cool before eating, Armin's fools were constantly concerned about belly comfort.

Less evident among Armin's fools is a tendency to be lecherous, although Jemy Camber got his last illness as a result of an attempt to seduce a young Scotch woman. The fools portrayed by Shakespeare, in contrast, are very much interested in sexual activity. Touchstone is burning to join the "country copulatives," as he so unromantically names them, by marrying Audrey; Feste speaks of his lady and is apparently in some difficulties about earlier dishonesty at the beginning of Twelfth Night; both Lavache and Pompey are burdened by temptations of the flesh. None of them believes that romantic love is anything other than a useful ethical disguise for the baser desire of every young man and woman to "do't if they come to't," or "to cart with Rosaline" (III.ii.107).

One thing about the fool seems fairly clear in As You Like It: Shakespeare as writer and Armin as player were accustoming their audience to a new kind of clownish garb. The rustic clown dressed in russet, a countrified style popularized by Tarlton and Kempe, was so familiar a sight that his costume alone was enough to remind an audience to smile in preparation for the laughter soon to follow. But if the Globe sharers were interested in effacing the name of Kempe from their customers' memories, as some of the evidence discussed elsewhere certainly implies,⁴ the new clown must appear in different habiliments. In his "quip" on his own playing of the fool, Armin had remarked that he wore "antic" dress, suggesting a general fantasy of custume rather than a particular stock costume. In his discussion of fools in the three works investigated earlier, the range of costumes suggests antic variety rather than stock similarity, and only Jack Oates is referred to as a wearer of motley, yellow or green, with the additional note that a colored coat on him was seldom seen.

Now it is quite possible that in his first appearances in the play as the Duke's servant, Touchstone wore a household livery, the usual long coat, often of blue, with the Duke's arms embroidered on his breast or perhaps worn as a badge (cullison) on his arm. At any rate, nothing is said to indicate that his garb is unique until Jacques meets him in the forest and reports his encounter to the Duke. In preparation for their flight, Rosaline and Celia assume disguises as upper-class country youths, and it seems likely that when the three are first seen on their way to the forest, Armin as Touchstone would be dressed for the first time in a long motley coat like those worn by Jack Oates, yellow or else green. Certainly Jacques seems surprised to find a fool in motley, for in twenty-three lines of delighted report on Touchstone he calls him a motley fool thrice and concludes that "Motley's the onely weare" (II.vii.36). Shakespeare seems to be telling the audience that motley is as proper a garb for laughter as russet.

But Touchstone's motley coat is not the only thing that Jacques notes about this new kind of clown. He is impressed with the Fool's ability to rail in "good terms, / In good set termes, and yet a motley foole" (II.vii.18-19). Like Tutch in the Two Maids, the fool is literate and witty not by chance but by design, and Jacques laughs "That Fooles should be so deepe contemplative" (II.vii.33). Indeed in his rapturous description of Touchstone, Jacques devotes more words to developing the special qualities of his wear and fooling than any gentleman in all of Shakespeare, or in any other play of the period that I have encountered. For the first time, too, a gentleman is found feeling envious of the fool's freedom rather than superior to his predecessor-clown's coarse manners and ignorant speech. Jacques wishes to be invested in motley so that he too may have the privilege "To blow on whom I please" (II.vii.52), and he descries in the role possibilities for moral improvement; for given leave to speak his mind he "will through and through / Cleanse the foule bodie of th'infected world" (II.vii.62-3).

Although Jacques clearly recognizes the literate wit of the fool, he also recognizes that he is not altogether a wise man; for he speaks of Touchstone's brain as being dry as "remainder bisket" (II.vii.39), and of his venting his observations "In mangled forms" (II.vii.42). But the observations of a character, himself limited by his particular kind of blindness, cannot be depended upon as an accurate description of another character of a peculiarly complex sort. Celia and Rosaline called Touchstone "Nature's natural" not altogether seriously, perhaps chiefly out of an awareness of the decorum that the fool expected and that he was accustomed wittily to operate under. Nor does Jacques seem to recognize that Touchstone is letting fly witty shafts against him either in his first encounter, when he rejects his naming him fool by quipping, "Call me not foole, till heaven hath sent me fortune" (II.vii.21), or in a later encounter, when Touchstone delicately euphemizes the vulgar Jacques (jakes-privy) to "Master What ye call't" (III.iii.68), a much more courtly term. Perhaps Duke Senior is the most trustworthy observer of the quality of Touchstone's fooling, for having heard Jacques' description and seen Touchstone himself, he remarks that Touchstone "is very swift, and sententious" (V.iv.67), and that "He uses his folly like a stalking-horse, and under the presentation of that he shoots his wit" (V.iv. 107-108).

Someone familiar with Armin's Quips readily sees a certain congruence between Jacques' description of his first meeting with the fool who "drew a diali from his poake,/And looking on it, with lack lustre eye" (II.vii.22-23), complains that heaven has not sent him fortune, and Armin's verses on "Whats a clocke":

One askes me whats a clocke, thinking indeede,
That I am lacke of clock-hous, and can tell:
He is a Iacke to think so, or to feede
His humor, as the clapper doth the bell.
I have a Hand, but not a Dioll, I,
Right it poyntes not, and tongues may lie

(C4v)

Armin's concluding quip states the point that Touchstone implies in discussing heaven-sent fortune and in recognizing and feeding Jacques' melancholy by moralizing on the time:

How vaine it is then, to aske whats a clocke?
Of one who for an answere, lendes a mocke.

(Dlr)

A play-goer must remind himself, then, in deciding the extent to which Touchstone's wit is artificial or natural that dramatic characters have their own blindnesses, and that the informed playgoer is the final judge of a character rather than another character pronouncing a judgment within the play. To the play-goer, Touchstone is clearly an artificial fool, making everyone he meets a victim of his wit.

Armin's songs in his own play have already been discussed, and his talent is clearly taken advantage of by Shakespeare in Twelfth Night; but what should be made of the singing in As You Like It? At only one point in the play is Touchstone involved in a scene with songs, the brief V.iii, where are also found for the first and last time, except perhaps as a part of the mise en scène elsewhere, two Pages. When Touchstone urges them to sing, "By my troth well met: come, sit, sit, and a song" (V.iii.9), the second Page replies, "We are for you, sit i'th middle" (V.iii. 10); and his invitation to Touchstone to sit in the middle, suggests, according to Roffe,⁵ that the song was arranged as a trio in which Armin took a part. If Baldwin's contention that most of the sharers key apprentices may be trusted, perhaps one of these pages was a boy trained by Armin.

As Touchstone, Armin sings only a little, if at all, in As You Like It. There is, however, a sweet singer in the play, Amiens, and it is worthy of note that he arrives with the company at about the same time as Armin and is not given opportunity to sing as a separate character in the next few plays. Amiens has a speaking part on stage only when Touchstone is off stage, and Armin could have doubled in the part as easily as he did in his old dual part as Tutch and Blue John. Amiens has but sixteen lines of dialogue besides his two lovely songs: "Under the Greenwood Tree," and "Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind." Only in V.iv is he listed as appearing simultaneously with the fool, and he has nothing to say. Only once is the fool in a scene preceding Amiens' entrance, and Armin could have made a quick change during the thirty-five lines of dialogue that occur after his last words as the fool and his appearance as Amiens in hunting costume. It is not impossible therefore, that Armin might have doubled these two roles—a kind of tour de force celebrating his appearance in the first role tailored specifically to his talents. This is only a conjecture, however, any other possible explanations, such as the hiring of an outsider or the arrival of a skilled singer who may have gone unnoted by theatrical historians, are equally plausible.

When Touchstone is finally introduced to Duke Senior in the last scene of the play, enough has been seen of his protean abilities as jesting servant, loyal follower, witty commentator on love, superior gentleman to the countryfolk, and pastoral satirist to leave few doubts of his claim to be a courtier:

I have trod a measure, I have flattered a Lady, I have bin politicke with my friend, smooth with mine enemie, I have undone three Tailors, I have had foure quarrels, and like to have fought one.

(V.iv.48-52)

He understands courts and courtly ways only too well, as he illustrates with his quibbling on his reasons for marriage and with his disquisition on the degrees of the lie.

For the first time in any play by Shakespeare, or for that matter in any other play up until that time, a fool is found who is "artificial" in every respect. He searches out the qualities of things, whether it be the sport of Le Beau, the character of Jacques, his own discomfort in the "comforts" of Arden, or the "right Butter-woman's rank" of Orlando's jogging verse. The country, he reminds his mistresses is not as comfortable as the court; wooing is perhaps romantic in part but has a very practical end in view for the country copulatives. His words are pithy, reflecting his wide knowledge of proverbial lore, and he glances at different meanings of words and situations at every turn. He can never be fully understood if taken literally. Moreover, Touchstone is so conscious of the ambiguities of words and situations that he cannot resist verbal effects even when they are lost on the listener, as they are on Audrey, William, and occasionally Jacques.

Until the appearance of Touchstone, the clowns who survive in extant plays that had been performed by the Chamberlain's Men were either rustics attired in the stock garb of a Tarlton, like Costard, or servants in a gentleman's household who had perhaps a certain amount of privilege to jest, like Launcelot Gobbo, and whose privilege is indicated in their wearing of coats more guarded or fanciful than those of their fellows. The latter breed are servants first and jesters incidentally. Tutch of the Two Maids seems not to have had even this occasional privilege, however, for he was allowed to exercise his natural gifts for intrigue and facetious wit only when appropriate in his primary function as a kind of steward.

But in describing this new genus "Fool" of the great species "Clown" to the audience of As You Like It, Shakespeare takes more than ordinary pains to explain to his audience what is happening. He introduces the Fool as "Nature's naturall," relating him to a species already familiar to Elizabethans in proverbial lore and in villages, taverns and great households, and at the same time demonstrates that he is a clown with whom (not on whom) the witty Rosalind and Celia sharpen their wits. He gives him 320 lines of dialogue to speak,⁶ making Touchstone's part rank third in the play. Shake-speare moreover uses one-third of the lines of the important character, the malcontent Jacques, to develop the role of the fool in considerable detail. In order to emphasize the uniqueness of this new character further, Shakespeare clothes him in motley—another new departure in drama so far as I have been able to discover. Indeed a glance at Bartlett's Concordance reveals that the word "motley" occurs only eleven times in Shakespeare, once connected to another word "motley-Minded," and of these eleven references, eight are made by Jacques. Elsewhere the word is used once in connection with Feste, once with Lear's Fool, and once indicating the absence of a Fool in the prologue to Henry VIII.⁷

Some critics have suggested that in As You Like It Shakespeare and Armin were attempting to establish, in their emphasis on motley, a new stock costume for the Fool, to replace the old russet costume that had served for years as the badge of the country Clown.⁸ But this suggestion underestimates badly the real ad-vance in the art of clowning accomplished by Armin and Shakespeare. If we remember that the critics of Shakespeare in the "Parnassus" plays as well as critics of dramatic spectacle in general like Sidney had said that a clown irrelevantly thrust into the midst of a play mars all, and remember too that Shakespeare himself, through Hamlet, is critical of clownish impromptus, it seems unlikely that an artist growing with each play as Shakespeare was would simply substitute anew stock part for an old. Nor would Armin, whose discriminating appreciation for the peculiar contributions of each fool he described is evident on every page of Foole Upon Foole, be very likely to concur in anything that might create a stock character. He had painstakingly described the special turns, tricks, and individualized dress of each of his fools, and as a virtuoso clown himself, able to do many things well, would want to be as different as possible in moving from one role to another. Certainly he would not want to remind his audience of Touchstone when playing Feste or Lear's Fool. One of the great contributions of Elizabethan drama, as contrasted with the continental Commedia dell'Arte tradition in which players improvised on a stock role, was that the Elizabethan drama was often a drama of characters simulating real life. Indeed in Shakespeare the characters tend to come to life too fully at times, and to interfere with more stylized and artificial comic devices in comedies like Measure for Measure and All's Well.

The "privilege" of Touchstone, which is his passport to social mobility and his license to satirize with only the whip as punishment, had long been among the stock appendages of the actual Elizabethan fool. Moreover, Shakespeare had shown his familiarity with the fool's privilege years before in Love's Labour's Lost, in the course of Berowne's sneering reference to Boyet's mockery of himself and his fellow wooers: "Go, you are alowd. / Die when you will, a smocke shall be your shrowd" (V.ii.478-9). But nowhere in the earlier plays is the concept of the fool's privilege so fully developed as it is in Jacques' description of the advantages of being a Fool, and the medicinal effects of fooling:

I must have liberty
Withall, as large a charter as the winde,
To blow on whom I please, for so fool es have:
And they that are most gauled with my folly,
They most must laugh

(II.vii.50-54)

I will through and through
Cleanse the foule bodie of th'infected world,
If they will patiently receive my medecine.

(II.vii.62-64)

This privilege remains a property of Shakespeare's fools hereafter, varying only to the extent that the fool is more or less professional or in a reputable position. So Lavache is more a jesting servant accorded privilege occasionally than a fully accoutered and privileged fool, and Pompey, because of his disreputable role as bawd-fool, can be facetious with some of his betters, but is careful to choose his targets wisely.

The fool's possession of this privilege, or in the case of the idiot-fool his assertion of a privileged position owing to his irresponsible innocence, is implied throughout Armin's studies of fools, and cannot be credited to either Armin or Shakespeare as in any sense a discovery except insofar as they recognized the dramatic potentialities of the privilege. The fool's purgative satirical properties as amender of "th'infected world" are perhaps more emphasized in Shakespeare and in Armin's Quips—moralized metamorphoses of changes—than elsewhere in Elizabethan literature. But again the emblematic nature of the Fool as a guide to wisdom for oneself is asserted in Ecclesiastes, Book of Proverbs, and much subsequent literature.

But despite the Elizabethans' familiarity with privileged fools, Shakespeare frequently finds it necessary to remind his contemporaries as well as the more solemn asses in his plays of the fool's privileged position when the fool seems to violate social decorum more than usual. When Malvolio attempts to restrain Feste's tongue before the Lady Olivia, for example, she reminds her steward that "There is no slander in an allow'd fool, though he do nothing but rail" (I.v.101-102). When Patroclus protests against Thersites' slanders and threatens to strike him, Achilles similarly interferes saying, "He is a privileg'd man" (II.iii.61). The humorless Goneril complains to Lear about his "all-licens'd Fool" (I.iv.220). Without his license or privilege the fool is naught, an "O" without a figure like the powerless Lear.

Shakespeare's Other Plays to 1606

In investigating the next eight plays that follow As You Like It I shall concentrate my attention on those five roles which are akin to the fool and might well have been played by Robert Armin: Twelfth Night, 1599-1600; Hamlet, 1600-1601; The Merry Wives of Windsor, 1600-1601 (private performance); Troilus and Cressida, 1601-1602 (private performance); All's Well That Ends Well, 1603-1604; Measure for Measure, 1604-1605; Othello, 1604-1605; King Lear, 1605-1606. But by concentrating on the fool roles, I do not mean to imply that Armin did not play, or was not capable of playing the First Gravedigger in Hamlet, for example, a part more in the Kempe line, which he could have mastered as easily as the part of Dogberry. I feel, however, that Hotson's speculation that he played Polonius (p. 104) interferes with what seems to be a development of such a line for another player—perhaps Heminges—in plays by Shakespeare and other dramatists for the Company. Baldwin suggests that Armin played Evans in Merry Wives (pp. 228-9 insertions), not implausible as a speculation since Armin had imitated Welsh dialect in his part of Welsh knight in The Two Maids. But I do not wish here to multiply difficulties by going beyond a consideration of the clearer professional role of Armin as fool, and therefore I will discuss only those parts which seem most clearly and unambiguously in his vein.

After Touchstone, Armin's next part was Feste, and Feste is clearly the most artificial and wisest of all the Fools, and, at the same time, he is perhaps more than any other figure in the play the master of the Twelfth Night revels. Certainly never again would the Fool have so many sweet airs to sing, and Armin's sweet music here, and perhaps in As You Like It, may have been a considerable help to the Chamberlain's Men in their competition with the musical little "eyasses" of Blackfriars, and Paul's Boys, who were attracting so much attention in upper-class playgoing circles. The fool's part is third in the play, ranking after the parts of Toby and Viola, and Shakespeare was never again to write so many lines (347) for a Fool or clown.

The part of dull clod in Twelfth Night is assigned to the obtuse Sir Andrew, and no one in the play has any delusions that he is anything other than a moderately rich gull to feed Toby's purse and palate and to be a butt for Maria's sharp wit. But the shrewd Maria has no reservations about Feste's wit, as she shows when the Fool enters the play for the first time, jesting familiarly with her:

Ma. Nay, either tell me where thou hast bin, or I will not open my lippes so wide as a brissle may enter, in way of thy excuse: my Lady will hang thee for thy absence.

Clo. Let her hang mee: hee that is well hang'de in this world, needs to feare no colours.⁹

(I.v.3-8)

Feste seems to be making an obvious and vulgar pun on another sense of being "well hang'de" here. That more was involved in Feste's offence than being absent without leave is hinted at in the Lady Olivia's sharp words later: "Go too, y'are a dry foole: Ile no more of you: besides you grow dis-honest" (I.v.39-40). Similarly Tutch of Armin's own play was reprimanded by his master Sir William for acting dishonestly, becoming a go-between for Tabitha and Filbon. At the same time he was dismissed and warned not to come near the house at risk of being charged as a "fellone" (Dlv), which reminds Tutch of the penalty for felons, being well hanged:

Gang is the word, and hang is the worst, wee are even, I owe you no service, and you owe me no wages, short tale to make, the sommers daie is long, the winter nights be short, and brickill beds dos hide our heds. As spiteli fields report.

(Dlv)

It is pleasant to be reminded by the fool and the servant that though the penalties for various crimes in Elizabethan times were severe, as often as not their very severity caused them not to be brought to action. Both men accept their fates—Feste's possible, Tutch's actual—in a lighthearted manner.

It seems fairly clear that Feste's garb is different from Touchstone's wear in Arden. As a household retainer he would no doubt wear his mistress's arms, and Maria's jest on his "two points," "That if one breake, the other will hold: or if both breake, your gaskins fall" (I.v.23-5), suggests that he is wearing wide slops, great breeches of some sort rather than tightfitting hose,¹⁰ under his servant's coat. Hotson based his ar-gument¹¹ that Feste carries a marotte or fool's double on Feste's invocation to wit and citation of Quinapalus, but it seems clear that as a professional singer Feste would carry the tabor noted by Viola ("Save thee Friend and thy Musick: dost thou live by thy Tabor?" [III.i.3-4]), which he would use as a rhythmical accompaniment to his voice, and he might even have concealed about his person the ubiquitous pipe for general music-making. When Feste appears at the opening of Act IV, importuning Sebastian, whom he mistakes for Viola-Cesario, to return to his mistress, Sebastian refers to him as a "foolish fellow" (IV.i.5) and as a "foolish greeke" (IV.i.19), which suggests that his garb is not so distinctive as his apparent role—Sebastian thinks he is a pander. In the final act when Feste and Fabian are asked by the Duke if they belong to the Lady Olivia, it becomes fairly certain that he is identifying them by the badges on their livery rather than any distinctive garb worn by Feste, and he does not identify Feste separately from Fabian until the Fool begins to jest: "I sir, we are some of her trappings" (V.i.ll).

The most direct indication found in the play for assuming that Feste does wear a distinctive garb comes just after he has been warned by Maria of Lady Olivia's displeasure, and he begins to jest with Olivia in order to save his job. He greets her familiarly, perhaps as a subtle reminder of his privilege, "God blesse thee Lady" (I.v.36-7), and she responds, coldly, with an order to take the fool away, which Feste quickly turns about by suggesting that she is the fool:

Misprision in the highest degree. Lady, Cuculi us non facit monachum: that's as much as to say, as I weare not motley in my braine: good Madona, give mee leave to prove you a foole.

(I.v.53-56)

If Feste wears motley, this is the only hint that he does, and it comes in a metaphor. Certainly no one else in the play identifies him as a fool by his motley wear. Perhaps his garb is somewhat fantastical, and he uses motley in that sense of the word, or perhaps he uses the words to refer to his position as privileged jester rather than to his motley garb. Indeed if one becomes too literal in interpreting the passage about the cowl not making the monk, one might even conclude that Feste wore a hood, a garment which seems not to have been worn by any real fool in this period.

Later in the play, when Orsino seeks the singer who formerly pleased him so well, Curio refers to Feste as the jester. The only other fool referred to as a jester by Shakespeare is Yorick, and the possibility must be considered that as a jester, Feste occupies a somewhat different status or is possibly recognized as a more talented and versatile performer than the fool. Benedick is called jester by Beatrice, and Prince Hal called Falstaff jester in rejecting him from service when king. That Feste clearly regards himself as superior to the ordinary fool becomes fairly evident in his uncharacteristic silence and rage when Malvolio compares him with another fool:

I marvell your Ladyship takes delight in such a barren rascall: I saw him put down the other day, with an ordinary foole, that has no more braine then a stone. Looke you now, he's out of his gard already: unies you laugh and minister occasion to him, he is gag'd.

(I.v.80-85)

But Olivia defends Feste by reminding Malvolio of his privilege ("There is no slander in an allow'd foole, though he do nothing but rayle" [I.v.89-91]), and by implication accepts the fool into her service once more. Moreover, it is this insult from Malvolio that persuades Feste to become Sir Topas in the plot to bring about the steward's downfall and make him the butt of the Twelfth Night celebrants.

When Feste is seen some time later joining Sir Andrew and Toby in their drinking bout, his wit is much more easy and informal than in this first encounter. Andrew pays the fool's singing and appearance high praise, while suggesting in a compliment to his "legge" that either his limbs are well proportioned and therefore visible or that he bows elegantly: "I had rather than forty shillings I had such a legge, and so sweet a breath to sing, as the foole has" (II.iii.22-24). Upon his entrance in the scene, we are reminded through a stage direction that though the species is changed, Feste belongs to the same genus as Costard and Launcelot Gobbo: "Enter Clowne" (II.iii.17). The climax of the celebration that the fool joins is reached when Malvolio enters to protest its noisiness, and Toby and the fool send him packing:

To. Art any more then a Steward? Dost thou thinke because thou art vertuous, there shall be no more Cakes and Ale?

Clo. Yes by S. Anne, and Ginger shall bee hotte y'th mouth too.

(II.iii.112-116)

It is helpful to find a passage from the introduction to Armin's Quips which explains the relationship of Feste's "Ginger" to Toby's "Cakes and Ale" and suggests that Feste spoke of a favorite custom of Armin's:

Use me with kindnesse, as you shall in the like commande me hereafter: whose Barke I will grate like Ginger, and carrouse it in Ale, and drink a full cuppe to thy curtesie.

(A2v)

Although Feste may ordinarily have accompanied himself on a tabor, the musical accompaniment to his songs was occasionally quite formal. When the Duke Orsino asks for an old song that he had heard the night before, and Curio tells him the singer "Feste the lester" is not at hand to sing it, the Duke commands that the tune be played "the while" Curio seeks him; and the text inserts the direction "Musick playes" (II.iv.13-17). The song that the Duke requests is the lugubrious "Come away, come away death," and Feste facetiously reminds the Duke when he rewards him for his pains, "No paines sir, I take pleasure in singing sir" (II.iv.73).

So far as I have been able to discover, the only lady who ever kept a fool in England was the Queen, and both Mary and Elizabeth supported fools in their ménages. Perhaps it was considered inappropriate for an ordinary noble lady to keep a fool because Shakespeare is at pains to explain through Curio that Feste is "a foole that the Ladie Oliviaes Father tooke much delight in" (II.iv.13-14), and he tells us with equally unnecessary care that Lavache of All's Well is retained by the Countess because:

My lord that's gone made himself much sport out of him. By his authority he remains here, which he thinks is a patent for his sauciness; and indeed he has no pace, but runs where he will.

(IV.v.67-71)

The subtle and sophisticated Feste's own definition of his role must not be ignored in an investigation of the nature of his fooling. After his discussion of his tabor with Viola, the quibbling conversation continues, Feste making words wanton, until Viola is driven to ask him if he is not the Lady Olivia's fool. He denies the title, suggesting that it would be more fitting to her husband, when she takes one, and concludes that he is "indeede not her foole, but hir corrupter of words" (III.i.36-37). When Viola suggests that she has seen him at Orsino's, he replies that fools are readily to be found there: "Foolery sir, does walke about the Orbe like the Sun, it shines everywhere" (III.i.39-40). Feste thus denies that he is a fool unless everyone else is willing to accept the name too. It is after this witty passage, in which Feste has carefully educated Viola on the role of fool, that she makes the following comment, a compressed version of Armin's description of himself in his Quips, quoted earlier:

This fellow is wise enough to play the foole,
And to do that well craves a kinde of wit:
He must observe their mood on whom he iests,
The quality of persons, and the time:
And like the Haggard, checke at every Feather
That comes before his eye. This is a practice,
As full of labour as a Wise-mans Art:
For folly that he wisely shewes, is fit;
But Wisemens folly faine, quite taint their wit.

(III.i.60-68)

In the remainder of the play, Feste is at whiles the ordinary household servant, doing an errand for his mistress by importuning Sebastian-Viola to return to the house; the clever mimic who switches costumes to become Sir Topas, and changes voices to carry on a conversation with himself and baffle Malvolio; and, finally, the epilogue of the play, singing his bitter-sweet song, "When that I was and a little tine boy" (V.i.409). After the identities of Viola and Sebastian have been established and Malvolio returns to Olivia's mind, the fool is allowed the last word, and reminds the lady of Malvolio's earlier smugness and self-conceit which brought about their plot against him, quoting the gulling letter by Maria, "Why some are borne great," and concluding with Malvolio's mockery of himself:

Do you remember, Madam, why laugh you at such a barren rascall, and you smile not he's gag'd: and thus the whirlegigge of time, brings in his revenges.

(V.i.393-396)

As has been pointed out earlier, Armin's own play abounded in imagery suggesting his trade of goldsmith, but the only suggestive reference of this sort in As You Like It is the name Touchstone. The language of Feste in Twelfth Night, however, occasionally reflects in its imagery some aspects of the goldsmith's trade. For example, when Feste has sung his song "Come away, come away death," he mockingly blesses the Duke with an invocation to the God of melancholy, asking that "the Tailor make thy doublet of changeable Taffata, for thy minde is a very Opali" (II.iv.77-80). To a son and brother of a tailor and as a goldsmith and lapidarist, comparisons of this sort would naturally occur, whether or not Armin had any influence on their occurrence here. The appropriateness of the name Sir Topas to the lapidarist goldsmith is particularly evident, and Furness long ago suggested that Shakespeare chose the name for its appropriateness to the situation, citing Reginald Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft, which says that "A topase healeth the lunaticke person of his passion of lunarie."¹² Certainly any members of Shake-speare's audience capable of appreciating the appropriateness of the compliment to Armin in being called Touchstone in his first important role, could not fail to appreciate the additional jest of Armin as Sir Topas, and a roar might very well greet Sir Toby's admiring words, "The knaue counterfets well," because goldsmiths were responsible for coining and Armin's first master had been Elizabeth's master of the mint. When Malvolio cries out in despair, "Sir Topas, sir Topas," and the delighted Toby picks up the refrain with "My most exquisite sir Topas," Feste replies somewhat smugly, "Nay I am for all waters" (IV.ii.63-67). Furness comments as follows on the word "waters" without knowledge of Armin's special appropriateness to the role:

The word "water," as used by jewellers, denotes the colour and the lustre of diamonds and pearls, and from thence is applied, though with less propriety, to the colour and hue of other precious stones. I think that Shakespeare in this place alludes to this sense of the word "water." The Clown is complimented by Sir Toby for personating Sir Topaz so exquisitely, to which he replies that he can put on all colours.¹³

Another place in the play which suggests this pecu-liarly appropriate pattern of imagery occurs when the Fool replies to the Duke's query, "Belong you to the Lady Olivia, friends," with the pert retort, "I sir, we are some of her trappings" (V.i.10-11). Now "trappings" conveys a clear enough meaning without reference to a dictionary, but, remembering the Fool's predilections to play on words mockingly, one is always tempted to look beyond the immediate and in this case he is rewarded: "trapping, n., Jewelry. Cutting of a gem in the form called the trap, or step, cut, or the cutting of a trap brilliant." Feste-Armin then is obviously paying himself and Fabian a deft compliment.

In my discussion of the peculiar appropriateness of some of the imagery associated with Feste to Armin, I certainly do not wish to suggest that all of these associations were inserted deliberately to carry on a private joke or that Armin himself was responsible for any of them. There do seem to be enough references, however, to tempt one to believe that Shakespeare, who was always fascinated with words and their punning and other ambiguous possibilities in his plays, may have been enjoying a little private joke from time to time in Twelfth Night.

Twelfth Night ends with Feste alone on the stage singing his bitter-sweet epilogue song, which will become more poignant when it reappears under tragic circumstances in King Lear:

Clowne sings.
When that I was and a little tine boy,
with hey, ho, the winde and the raine:
A foolish thing was but a toy,
for the raine it raineth every day.

A great while ago the world began,
hey ho, &c.
But that's all one, our Play is done,
and wee'l strive to please you every day.

(V.i.408-412, 425-428)

In contrast with Touchstone, whose status hovers between natural and artificial fool until the final act of As You Like It when Duke Senior finally gives a considered judgement on his wit, Feste is clearly the allowed fool from the very beginning of his part. Only when Feste himself reflects on the paradox of his position to Malvolio does he make any reference to himself as a born or natural fool. Nor is there any hint of the "roynish" or rustic fool in Feste, who is shown associating only with gentlemen and who says that he frequents only the best taverns. Touchstone, Lavache, and Pompey, in contrast, are equally at home in low society, and the first two fools court plain country wenches.

Like Armin in his Quips, Touchstone rhymes badly in doggerel vein, but Feste sings and mimes like Tutch. Both Touchstone and Feste are material fools; two successful variations on the fool character. Feste is an especially graceful beggar of gratuities, but each Fool makes use of proverbial wisdom, seems to be lettered, and has some knowledge of classical lore.

For his third variation on a fool, Shakespeare wrote the unpleasant character of Thersites into Troilus and Cressida, a play which may never have been shown at a public performance during Shakespeare's time. In most discussions of Troilus, Thersites is treated as a foul-mouthed malcontent rogue, which indeed he is but it should also be noted that Shakespeare describes him as a fool—a combination of Touchstone and Jacques might be the aptest comparison. In his quarrel with Ajax, however, Thersites makes it clear that he is not a hired servant, for he says that he serves him not and emphasizes this in the next line by stating, "I serve here voluntary" (II.i. 102), a statement which Ajax does not deny. His privilege is explained by Archilles when Patroclus objects to this insult:

Ther. Ile decline the whole question: Agamemnon commands Achilles, Achilles is my Lord, I am Patroclus knower, and Patroclus is a foole.

Patro. You rascal1.

Ther. Peace, foole, I have not done.

Achil. He is a priviledg'd man, proceed Thersites.

Ther. Agamemnon is a foole, Achilles is a foole, Thersites is a foole, and as aforesaid, Patroclus is a foole.

(II.iii.55-65)

But the conclusive statements of Thersites' role as fool are made by Ulysses and Nestor as they discuss the anger of Ajax at Achilles:

Nest. What mooves Aiax thus to bay at,him?

Uliss. Achillis hath invegled his foole from him.

Nest. Who Thersites? Ulis. He.

Nes. All the better, their fractiô is more our wish then theit [r] faction, but it was a strôg composure a foole could disunite.

Ulis. The amity that wisdom knits not, folly may easily unty.

(II.iii.98-100, 105-111)

Thersites differs from Touchstone and Feste in a number of respects. First, he serves voluntarily without any formal pay arrangement and contractual agreement such as a servant was likely to have. He seems to have assumed his role of privileged fool in order to liberate his tongue, yet he is the only fool in Shakespeare's plays who is actually beaten by his master, Ajax. Whereas Touchstone and Feste are more often witty at the expense of the foibles of society, such as courtly love, unseemly melancholy, and the excesses that develop from them, Thersites makes more fun of individuals directly; no one escapes his calumny and the greater the target the better he is pleased. Like the malcontent Jacques, lacking qualities of greatness in himself, he mocks them in others; but he is forced to admit a grudging admiration for the wisdom and policy of Ulysses and ancient Nestor.

Thersites' part in Troilus is an important one, for some 271 lines of dialogue are assigned to him in the Folio version. He supplies the commentary on the motives of the various contestants, and, along with Pandarus, by words and deeds develops the tawdry moral tone of the play. Unlike Pandarus, however, he is fully conscious at all times of his mean role, and in his concluding words weighs himself to the exact scruple of his worth: "I am bastard begot, bastard instructed, bastard in minde, bastard in valour, in everything illigitimate" (V.vii. 18-20).

In the next two important parts which Shakespeare wrote for Armin's line, the fool suffers a decline in his social position, the size of his part, and his relative importance to the plot. The part of Lavatch in All's Well ranks seventh with 214 lines and that of Pompey in Measure for Measure ranks sixth with 185 lines. Parolles, who becomes LaFeu's fool at the end of All's Well, has the second part in the play with 415 lines. McManaway dates All's Well, as 1603-1604, and Measure for Measure, 1604-1605.¹⁴

Lavatch's position as fool in the Countess's household is semi-official only. He is also very obviously a serving-man, and a somewhat troublesome one at that, as the Countess's displeasure on his first appearance in the play makes clear:

What doe's this knave heere? Get you gone sirra: the complaints that I have heard of you, I do not all beleeve, 'tis my slownesse that I doe not: For I know you lack not folly to commit them, & have abilitie enough to make such knaveries yours.

(AWTEW I.iii.8-13)

Lavatch quickly detects mingled with the Countess's displeasure a willingness to listen to an excuse. There is no indication here or elsewhere that the fool is to be regarded as a lackwit. Feste in a similar situation invoked wit; Lavatch feigns a willingness to be discharged and manages in the process to put his kindly mistress off her guard:

'This not so well that I am poore, though manie of the rich are damn'd, but if I may have your Ladiships good will to goe to the world, Isbell the woman and w [sic] will doe as we may.

(I.iii.18-21)

From the outset, Lavatch shows the somewhat theologically oriented moralism that comes out so clearly in a later exchange with Lord Lafew when he speaks of the broad way to hell, the narrow, winding way to heaven, and the Prince that he serves. When Lafew asks him the Prince's name, Lavatch replies: "The blacke prince sir, alias the prince of darkenesse, alias the divell, (IV.v.54-55).

Lavatch also jests in the customary way about cuckolds, delighting like Touchstone in the necessity of horns, and passes his sallies of wit on Parolles and Helena with impunity. So far as his costume is concerned, the text is silent, a fact which suggests that he was wearing the costume of an ordinary servant. When he answers Lafew's catechism as to whether he is knave or fool, however, he refers to his bauble; but he uses the term in its vulgar reference to the penis: "And I would give his wife my bauble sir to doe her service" (IV.v.31-32). But the ambiguous nature of Lavatch's role as privileged servant is not revealed fully until a discussion between the Countess and Lafew near the end of the play:

Laf. A shrewd knave and an unhappie.

Lady. So a is. My Lord that's gone made himselfe much sport out of him, by his authoritie hee remaines heere, which he thinkes is a pattent for his sawcinesse, and indeed he has no pace, but runnes where he will.

(IV.v.59-61)

"Unhappie" probably refers to the moralistic nature of some of Lavatch's jesting.

With the arrival of Lavatch in Shakespeare's plays, the professional fool begins to merge for a time into a more ambiguous figure, the privileged servant, who appeared in Shakespeare's plays before the arrival of Armin. The exemplar of the privileged servant is Launcelot Gobbo. But Lavatch differs from Launcelot in that his language is more courtly, he is more at home in aristocratic circles, and he jests with more important people. Although he is less presumptuous in his familiarity with his betters than Feste or Touchstone, his jests are more vulgar and his moral is more bluntly stated.

Pompey of Measure of Measure is even less the professional fool than Lavatch. In fact the term "foole" is applied to Pompey only once, and then only in a general way rather than as a specific description: "Come: you are a tedious foole" (II.i.123). As tapster-pimp for Mrs. Overdone, the clown has no very central role in the play, but serves to indicate something of the moral tone of society, to relieve the occasional tedium of the main plot and to pass the time more merrily. Neither Lavatch nor Pompey rime (Lavatch does sing [I.iii.69-75]), and there is no hint as to how Pompey is garbed unless Escalus's reference to his large "bum" can be interpreted to mean that he wore doublet and hose rather than a long serving-man's coat.

With the appearance of Othello in 1604-5, the fool diminishes further and becomes a humble servant-clown with a part only seventeen lines long. His jokes are no funnier than those of generations of clowns before him, and he can be dropped from the play with no harm to its organic unity. The earlier tragedy of Hamlet similarly provided little scope for a fool, offering only the interlude-like part of the first gravedigger to the talents of Robert Armin.

Shakespeare's boldest and most poignant use of the fool, however, is in King Lear (1605-6). The Fool becomes an integral part of the play without any wrenching of decorum which would justify the older critical belief that the fool in the midst of tragic action mars all. In Lear, moreover, Shakespeare develops the apothegmatic wisdom of the fool and his paradoxical reflection on the general dilemma of mankind to its highest dramatic achievement. The Fool becomes a tragic interlocutor instead of a Touchstone or Feste, reminding Lear of the tragic consequences of his folly.

There is no hint of the existence of a fool in King Lear until the conversation between those two chillingly humorless characters, Goneril and the venal Oswald. Goneril seizes upon the privileged Fool's antics as an excuse to quarrel with her father:

Did my father strike my gentleman for chiding
of his Fool?
Oswald. Ay, madam.
Gon. By day and night he wrongs me; every hour
He flashes into one gross crime or other, That
sets us all at odds.

¹⁵

(I.iii.1-6)

One of the aspects of this tragedy which the Fool brings out tellingly is the saving human grace of laughter—a grace which the party of Lear retains but which the parties of Goneril and Regan ignore. Indeed it is the denial of the dignity of the human condition and of the existence of love which brings about the downfall of the Goneril-Regan factions, for they fail to recognize the innate humanity of most human beings, including in Regan and Cornwall's case their own outraged servants.

Besides the Fool's prominence in the minds of Goneril and Oswald, he is also in the forefront of Lear's mind when he returns from hunting and calls for dinner and the Fool in the same breath:

Dinner,
ho, dinner! Where's my knave? my Fool?—
Go you, and call my Fool hither.

(I.iv.40-42)

But the Fool is not his old gay self, for a knight replies:

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.70-72)

Nothing further is said to develop this close relationship between the Fool and Cordelia, but it is clear from these lines that the Fool, besides his function as reminder to Lear of his folly in general, also is a constant reminder to Lear of his absent and beloved daughter. These lines also suggest a close family bond between the Fool, Lear, and Cordelia, like the faithful Touchstone's bond which made him willing to "go o'er the wide world" with Rosaline and Celia, or Yorick's with the young Hamlet, or William Summers' with the Tudor family.

After all these preparations for the Fool's entrance, he finally capers on the stage with a jest about the disguised Kent's folly in electing to serve a man whose fortunes are on the wane. He offers to give Kent his coxcomb in payment for his service (the only time this old-fashioned article of Fool's wear appears in Shakespeare as an article of apparel), and in return he receives from Lear a threat of the whip. The Fool continues to jest about Lear's folly in giving away his property, and simultaneously alienating two of his daughters who loved him for his property, until Lear is driven to call him a bitter fool. The Fool offers to teach Lear the difference between a bitter fool and a sweet one:

That Lord that counsell'd 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.
Lear. Dost thou call me fool, boy?
Fool. All thy other titles thou hast given
away; that thou wast born with.

(I.iv.135-145)

It quickly becomes evident that in Lear the Fool is more the rimer and as much the singer as he is anywhere else in Shakespeare. The verse above suggests that in addition to his archaic coxcomb (possibly the term is used figuratively), he wore the motley garb of Touchstone, although his reference to Lear and himself as "Grace and a codpiece" may mean that he wore gaskins on which a codpiece would be visible. Like his Shakespearean and historic predecessors, the Fool is a material fool. Throughout the play he reminds Lear of his lack of power in terms of his loss of property. He also reminds him of his loss of love in the absence of Cordelia. Although Lear's Fool seems at times to be more natural, less "artificial," than Feste or Touchstone, Goneril, a careful observer in these matters, seems to have little doubt about his keenness, for after Lear departs enraged by her taunts, the Fool is prevented from lingering behind by this command from Goneril: "You, sir, more knave than fool, after your master" (I.iv.309).

But as Lear's plight worsens in his conflict with Goneril and Regan, the Fool's materialistic arguments undergo a subtle change. He continues to urge the materialistic point of view, not much differently from the way it is urged by Edmund, Goneril, and Regan, but at the same time he indicates that this is not the way for him. These verses spoken by the Fool after Lear's party has arrived at Gloucester's house, only to find Kent in the stocks outside, illustrate the Fool's way with respect to materialism:

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.
But I will tarry; the Fool will stay,
And let the wise man fly;
The knave turns fool that runs away;
The Fool no knave perdy.

(II.iv.74-81)

For the first time in Shakespeare's development of the fool there is a hint that the improvident folly of the fool in following for love instead of gain shares a kinship with the Christian folly of doing what is unwise in the eyes of the world for the sake of righteousness rather than gain.

Enough has been said to indicate the artificiality of Lear's Fool. It seems to become more apparent as his master loses his wits; the Gentleman reports, for example, during the storm on the heath that no one is with Lear "but the Fool; who labours to out-jest / His heart-strook injuries" (III.i.16-17), a function hardly possible for a natural to perceive, let alone fulfill. Shortly after the poignant and terrible trial scene in which Lear in his madness appoints the Fool and the Bedlam as judges and arraigns Goneril and Regan, the Fool disappears wordlessly from the play. Despite his disappearance so early as Act III, however, the Fool has had some 253 lines to speak, ranking his part fourth among fools after Feste, Touchstone, and Thersites.

The daring of Shakespeare and Armin in creating the first and only high tragedy fool has been amply rewarded by the 250 years of critical praise that have followed. The Fool's humanity in the face of adversity, his love for his master, and his faithfulness have even caused sentimental critics to say that he disappears from the play because he is dying of grief. But a more objective approach is to ask what part a Fool could play with a master whose wits have gone. We should also remember that the Fool's irrelevant tag, "She that's a maid now, and laughs at my departure / Shall not be a maid long, unless things be cut shorter" (I.iv.55-56), and Merlin's prophecy at the end of III.ii suggest that Shakespeare and Armin were concerned lest their Fool be too different from his predecessors and introduced these jests, which now seem irrelevant, as sops to a conservative 17th century audience. However we explain occasional irrelevancies in the Fool, he nonetheless remains in our minds as a supremely bold artistic conception and as a poignant dramatic character—an apotheosis of the dramatic fool.

Although I conclude my discussion of Shakespeare's Fools with Lear's Fool, I by no means intend to convey the impression that Lear's Fool is the last of Shakespeare's fools. But the later fools contribute little or nothing new to the genre which reaches its supreme expression in the part of Lear's Fool. It is not necessarily true, however, that because fool parts become smaller and less frequent after 1605, that Armin the player's importance to the company was lessened. There was always the role of between-the-acts entertainer to be filled, and although little is known about the nature of this entertainment, Chambers and others show that such entertainment remained a part of the clown's role until the closing of the theatres. Moreover, John Shank, apparently Armin's successor with the King's Men, is mentioned in a contemporary bit of doggerel as singing "his rhimes," which he may have left off singing to join the King's Men between 1613-1619, where he apparently became very prosperous, despite having but few listed parts in later plays.¹⁶

It is not until 1610-12 that any significant roles in Armin's vein reappear in Shakespeare's plays; but when they do reappear, with the arrival of Autolycus in The Winter's Tale (1610-11) and Trinculo in The Tempest (1611-12),¹⁷ these roles become quite large.Of all the fool's parts, Autolycus is third in size with 322 lines and Trinculo is tenth with 116 lines. It may be true, as Baldwin has suggested, that Armin had in the meantime played parts like Polonius and Cloten, and if so the range of his performances in the Company would have been much greater than anyone has supposed. Whether Armin played these parts, however, must remain pure conjecture. But it is clear from Baldwin's charts that Robert Armin was given fatter parts than his famed ad-libbing predecessor, William Kempe. As company clown, Robert Armin would of course also appear in similar parts in other plays than those of Shakespeare. Among the extant plays by other authors for the Shakespearean Company, three embody rhyming, singing, saucy clowns with fool-like parts: Marston's The Malcontent (1604), Wilkins' The Miseries of Enforced Marriage (1605-07), and Tourneur's The Atheist's Tragedy (1607-11).¹⁸

In Wilkins' play the clown Robin is obviously a witty household servant, partaking of the nature of Tutch or Lavatch, and garbed in the ordinary household livery. His privilege, if any, is not mentioned in any of the repartee:

Enter Clowne

Ilf. But stay, here is a Scrape-trencher arrived: How now blew bottle, are you of the house?

Clow. I have heard of many Black lacks Sir, but never of a blew bottle.

Ilf. Well Sir, are you of the house?

Clow. No Sir, I am twenty yardes without, and the house stands without me.¹⁹

Miseries (A2r-A2v)

The clown's jest is similar to Feste's reply to Viola's question "Do thou live by thy Tabor?" (II.i.3-4). To Ilford's further question the clown provides further evasions which similarly echo earrimes and responses by Shakespearean fools:

Ilf. Dos maister Scarberow lie heere.

Clow. He give you a rime for that sir, Sicke men may lie, and dead men in their Graves, Few else do lie abed at noone, but Drunkards, Punks, & knaves.

Ilf. What am I the better for thy answer?

Clow. What am I the better for thy question?

Ilf. Why nothing.

Clow. Why then of nothing comes nothing.

Enter Scarborrow

Went. Sblud this is a philosophicall foole.

Clow. Then I that am a foole by Art, am better then you that are fooles by nature.

(A2v)

This is the only indication given in the play that the clown is to be regarded as an artificial fool and that it is not to be taken very seriously is evident in the balance of the play.

Robin's part is a hodge-podge of apparently successful bits repeated from Shakespeare's fools, suggesting that perhaps this part was created with Armin's line in mind, as it was developed in several of his Shakespearean parts. The more intricate impression of Armin's brand of fooling is certainly present on the follow lines:

Ilf. Whats your busines?

Clow. My busines is this Sir, and this Sir.

Ilf. The meaning of all this Sir.

(C2r)

When Ilford understands the clown's references and offers to take his letter, however, Robin refuses with the following explanation:

Because as the learned have very well instructed me, Qui supranos, nihil ad nos, and tho many Gentlemen will have to doe with other mens business, yet from me know, the most part of them prove knaves for their labor.

(C2r)

Shortly after delivering this message, Robin disappears from the play with a merry bit of doggerel which he may have sung:

From London am I come, tho not with pipe and Drum,
Yet I bring matter, in this poor paper,
Will make my young mistris, delighting in kisses,
Do as all Maidens will, hearing of such an ill,
As to have lost, the thing they wisht most,
A Husband, a Husband, a pretty sweete Husband,
Cry, oh, oh, and alas, And at last ho, ho, ho,
as I do.

(C3v)

Wilkins incorporated so much of Armin's line of fooling in his play, using bits of business from earlier Armin parts, that he may have decided to use the familiar nickname for Robert, "Robin," as an additional compliment to the company clown.

The part of the clown Fresco in The Atheist's Tragedy also shows the influence of Armin's art. Like Pompey Bum, Fresco is servant to a bawd and just as ready as Pompey to make a vulgar jest. When Belforest asks him if he has been acting as pander to Lady Levidulcia Belforest, he replies:

Fres. O yes! (Speakes like a Crier)

Belfo. Is not thy Mistresse a Bawde to my wife?

Fres. O yes!

Belfo. And acquainted with her trickes, and her plots, and her devises?

Fres. O yes! If any man o' Court, Citie, or Countrey has found my Lady Levidulcia in bed by my Lord Belforest, it is Sebastian.

Belfo. What dost thou proclaime it? Dost thou crie it, thou villaine?²⁰

(p. 125)

In the final act of the play he defends his mistress, Cataplasma, in Pompey's vein:

Good my lord her rent is great.
The good gentlewoman has not other thing
To live by but her lodgings. So she's forc'd
To let her foreroomes out to others, and
Herselfe contented to lie backwards.

(p. 140)

Fresco and his mistress are then sentenced and disappear from the play.

The parts of Robin and Fresco, however, although similar in some respects to Armin's comic turns in Shakespeare's plays, are not large enough or distinctive enough to warrant making any very useful assumptions about the impact of the player Armin on the clownish parts. One must ask himself the question, If I did not know these were plays from the repertory of Shakespeare's Company, would the clown parts strike me as inevitably Armin's? And the only answer can be a mildly qualified No. But an investigation of the history of the clown part in the augmented version of John Marston's The Malcontent as played by Shakespeare's Company provides, in contrast, an unqualified Yes.

The Malcontent, produced in 1604 at the height of the stage fool's popularity, was obtained by the King's Men from the repertory of the Children of Blackfriars in apparent retaliation for an earlier act of dramatic larceny by the Children. The history of the three different Quartos of the play need not be given here except to point out that Quarto "C" is apparently the copy of the play produced by the King's Men.²¹ That the playing of the piece by the King's Men involved no quarrel with the author, however it is clear from the title page, which shows that Marston was responsible for a part of the rewriting job done to make the play suitable for an adult company:

The/ Malcontent/ Augmented by Marston./ With the Additions played by the Kings/ Maiesties servants. Written by lohn Webster./ (ornament)/ 1604./ At London/ Printed by V. S. for William Aspley, and/are to be sold/ at his shop in Paules/ Church-yard.

(p. xlii)

Stoll's analysis of the play, which concludes that only the induction to the play is by Webster and that the new work in the play itself is by Marston,²² has been generally accepted by scholars.

Webster's "Induction" introduces the players Sly, Condell, Burbage, and Sincklow to the audience, explains that the play was taken from the Boys' company in retaliation for their unauthorized use of "Ieronimo," and suggests that the additions are "not greatly needefull, only as your sallet to your great feast, to entertaine a little more time, and to abridge the not received custome of musicke in our Theater" (p. 143). The purpose of comic interludes in a serious plays could be explained much more learnedly than this, but no more effectively.

Substantial additions are made in Quarto "C" to Burbage's part of Malevole, the Malcontent, to the part of Bilioso, a court official of the Polonius type, and to the part of Bianca, his wife. But the most interesting addition to the play is the completely new part of Passarello, fool to Bilioso. The only modern edition of Marston, H. Harvey Wood's, seriously errs in indicating that a brief passage between Malevole and Passarello occurs in quarto "A". A check of the first edition in The Folger Shakespeare Library²³ shows, however, that this passage does not occur in quarto "A". The part of Passarello is an entirely new addition by Marston, an extra ingredient of the "sallet to your great feast," spoken of in the Induction, as well as an indication that the important comic fool created by Robert Armin could not be ignored in 1604 by the King's Men any more than the boys' companies could "abridge" the "custome of musicke in" their "Theater."

The fool Passarello appears for the first time in I.vii with Malevole, and immediately reveals details of his profession and his costume:

Mal. Foole, most happily incountred, canst sing foole?

Passar. Yes I can sing foole, if youle beare the burden, and I can play upon instruments, scurvily, as gentlemen do. . . .

Malevole. You are in good case since you came to court foole; what garded, garded!

Passar. Yes faith, even as footemen and bawdes weare velvet, not for an ornament of Honour, but for a badge of drudgery.

(I.vii.pp.160-161)

Here is another variant costume for the fool, a long servant's gown ("in good case") perhaps of velvet (it is velvet in I, 177) with extra guards as a badge of his profession much like Launcelot Gobbo's gown, "more guarded than his fellows." When Malevole asks Passarello about his master, Bilioso, and the fool answers that he is a sorry figure, Malevole speaks of the wisdom of fools in terms which had become commonplace to Shakespeare by 1604: "O world most vilde, when thy loose vanities / Taught by this foole, do make the fooles seeme wise!" (I.vii.pp. 161 -162).

Although Armin's 116 lines in this play make the part he played smaller than those of Feste and Touchstone, and smaller even than those of Pompey and Lavatch, Passarello, like Pompey and Thersites, has an important function in the play in establishing the brooding atmosphere of corruption and lust that permeates it. He is a cynical fool who has no fondness for anyone and suspects everyone of baseness. He jests vulgarly with his master when Bilioso attempts to show his wife how he will entertain a beautiful lady, and he makes covert fun of him when asked to admire his leg in a long stocking, "An excellent calfe my Lord" (V.i. p. 199). He also offers logical proofs in Touchstone's syllogistic vein when informed that a rival of his is very valiant and a quarreller:

Pasa. O is he so great a quarreller? Why then hees an arrant coward.

Bili. How proove you that?

Pasa. Why thus, he that quarrels seekes to fight; and he that seekes to fight, seekes to dye; and he that seekes to dye, seekes never to fight more; and he that will quarrell and seekes meanes never to answer a man more, I thinke hees a coward.

Bili. Thou canst proove any thing.

Pasa. Any thing but a ritch knave, for I can flatter no man.

(V.i.p.200)

Passarello appears for the last time in V.i in a drunken scene with Malevole and Maquerelle the bawd. After some vulgar jesting and some toast-drinking, the bawd feels more friendly toward the fool, who has been insulting her about her trade: "Now thou hast drunke my health; foole I am friends with thee" (V.i. p.201). But Passarello, not flattered by the offer, replies with a question and a snatch of a bawdy song:

Art art
When Griffon saw the reconciled queane,
offeringe about his neck her armes to cast:
He threw of sword and hartes malignant streame,
And lovely her below the loynes imbrast.

(V.i. p.201)

He then disappears from the play.

It is clear that in adding to his play for the King's Men, John Marston kept, no doubt at the instance of the Company, three important dramatic lines in mind: Burbage's, the player of Bilioso (probably John Heminges), and Robert Armin's. We learn, moreover, that the play was lengthened in these comic parts chiefly because the King's Men could not provide musical interludes like the Boys' Company which first produced the play. Certainly if Marston kept the players of these parts in mind in writing his augmentations, it seems likely that Shakespeare followed the same practice in writing parts for his own Company. Passarello sings, rails, is wise, manipulates words skillfully, and conducts himself familiarly with everyone at the court much like Shakespeare's fools. His elegant velvet costume is his main distinguishing characteristic and suggests that Marston's version of the fool was no more to be considered stock clowning than the differently costumed versions of Shakespeare were.

As I hope I have shown in my discussion of fools in the plays of Shakespeare from 1599 to 1605 and in three other plays performed by Shakespeare's Company, the character of the fool—a kind of fool that was Armin's specialty—becomes an important part of the repertory of the company. Of the eight plays by Shakespeare during this period, only three, Hamlet, Merry Wives, and Othello, do not have important parts for fools, but even in these plays there are opportunities in other roles for Armin's brand of clowning in the older tradition. The evidence clearly suggests that William Shakespeare found in Robert Armin a clown versatile enough to fill the more traditional Kempe-like roles of servant-clown or rustic fellow, including the preeminent Kempe part of Dogberry, as well as an artful student of comedy who had some new ideas picked up in his travels with a provincial company which could be adapted to the theatre in the character of the fool. This new comic character could move freely among all classes of society because of his privilege as a fool, could reflect in his antics a more cultivated kind of entertainment, and could adapt himself comfortably in a sophisticated courtly environment. With the arrival of Robert Armin as a member of the Chamberlain's Men, the roynish natural clown of Shakespeare's earlier comedies becomes the witty artificial fool of his mature comedies and great tragedy, King Lear.

Notes

¹ Sir Edmund K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, Vol. IV, (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1923), 180.

² "Recent Studies in Shakespeare's Chronology," Shakespeare Survey, ed. Allardyce Nicoli (London, 1950), III, 22-33. All dates used in my discussion of Shakespeare's plays follow McManaway's chronology.

³ All citations of AYLI are from A New Variorum edition of Shakespeare, edited by Horace Howard Furness, Vol. VIII: As You Like It (Philadelphia, 1891).

⁴ Leslie Hotson, Shakespeare's Motley (1952), p. 88, believes that Shakespeare and Armin were: "Faced with the necessity of weaning their public little by little from its fanatic addiction to the Tarlton-Kempe-Cowley convention. A significant progression in the treatment of the role can be traced in the comedies . . . As You Like It, and Twelfth Night."

⁵New Variorum Shakespeare, VIII, 262.

⁶ All line counts given with the exception of those for Thersites and Passarello come from Thomos W. Baldwin, The Organization and Personnel of the Shakespearean Company (Princeton, 1927) Charts between pp. 228-229.

⁷ I discuss the ambiguous use of the word "motley" as a specific description of a kind of cloth and as a general term meaning parti-colored in Appendix HI of my unpubl. diss. "William Shakespeare and Robert Armin His Fool: A Working Partnership" (University of Michigan, 1955). E. W. Ives, "Tom Skelton—A Seventeenth-Century Jester," in Shakespeare Survey 13, ed. Allardyce Nicoli (Cambridge, 1960) conclusively demonstrates in his discussion of the word "motley" and in the woodcuts reproduced in the text along with the paintings of Tom Skelton in Plate V that Elizabethan and Stuart fools were variously dressed off the stage as well as on.

⁸ See Hotson, Shakespeare's Motley and Robert H.Goldsmith, Wise Fools, of Shakespeare (1955).

⁹ All citations of TN are from A New Variorum edition of Shakespeare, edited by Horace Howard Furness, Vol. XIII: Twelfth Night (Philadelphia, 1901).

¹⁰ Suggested by Furness, New Variorum Shakespeare, XIII, 63.

¹¹ Leslie Hotson, The First Night of Twelfth Night (New York, 1954), p. 157.

¹²New Variorum Shakespeare, XIII, 258.

¹³New Variorum Shakespeare, XIII, 264-265.

¹⁴Shakespeare Survey III, 22-33.

¹⁵ All citations of KL are from A New Variorum edi-tion of Shakespeare, edited by Horace HowArd Furness Vol. V: King Lear (Philadelphia, 1880).

¹⁶Elizabethan Stage, II, 338-339.

¹⁷Shakespeare Survey III, 22-33.

¹⁸ Dates derived from Alfred Harbage, Annals of English Drama 975-1700 (Philadelphia, 1940), p. 78 and p. 80.

¹⁹ George Wilkins, The Miseries of Enforced Marriage 1607, fac. ed. J. S. Farmer (London, 1913). All citations are from this volume.

²⁰ Cyril Tourneur, The Plays and Poems of Cyril Tourneur, ed. John Churton Collins (London, 1878), Vol. I. All citations are from this volume.

²¹ John Marston, The Plays of John Marston, ed. H. Harvey Wood (Edinburgh and London, 1934), I, xlii-xliv. All citations are from this volume.

²² E. E. Stoll, John Webster (Boston, 1905), p. 56

²³ John Marston, The Malcontent, Augmented by Mar-ston, with the additions played by the Kings Majesties Servants written by Iohn Webster (London, 1604).