The Role and Character of Fool in King Lear
The usual method of analyzing Shakespeare’s characters is to tabulate what they say and do,
and add what other characters say about them. Though this is possible method and one
which occupies a prominent place in the Shakespearean critical tradition known as ‘character
criticism’, it can be misleading as it starts from the wrong end. Shakespeare did not begin by
inventing characters and then search for a suitable plot to embody them. His characters are
largely defined by their roles or by their functions in the plot. This definition of a role by
circumstances is obvious with the fool in King Lear, who is basically the traditional Fool, a
truth-teller. He is also, equally obvious, a splendid part of the comic actor of Shakespeare’s
stage, Robert Armin, fresh from his triumphs in as You Like It and Twelfth Night. Our
impressions of the characters depend very largely on the close relationship between him and
Lear. Shakespeare does not tell us everything; for example, we are not told what happens to
him after the storm scenes in Act III. During the storm the Fool labours to out jest Lear’s
injuries, but in earlier scenes his devotion to Cordelia makes him harp on Lear’s foolishness in
distinguishing her.
Lear’s response to Cordelia’s non-rational rejection of an assessing process that would have
made her rich is to brand his daughter ‘foolish’ in the extreme. By that token, he is also links
her with ‘official’ representative of foolishness in the play. Terrence Hawke’s has pointed out
that two kinds of reasons are in operation in the world of King Lear; instrumental reason and a
process which is intuitive. This instrumental reason is the one applied by Lear to judge
cordelia’s refusal to outbid her sisters in expressing love for their father. From the point of
view this instrumental, lower reason , intuitive reason often appears as a kind of madness or
foolishness, in which the apparently irrational proves capable of genuine insight. While
Cordelia is banished from Lear’s sight the Fool remains serving to a large extent as the
representative of the pole opposed to reason and in Cordelia’s absence, as its most effective
voice the fact that Cordelia and the Fool never appear on the stage together- added to the
fact that all female parts on the Elizabethan stage were in any case played by malessuggests that their linking could easily be reinforced if the part were ‘doubled’, if Cordelia and
the Fol were seen transparently, to be played by the same actor.
Be that as it may, the Fool nevertheless makes certain that the point of view for which
Cordelia stands in the play is maintained when she is off-stage. As a result, once Cordelia is
banished, the Fool’s presence in Lear’s company becomes pervasive. Rising above the level
of direct influence on the plot, he begins to function almost as a chorus to the action,
commenting sometimes obliquely, sometimes almost directly on its developments in terms of
an ‘intuitive’ non-rationally which quite starkly points out that reality and the consequences of
Lea’s actions: “ Thou hadest little wit in thy crown when thou gav’st thy golden one away.”
Time and again the Fool presents Lear with grotesque overriding paradox that results from his
action when the King shows himself to be a fool, then the Fool has a good claim to be a King.
The two fools – the one in motley who sees the truth and the other, wearing the crown, who is
blind to it – confront each other; and the point is materially and visually made Lear, although
rational, is foolish. The Fool, non rational, is wise. It is thus not inappropriate that Lear’s angry
“Dost thou call me fool boy?” meets with the riposte draws Kent’s perceptive comment, “Thus
is not altogether fool, my lord.” The Fool’s mockery of Lear’s arrogant mathematics is
relentless, pointing directly to the crime that Lear has committed in equating the valve of Lord
land with that of love. The Fool asks Lear, “Can you make no use of nothing?” When replies
that “nothing can be made out of nothing.” The Fool asks Kent to explain this to Lear for “he
will not believe a fool..” These words of the fool could be Lear’s motto, for they contain the
essence of his tragedy, referring both to the Fool himself and to Cordelia. Perhaps Lear
recognizes their unity right at the end of the play. By then, completely irrational, he enters with
the dead Cordelia in his arms and showing her body, announces that “my poor fool is
hanged.”