"Jesters do oft prove prophets." (V, iii, l. 73)
The Incorporation of the Fool into King Lear
The relationship of the Fool and Lear goes far beyond that of master and servant. Indeed, when Lear loses all of his real power and authority, the Fool is seen as the wisest of the twain. It is this wisdom that the Fool passes onto Lear in their many dialogues. This may be traced through the play's progression. First, we must extrapolate what it is that the Fool has to offer Lear; second, we must examine how the Fool is able to remain by Lear's side, as opposed to Kent's banishment; third, we must explore how the Fool communicates with Lear; fourth, we must examine the most fruitful scenes between Lear and the Fool - the heath scenes; and finally, we must examine how Lear effectively carries on the Fool's role after the clown's mysterious exit from the play. These steps will illuminate how the Fool is incorporated into Lear's character.
As Lear's new advisor, the Fool has two things to teach Lear, both of which are necessary for Lear's growth as a character. The first thing the Fool teaches Lear is to recognize the truth - truth about himself and his daughters. As John F. Danby notes, "the Fool is under a compulsion to tell the truth, so that what he says has professional reliability." As a professional fool, the Fool must know the truth to put his own brand of witty spins upon it. However, the Fool's jests are hardly playful and benign while in Lear's presence. His sardonic jests bear the truth of the king's folly like stiff arrows bent on penetrating Lear's maddening exterior. Lear's problem, as the Fool seems to intuit, is that he only admits the effects of his errors, i.e., the gross mistreatment of himself by Goneril and Regan. He sidesteps the truths that are the ultimate cause of the play's tragedy: the expelling of his only faithful daughter, and the parceling off of his real power amongst his "pelican daughters." The Fool, however, is ever swift to point out Lear's original mistakes:
Lear. When were you wont to be so full of songs, sirrah?
Fool. I have used it, Nuncle, e'er since thou mad'st thy daughters thy mothers; for when thou gavest them the rod, and put'st down thine own breeches,
[Singing] Then they for sudden joy did weep,
And I for sorrow sung,
That such a king should play bo-peep
And go the fools among.
Prithee, Nuncle, keep a schoolmaster that can teach thy Fool to lie. I would fain learn to lie.
Lear. And you lie, sirrah, we'll have you whipped.
Fool. I marvel what kin thou and thy daughters are. They'll have me whipped for speaking true; thou'll have me whipped for lying; and sometimes I am whipped for holding my peace. I had rather be any kind o' thing than a Fool, and yet I would not be thee, Nuncle; thou hast pared thy wit o' both sides and left nothing in the middle. [my bold]
(I, iv, ll. 174-193)
This sample dialogue is representative of the Fool's speech: it is literally saturated with his perception of the truth. But Lear must begin to learn and reason out the truth for himself. Teaching the unadulterated truth is the first of the two lessons that the Fool has to offer Lear.
The second lesson for Lear to learn is to gain the ability to sense how others feel. Enid Welsford calls this characteristic "fellow-feeling." She contends that this single characteristic is the main difference between the "good" and the "bad" characters in the play. Despite his original errors, most critics would group Lear into the "good" characters category by the play's close. But to achieve this status he must develop that higher ability to understand how others feel. This, too, he will learn indirectly from the Fool. It will become a skill that Lear intuits from a combination of the Fool's truth and through the dire conditions both he and the Fool will suffer when upon the heath. Truth and "fellow-feeling" are the two great lessons that will be taught by the Fool, Lear's new "advisor."
A question arises: why does Lear keep the Fool on as an advisor, as opposed to Kent, his former advisor? Unlike Kent, the Fool is basically able to say what he wants, when he wants. When Kent intervenes on behalf of Cordelia in Act I, scene one, he is blunt and explicitly frank about Lear's folly:
Kent. Be Kent unmannerly
When Lear is mad. What wouldst thou do, old man? Think'st thou that duty shall have dread to speak
When power to flattery bows? To plainness honor's bound
When majesty falls to folly. Reserve thy state,
And in thy best consideration check
This hideous rashness. [my bold]
(I, i, ll. 147-153)
The Fool, too, addresses Lear's folly and wrath:
Fool. Thou hadst little wit in thy bald crown when thou gav'st thy golden one away [Cordelia's crown]. If I speak like myself in this, let him be whipped that first finds it so.
[Singing] Fools had ne'er less grace in a year,
For wise men are grown foppish,
And know not how their wits to wear
Their manners are so apish. [my bold]
(I, iv, ll. 166-174)
Kent and the Fool's observations are almost identical in content. Both "advisors" speak the truth, and both are prepared for a royal retaliation by Lear. However, Kent receives the full force of Lear's anger, whereas the Fool seems to always get off with merely an impotent threat by Lear. The answer to why the Fool is able to diffuse Lear's wrath lies in the Fool's delivery. Kent's language is direct and to the point, and invokes Lear's anger. However, the Fool's clever style of speaking - through a combination of riddle and song - holds off any real threat of punishment by Lear. It seems, therefore, that Lear's current state of mind (i.e., irrational, confused, and prone to violent verbal outbursts) cannot and will not accept Kent's frank delivery of the truth. The king is not prepared to hear the direct naked truth - not yet anyway. The Fool, on the other hand, bypasses Lear's temper: he is able to snake the truth to Lear into the form of jests and lessons. Therefore, it is not very surprising to understand that only the Fool can hold relatively lengthy conversations with Lear, even when the king's thought train is clearly disorganized. Lear does not cast off the Fool precisely because of the Fool's somewhat opaque usage of wit and song.
Exactly how the Fool converses with Lear is a complex matter. He must not merely speak to Lear (as Kent consistently attempts), but also engage the king's disorganized mind. The Fool doesn't so much talk at Lear as he talks with Lear. Therefore, when the Fool frequently seems to be spouting random bits of foolery, puns and outright nonsense, a closer scrutiny reveals that his word choice is cleverly manipulating the conversation. To better understand the Fool's manipulative abilities over King Lear's mind requires a detailed sketch of their conversation while in progress. To do this I will break up one of their earlier private conversations, and will detail the Fool's agile control over the direction of the conversation. This example occurs in Act I, scene five, in which Lear and the Fool are waiting to depart from Goneril's house to Regan's:
Fool. If a man's brains were in's heels, were't not in danger of kibes?
Lear. Ay, boy.
Fool. Then I prithee be merry. Thy wit shall not go slipshod.
Lear. Ha, ha, ha.
(ll. 8-13)
The Fool begins their private dialogue with a performance of his biting wit. The jest is obvious, yet it is not funny to Lear. One expects that Lear's laughter is a hollow, sarcastic laugh, as suggested by the period at the end of the sentence (as opposed to an exclamation point). Lear's wits are still with him enough to realize that he has just been called brainless by his Fool. However, Lear's temper does not flair, as if his mind is in conflict between thoughts of rage at Goneril and hope that Regan will treat him better. The Fool seems to pick up immediately on Lear's ill-founded hope:
Fool. Shalt see thy other daughter will use thee kindly, for though she's as like this as a crab's like an apple, yet I can tell what I can tell.
Lear. Why, what canst thou tell, my boy?
Fool. She will taste as like this as a crab does to a crab.
(ll. 14-18)
Indirectly, through the crabapple simile, the Fool gives a clear warning of what Lear should expect from his other daughter. The Fool is not so much foretelling as he is reasoning: Regan, like Goneril, offered an artificial reply to Lear's demand of love, thus her behavior should be similar to Goneril's. Lear's ill placed hope in Regan informs the reader and the Fool that Lear is for the moment blind to reason when it concerns his daughters. However, the Fool has just planted the seed of truth concerning her in Lear's mind. Before Lear can respond, the Fool quickly engages Lear in another riddle:
Fool. Thou canst tell why one's nose stands i' th' middle on's face?
Lear. No.
Fool. Why, to keep one's eyes of either side's nose, that what a man cannot smell out, he may spy into.
Lear. I did her wrong.
(ll. 19-25)
On the surface the riddle seems unrelated to what the Fool has said prior. The riddle's answer is a simple truth: if the truth is in front of a man he may see it, or at the least smell it out if he tries (echoes Gloucester's "Do you smell a fault?" I, i, l. 16). The Fool's solution penetrates Lear: he now openly admits that he did Cordelia wrong. (In fact, the Fool uses this advice when he informs the bestocked Kent that any man can smell Lear's stinking fortunes.) Lear has openly recognized the effect of his error, but not the cause itself as of yet. Therefore, the Fool points out the cause of Lear's misfortunes:
Fool. Canst tell how an oyster makes his shell?
Lear. No.
Fool. Nor I neither; but I can tell why a snail has a house.
Lear. Why?
Fool. Why, to put 's head in; not to give it away to his daughters, and leave his horns without a case.
Lear. I will forget my nature. So kind a father! Be my horses ready?
(ll. 26-34)
The Fool employs the unanswerable oyster riddle to wretch Lear's thoughts away from Cordelia and back to the Fool. Having regained Lear's attention the Fool offers his snail riddle. The connotations to Lear are obvious. Lear again exhibits his tendency for madness: he overreacts at the result of Goneril and Regan's misuse of his gift. Again, this is a form of denial; Lear refuses to confront the source (i.e., his decision to parcel out his authority), and he again focuses on the effects (i.e., the harsh treatment he has received). Lear ends with an absent-minded call for his horses, as if physically to flee the truth. The Fool again sets up a test for Lear's wits:
Fool. Thy asses are gone about 'em. The reason why the seven stars are no moe than seven is a pretty reason.
Lear. Because they are not eight.
Fool. Yes indeed. Thou wouldst make a good Fool.
Lear. To take't again perforce. Monster ingratitude!
(ll. 35-40)
The Fool quickly dismisses Lear's horse query, and sets up a simple logical riddle to test Lear's capabilities. Lear, of course, gives the correct answer, proving to the Fool that Lear is capable of reasoning out the truth if he wants to. He then gives Lear a compact compliment by saying, "Thou wouldst make a good Fool." He does not call Lear a fool, but a "Fool," that is, a person capable of seeing or intuiting the truth. However, Lear may be able to reason through truth of simple riddles, yet he is not ready to realize universal truths. His response is again an angry outburst at having been mistreated, and he toys with the thought of regaining his former glory. Lear is still preoccupied with how events have effected him, not with how his decisions ultimately affect others. Lear must imagine how others feel if he is to grow as a character. The Fool addresses Lear's current shortsightedness:
Fool. If thou wert my Fool, Nuncle, I'd have thee beaten for being old before thy time.
Lear. How's that?
Fool. Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise.
Lear. O, let me not go mad, not mad, sweet heaven! Keep me in temper; I would not be mad!
(ll. 41-47)
For the moment the Fool has given up on Lear: the king is not yet ready to confront the truth by himself. This lengthy exchange between the two is a test of the Fool's making to gauge Lear's reasoning abilities. Lear's final lines show a continuation of his earlier denial. As of yet, the Fool has much to teach Lear.
The most fruitful moments of Lear's instruction by the Fool occur in the dramatic heath scenes. Initially, during these scenes Lear has only one follower left: the Fool. Even loyal Kent has been momentarily separated from his lord during the tempest. Their time alone on the heath is vitally important. It is during these scenes that Lear finally accepts the truth and achieves "fellow-feeling." It is during these scenes of heightening madness that the relationship between Lear and the Fool ascends to a new level. And it is during these scenes that the Fool makes his enigmatic silent exit from the play.
Initially, Lear's speech is spoken only to the wrathful skies about his "pelican daughters." The Fool, as we've seen before, again converses with Lear's madness and shifts his thoughts toward the more immediate concern of removing them to shelter. This is a relatively long process, and the Fool has the added benefit of Kent's suggestion of a nearby hovel. But unlike Kent's direct pleas for the king to take shelter, the Fool skillfully directs Lear's own thoughts toward that conclusion.
A wonderful change takes place upon the heath: in Lear's moments of raving lunacy, the Fool (and only the Fool) reasons with Lear's madness and finally breaks new ground in Lear's character. As Lear's crazed temper begins to subside, we see that he is finally growing in at least one capacity: Lear can now imagine how others feel; he achieves Welsford's "fellow-feeling." This change is brought about by the Fool, who suggests to Lear:
Fool. . . .a dry house is better than this rain water out o' door.
(III, ii, ll. 10-11)
Fool. He that has a house to put 's head in has a good headpiece.
(III, ii, l. 25)
Fool. Prithee, Nuncle, be contented, 'tis a naughty night to swim in.
(III, iv, ll. 112-113)
Unlike Kent's blunt appeals for the king to take shelter, the Fool's subtle reason penetrates Lear's mad hide, and the king finally directly acknowledges his Fool:
Lear. True, my good boy. Come, bring us to this hovel. [my bold]
(III, ii, l. 78)
He does not say, bring me to this hovel, but "bring us to this hovel." Lear is no longer "alone" on the heath; he now has enough sense to realize that his actions are at least affecting one other soul, his Fool.
His sense of "fellow-feeling" continues to develop in these scenes. Again, this growth is prompted by the Fool, though this time it is not the result of what the Fool says, but of the wretched conditions the Fool suffers. It is on the coattails of Lear's thinking about the Fool's dire circumstances ("in boy; go first" III, iv, l. 26) that we get Lear's famous "You houseless poverty" speech. Within these insightful moments a genuine side of Lear that we have not yet truly witnessed emerges: he shows sympathy for others, including the poor whom he had once ignored as king. Lear's sympathy is quite paternal-like (also something we have not seen) in his gentle speech to the Fool:
Lear. My wits begin to turn.
Come on boy, my boy. How dost, my boy? Art cold?
I am cold myself. Where is this straw, my fellow?
The art of our necessities is strange,
That can make vile things precious. Come, your hovel.
Poor Fool and knave, I have one part in my heart
That's sorry yet for thee.
(III, ii, ll. 68-73)
Shakespeare's taste for dramatic irony is perfectly blended in the heath scenes: at the height of Lear's madness he begins to grasp some of the concepts that the Fool has been teaching.
Finally, this leads to the Fool's enigmatic exit from the play. Enid Welsford describes the Fool's sudden disappearance as:
. . . a poetic necessity, for the King having lost everything, including his wits, has now himself become the Fool. He has touched bottom, he is an outcast from society, he has no longer any private axe to grind, so he now sees and speaks the truth.
I believe that Ms. Welsford in right on target. The Fool is no longer necessary as an advisor for Lear. Lear has seen the truth of his gross errors, and he has learned how to imagine what others feel. The king has finally become one of the "good" characters, and the play no longer needs the Fool. Lear has incorporated the Fool, i.e., the Fool continues in Lear.
Lear strikingly resembles the Fool's role for the remainder of the play: he is ludicrously garbed; his insight is elevated; his status is degraded; and his speech produces quasi-comedic statements, in which the truth is embedded. He does not re-enter the play until Act IV, scene six. He emerges physically changed ("Enter Lear [fantastically dressed with wild flowers] ") and in mental overdrive, which is very similar to the Fool's initial entrance. As he stumbles in upon blinded Gloucester and his guide, Edgar, Lear speaks as if he is hallucinating several things at once. But implanted within Lear's seeming gibberish are glimpses of truth about his earlier deception:
Lear. They [Goneril and Regan] flattered me like a dog, and told me I had white hairs in my beard ere the black ones were there.
When the rain came to wet me once and the wind to make me chatter; when the thunder would not peace at my bidding; there I found 'em, there I smelt 'em out. Go to, they are not men o' there words: they told me I was everything; 'tis a lie, I am not agueproof. [my bold]
(IV, vi, ll. 97-98, 102-107)
This speech is Lear's recognition speech. The earlier truth spoken by the Fool is now expressed by Lear himself. His acknowledgment of being deceived by his two daughters ("told me I had white hairs in my beard ere the black ones were there") echoes the Fool's earlier chastising ("If thou wert my Fool, Nuncle, I'd have thee beaten for being old before thy time"). On the heath ("rain," wind," and "thunder") he has discovered for himself that his daughters have greatly misused him ("they told me I was everything; 'tis a lie").
Furthermore, Lear's insight into the truth is not only confined to his own particular situation, but he also begins to see more universal truths. He recognizes the faults of this temporal world; the world of imperfection; the world where justice is often found false. Lear exclaims these truths in his grotesquely comic speech with eyeless Gloucester:
Lear. Read.
Gloucester. What, with the case of eyes?
Lear. O, ho, are you there with me? No eyes in your head . . . ?
Your eyes are in a heavy case, your purse light, yet you see how this world goes.
Gloucester. I see it feelingly.
Lear. What, art mad? A man may see how this world goes with no eyes. Look with thine ears: see how yond justice rails upon yond simple thief. Hark, in thine ear: change places, and, handy-dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief?
Plate sin with gold,
And the strong lances of justice hurtless breaks. . . .
Take that of me, my friend, who have the power
To seal th' accuser's lip. Get thee glass eyes,
And, like a scurvy politician, seem
To see the things thou dost not.
Edgar. O, matter and impertinency mixed!
Reason in madness! [my bold]
(IV, vi, ll. 145-177)
Edgar, also a fugitive from the "law," perceives Lear's reasoning. The faults of the world are exposed before Lear's penetrating eye: a world that preaches love and honor, but advances hate and greed; a world where Cordelia is the outcast, and the evil triad of Goneril, Regan, and Edmund wield dominion. Politicians have eyes, yet they are willingly to turn a blind eye to an abuse of justice. Lear has seen the harsh underside of the world and it has made him mad.
Of course, Shakespeare has Lear die at the end of King Lear, for loss is the integral ingredient of a tragedy. He uses Lear's new found insight and perception to further dramatize the already tragic ending. It is as if the death of innocent Cordelia is not enough for Shakespeare. No, he must go one step further and strike down Lear's life only when he has achieved new levels of perception. And what of the Fool? Lear perhaps addresses this in one of his final speeches when he wails the unclear line, "And my poor fool is hanged: no, no, no life?" (V, iii, l. 307). One of the many readings of this ambiguous line is that the Fool is actually dead. And since Lear has incorporated so much of the Fool within himself, it somehow seems fit that he too shall die. And he does. Thus, "Jesters do oft prove prophets."
Source:
Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of King Lear. Edited by: Russell Fraser. The Signet Classic Shakespeare. New York, New York: New American Library, a division of Penguin Books, USA Inc. 1987.
© sklender, 1996 - Until My Death, and then three weeks beyond that.