Fool in William Shakespeare's King Lear

Fool in William Shakespeare's King Lear

The Fool’s function in King Lear is to create emphasis on the tragedy

in the play and give insight into the characters’ true nature. He

shows other characters’ nature though blunt comments and earns himself

the name of ‘all-licensed Fool’, as he clearly states peoples’ inner

personality.

He develops the tragedy though a theme of madness and instability,

from his use of poems and rhymes intermingled with standard prose,

which even then is full of cryptic phrases and drivel. This, also,

creates a dramatic atmosphere, as the lines of his riddle are short

with a quick tempo.

However, the Fool was not just used in King Lear. There were many

other Fools used in different plays and the beginning of the use of

the Fool was in medieval England in the 13th Century. The Fool was

used as the link between the exotic imagination of the play and the

immediate world of the audience. His duties include improvising with

the audience and sweeping aside the confines of the script in order to

establish verisimilitude and an easy transformation between English

oral and written traditions. There were two kinds of Fool during

Shakespearean times. These were: the natural Fool - a physically and

mentally disabled person; and an artificial Fool – a witty and clever

actor.

The Fools first appearance is in Act I scene IV, where he shows his

views of Cordelia, Goneril, Regan and Lear. To begin with he believes

that Goneril and Regan are fools, expressing this to Lear through the

phrase ‘How now, Nuncle! Would I have two coxcombs and two daughters’.

Goneril and Regan being fools is portrayed through this state...

... middle of paper ...

...hakespearean times the Fool have been a

great asset to the play as he was fashionable and plays were more of

an occasion instead of just a story for you to decipher.

In contrast, Shakespeare did not use a Fool in his next play, Macbeth.

This is probably because the Fool had already reached its peak, but

now was declining in fashion and popularity. However, instead of the

Fool, Shakespeare had a Porter for Act II to create comic relief and

contrast. However, the porter did not participate in the whole of

Macbeth or as a link to the audience. This makes King Lear the last of

Shakespeare’s plays to contain a Fool.

In conclusion, I believe the Fool to be an asset to the play and have

an important function of increasing the emotions and clarifying parts

of the play to, overall, make it another of Shakespeare’s classics.