[In the essay below, Asnani offers an overview of Shakespeare's fools, notably Touchstone, Feste, and Lear's Fool.]

The meaning of the word Fool has undergone a considerable change since the time of Shakespeare. The word as we understand today, means a person "marked by folly: lacking in judgment, fit consideration or intelligence, as lacking in intellect: Idiotic, feeble minded, simple¹. etc. But the Fool of Shakespeare instead of being idiotic, simple and feeble minded, is marked by the sharpness of his wit, spontaneity in fun and sometimes satire in his tone.

During the Elizabethan period, the kings, the noblemen and other wealthy persons used to employ fools in order to entertain themselves, and their friends either on certain ceremonial occasions or in the common parlour. The fool, or the clown, or the jester (to be taken as synonymous terms presently,) used to wear the conventional 'motley'—particoloured dress and also a conical cap, and carry in his hands a staff with some jingling-bells attached to one end of it, which the fool used to shake before his listeners whenever he used to speak something foolish or funny in order to excite laughter in them. Such a fool or a jester was usually drawn from the ranks of the cultured, for he had to be polished, cultured, well-read and possessed of both moral courage and intellectual tact. He was most privileged in the sense that he was permitted to speak any amount of sense and nonsense before any august assembly and sparing none of the august persons for the jokes, which were sometimes humorous, sometimes witty, sometimes farcical and even vulgar. He had also the movements of his body, some kind of gesture, which also was intended to provoke laughter. Richard Tarleton, Will-Kempe, and Robert Armin were among the leading professional fools during the Tudor Age, which gave food for pastime to the royal court and noble audience.

Moulton in his interesting study of Shakespeare². believes that this institution of fools seems to rest upon three medieval and ancient notions. The first is the barbarism of enjoying personal defects, illustrated in large number of Roman names derived from bodily infirmities Varus, the bandy-legged, Balbus the stammerer, and the like; this led our ancestors to find fun in the incoherence of natural idiocy, and finally made the imitation of it a profession. A second notion underlying the institution of a jester is the connection to the ancient mind between madness and inspiration; the same Greek word etheos stands for both and to this day the idiot of a Scotch village is believed in some way to see further than sane folk. A third idea to be kept in mind is the medieval conception of wit. With us wit is weighed by its intrinsic worth; the old idea, appearing repeatedly in Shakespeare's scenes, was that wit was a mental game, a sort of battledore and shuttlecock, in which the jokes themselves might be indifferent since the point of game, lay in keeping it up as smartly and as long as possible. The fool, whose title and motley dress suggested the absence of ordinary sense or propriety, combines in his office all three notions; from the last he was bound to keep up the fire of badinage, even though it were with witless nonsense; from the second he was expected at times to give utterance to deep truths; and in virtue of the first he had licence to make hard hits under protection of the 'folly' which all were supposed to enjoy:

He that a fool doth very wisely hit,
Doth very foolishly, although he smart,
Not to seem senseless of the bob . . .

It was the fashion of the time to call these comic characters all indifferently, clowns; but Gordon has technically classified them into two groups: "those who play with words, and those who are played with by them—those, who are sufficiently masters of the English language to make fun out of it; and those who are mastered by it as to give fun unconsciously"³. In the first class he has placed the professional fools headed by Touchstone, with Feste, and such court-bred attendants as Moth-that 'tender juvenal.' In the class, though touching on the second, come the men servants, the roguish valets, like Speed, and Launce, and Launcelot. The second class consists of rustics like Costard, artisans like Bottom and officials like Dogberry, Verges and Dull. The amusement they cause is at their own expense. They are complacent, vain, and adorably stupid. Sometimes they achieve pure nonsense, than which nothing is more difficult to explain. "There is nothing in Shakespeare more certainly the work of genius" says Gordon, although with a little exaggeration, "than the mettled nonsense, the complacent nonsense, the perfectly contented and ideal inanity which Shakespeare, in some of these characters has presented to us".⁴

The purpose of Shakespeare's introducing the fool into comedies as well as tragedies, historical plays as well as romances, is manifold. It is, of course, the general one of making the company or the audience laugh, of keeping the dialogue going on in the intervals of action, of providing the song and dance, whenever and wherever necessary (for example Dull in Love's Labour Lost, Touchstone in As You Like It, Feste in Twelfth Night and Autolycus in the Winter's Tale). Another contribution of the fool in Shakespeare's plays is to moralise or sermonise or philosophise over certain situations and incidents of the play or even upon the actions of certain characters; while at other times, his function is to explain certain things—either the behaviour of the hero or the heroine, or the trend of the action of the play which would otherwise remain unintelligible to the audience. Hence the Fool in Shakespeare is not necessarily a 'fool' in modern context, or an im becile or a half-witted fellow, but quite the reverse, he is one of the wisest or the most learned characters in the play. More than a jester or a humorist, he very often assumes the role of a philosopher, a Greek Chorus, an interpreter and a critic. It would be no exaggeration to say that it is through the lips of the fool that sometimes Shakespeare speaks and expresses his own opinion on certain matters, for he has made him more wise and profound than most of the so called wise men.

A study of the fool in Shakespeare's Comedies, Tragedies and Romances may lead to some interesting results. Let us take, first of all, Touchstone.

Touchstone, the prince among Shakespearean fools has neither the vulgarity of Autolycus, nor the indecent jests and coarse witticism of Brown. His wit, though a bit sophisticated is apt and entertaining without being vulgar; his humour is never boisterous and infections; it is always playful, hilarious and designedly foolish. The motive of his witticism is to unmark the follies and human absurdities. He has been called "a mixture of the ancient cynic philosopher with the modern buffoon." His solemn, bright, lovable and deceptive fooling anent the flight of time is a sort of parody of Jaques' sombre meditations.

John Palmer esteems him as a "loyal servant who without any illusions as to the sequel is ready at a word to 'go along over the wide world' with his mistress"⁵. And he knows which side the bread is to be buttered, for like a complete realist gifted with abundant common sense he aptly responds to the situation:

Ay, now am I in Arden, the more fool I.
When I was at home, I was in a better
Place, but travellers must he content.

His special lecture to Corin on the rival claims of town and country, court and rustic life casts sufficient light on his sharp and intelligent wit. He gives a very balanced view of life. He is at pains to show to Corin how full of fraud and humbug the court life is. But at the same time, he has no predisposition to idealise the forest life and presents it with a most convincing innocence.

Truly . . . in respect of itself, it is a good life, but in respect that it's a shepherd's life, it is naught. In respect it is solitary, I like it well, but in respect it is private, it is a very vile life. Now in respect it is in the fields, it pleaseth me well; but in respect it is not in the court, it is tedious . . . ⁷.

The incomparable Rosalind, whose tide of wit and flush of love set her above any need of correction by the comic spirit, is moved to commit: "Thou speakest wiser than thou art ware of" (II, iv, 52). Even a character like Jaques-steeped head over heels, in the desponding slough of melancholy and dejection, is enthralled and pays the greatest compliment to Touchstone's wit. (II, vii, 12-19). It is a testimony worth recollecting that Touchstone is able to communicate some sort of enthusiasm for living to a man like Jaques—a born pessimist. It, no doubt, amounts to the undying popularity of Touchstone, when Jaques more than once wants to be invested with the power of the fool:

1. O, that I were a fool . . .
I am ambitious for motley coat⁸.

2. . . . I must have liberty
Withal as large a character as the wind,
To blow on whom I please; for so fools have⁹.

But it is the senior Duke, a keen student of human nature, who understands Touchstone best and gives the aptest appreciation of the function of all fools in Shakespeare's plays, when he says of Touchstone that:

He uses his folly like a stalking horse; and
under presentation of that he shoots his wit.

We then find him as a critic of poetry which expresses the mad passion of a lover. When Rosalind is naturally thrilled to read the poems, scattered and hung on the boughs of the trees in the Forest of Arden by her lover-Orlando, Touchstone comes along and pours cold water on such effusions. He says it is clumsy, unmusical and cheap poetry; nothing better than a doggerel:

I'll rhyme you so, eight years together,
dinners, suppers, and sleeping hours excepted;
it is the right butter-woman's rank to the market.

And he is not a mere boaster; he can do what he says and indeed gives a sample of extempore rhymes in the mock-heroic style—

His very marriage, so grotesquely ill-assorted is the partner of his choice. It tends (in Hazlitt's words) to "throw a degree of ridicule on the state of wedlock itself" and consequently on the others over whom Hymen speak his blessing.

During the course of the play Touchstone has to draw fun on demand from such diverse topics as Courtiers' oaths, travellers' complaints, the course of Time the irregularities of Fortune, music, versification, and even his own intended wife—"a poor virgin, sir, an ill-favoured thing, sir, but mine own." In the final scene, to fill up a moment of waiting, Touchstone treats us to a superb piece of comic casuistry. He very shrewdly brings in his famous anatomy of the lie in its seven fold stages and shows himself a refined logician. The seven stages are the Retort Courteous, the Quip Modest, the Reply Churlish, the Reproof Valiant, the Countercheck Quarrelsome, the Lie with the Circumstance and the Lie Direct. The passage is important for the light it throws on his claim to be considered a courtier. The evidence he adduces is: "I have flattered a lady, I have been polite with my friends, and smooth with mine enemy; I have undone three tailors; I have had four quarrels and like to have fought one"¹². But actually he did never fight it out, since he and his opponent discovered that the quarrel was upon the seventh cause. He then explains that the seventh stage "Lie Direct" can be avoided by the addition of the qualifying word 'If'. 'Your if' is the only peace-maker; much virtue in 'If' he declares.

It has been wittily said of Touchstone: "He is undoubtedly slightly cracked, but the very cracks in his brain are chinks which let in light"¹³. If we take into account the effectiveness of his fooling, the unvarying versatility with which it is suited to its subject, and the insight into character and life with his apposite arguments, we can only doubt the existence of these alleged 'cracks'.

Thoughout the Forest scenes, Touchstone furnishes ballast in the shape of shrewd and homely thrusts to counteract the rarefied atmosphere of romance, mystery and idealised love. In short what has been said of Feste in Twelfth Night, is equally true of Touchstone: "Is not this a rare fellow, my lord? he's as good as anything and yet a fool."¹⁴

Feste: Feste, one of the most interesting characters in Twelfth Night is a sort of the Master of Revels—the highest prudence and the lowest buffooner in the play. He is conscious of his superiority and knows that he dpes not carry motley in his brain when he very shrewdly observes: "Those wits that think they have thee do very oft prove fools; and I that am sure that I lack thee, may pass for a wise man."¹⁵ This fellow who is "too wise to play the fool" quickly wins Viola's applause when he sees the disease of both Malvolio and the Duke and prescribes remedies to them. This indeed is the top of wisdom to philosophise yet not to appear to do so, and in mirth to do the same with those that are serious and seem in earnest. On being asked by Viola if he is not Lady Olivia's fool, he at once retorts, "No, indeed, sir, the Lady Olivia has no folly; she will keep no fool, sir, till she is married; and Fools are as like husbands as pilchards are to herrings, husbands the bigger. . ."¹⁶.

Some of his remarks have passed for sayings and maxims, for instance; "Better a witty fool than a foolish wit," or. "God give wisdom to those that have it; those who have it not, let them use it."

Feste, the wise fool, who translates deep truths of human nature into the languge of laughter, to use A. C. Bradley's phrase "endears himself to us",¹⁷ because he is witty, satirical, apt enough at repartee, merry, jovial; in short "for all waters."

Lear's Fool: He is the traditional royal retainer whose licensed profession is to entertain the king in such ways as the king finds entertaining. But he goes beyond his privilege and thus transgressing his usual professional role, he becomes the commentator on his master's doings. "He points his remarks". says Charlton¹⁸ "on Lear's projects with a sting which pierces to the quick, and he knows how near the edge he is thrusting".

Thou wast a pretty fellow when thou hadst no need to care for her frowning; now thou art an O without a figure; I am better than thou art now; I am a fool, thou art nothing.¹⁹

So far as his presence for the most part in the play; his foresight and voice of disembodied wisdom, and his sharp chidings on the King are concerned, he is like the Chorus in the Greek Tragedies with one essential difference. Unlike the chorus in Greek Tragedies, his prophetic utterances are not mystically inspired. They afe "the cumulative product of mankind's human experiences."²⁰

He speaks from the well of traditional wisdom of the ages—all the wisdom stored up in Lear which might have been the well-spring of his actions if he could have listened to it and valued it. The keynote of Lear's tragedy is, in fact, sounded in the words of the fool: "Though should'st not have been old until thou hadst been wise." (K. L. I,v,45). He scolds the king for giving away his land, and for resigning his crown: "Thou hadst little wit in thy half crown", he says, "when thou gavest thy golden one away." And further," I can tell why a snail has a house," he says, "to put his head in, not to give it away to his daughters and leave his horns without a case." It is again the sensible fool who very cryptically sums up the essence of the common tragedy of the plot and the sub plot;

The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long
That it had its head bit off by its young.

Autolycus: Moving in the midst of rustic merriment, the agile figure of Autolycus is, as if, an incarnation of rascal knavery and vagabondage. He has in him the wit of Touchstone, tunefulness of Feste and mental agility and a ready tongue of Falstaff. He is a rogue, not so much from malice as from his joyous and sportive nature. He takes delight in thievery for its own sake rather than for its gains. He is aware of his misdeeds, and laughs at them. His life is folly, to be sure, but then he wants to enjoy his own folly. A brilliant scapegrace, a knave of many faculties; of sparkling versatility of parts; with wit equal to thievery; quick, sharp and changeable—he belongs to the class of consciously comic characters, who make fun and enact folly for themselves.

To him, life is a festival of gay adventures in which his own unfailing resourcefulness brings him both money and enjoyment. Adventurous as he is, he makes no pretence to courage and virtue; much as he loves crime, he dreads its consequences. "Gallows and knock are too powerful on the highway; beatings and hangings are terror to me".²² At the same time, he finds "Honesty a fool, and Trust his sworn brother, a very simple gentleman."²³ Simplicity and Honesty are thus an infamy to him. Consummate in arts of lying, fraud and imposture, this merry rogue, the incarnation of fun and rascality, practises them with such a droll and brazen audacity, with such a keen sense of enjoyment and fun, that we are inclined to be indulgent to him.

Trinculo in The Tempest is a mean type of Shakespearean fools, because he lacks decent humour or intelligent wit, because he indulges mostly in plays upon words or in vulgarity, which is nothing but bufoonery, and because, at the top of all, he is a dammed coward and a confirmed addict to drinking. Even Caliban, a monster hates Trinculo and outwits him. The only one remark which Trinculo makes and which is worth noting is "Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows," otherwise, Trinculo is really one of the most degenerate forms of the Elizabethan fools.

There are other fools or clowns in Shakespeare's plays, but they are not as remarkable as the fools just studied, and yet some of them deserve mention. These are Launcelet Gobleo in The Merchant of Venice, Costard in Love's Labour Lost; the grave diggers in Hamlet; Bottom the weaver in the Mid Summer Night's Dream, clowns in Measure for Measure and All is Well That Ends Well; and jesters who appear in Othello and Timon of Athens.

These fools can also be classified according to the various types of humour which Shakespeare uses in his plays. We have seen that in most of the comedies Shakespeare uses either witty humour or farcical humour, grim humour or ironic humour, philosophic or romantic humour, bantering or refreshing humour. The variety of fools in Shakespeare plays indicates not only his own insight into the various types of persons, who are capable of expressing their humorous spirit in their own typical ways which can be clearly distinguished from one another. We can surely distinguish Falstaff from Touchstone, or Feste from the fool of King Lear.

Notes

¹Webster's Third new International Dictionary Unabridged p. 884.

² P. G. Moulton Shakespeare As a Dramatic Artist pp. 219-220. Chapter X.

³ G. Gordon: Shakespearean Comedy.

⁴ G. Gordon: Shakespearean Comedy.

⁵ John Palmer: Political and Comic Character of Shakespeare.

⁶As You Like It II, iv, 16-18.

⁷ Ibid III, ii, 11-18.

⁸As You Like It II, vii, 42-43.

⁹ Ibid II, vii, 47-49.

¹⁰ Ibid V, iv, 106-107.

¹¹ Ibid III, ii, 86-88.

¹²As You Like It V. iv, 43-46.

¹³ Leopard Shakespeare pp. Iv iii.

¹⁴Twelfth Night—V, iv, 100-101.

¹⁵Twelfth Night—I, v, 28-31.

¹⁶ Ibid III, i, 28-31.

¹⁷ A. C. Bradley: A Homage to Shakespeare.

¹⁸ H. B. Charlton: Shakespearean Tragedy ch VII, pp-224.

¹⁹King Lear—I, iv, 210.

²⁰ H. B. Charlton: Shakespearean Tragedy p. 225.

²¹King Lear—I, iv, 213-214.

²²The Winter's Tale IV, iii, 27-28.

²³ Ibid—IV, iv, 583-84.