Lear’s Fool

“Lear’s Fool can be considered the epitome of all Shakespearean fools: he is no messenger, uses monologues and asides addressing the audience directly, speaks almost exclusively to his master, is given no possibility of intervention in the plot, but has powers of satirical and utopian prophecy.

As the court fool is a stranger in the court—an external element to which the court gives a limited license but, paradoxically, a powerful voice—so the stage court-fool lives inside the main action ready to step out of its borders, as little involved as possible.

The fool arrives at the court when the king wants to be amused, or wants to divert the ‘evil eye’ from his sacred person—fools being chosen from the wretches of society. He is accepted by the…hierarchy because the king wants a sort of speaking and tumbling toy, a comic double of his royal person. The bauble and the coxcomb are comic copies of the sceptre and the crown.”

From “Playing the Fool: The Pragmatic Status of Shakespeare’s Clowns” by Roberta Mullini