The Fool

The Fool

1. Nothingness

   • F 'I am a fool, thou art nothing'
     • Lear's loss of identity
     • Fools assurance of being highlights Lear's confusion and misplacement
   • L 'nothing can be made out of nothing'
   • K 'This is nothing fool'

2. Parallels between Lear and the Fool

   • F ' rather be any kind o'thing than a fool'
     • Parallels to Lear dividing kingdom
   • Follows Lear into the storm selflessly, as though he were Lear's alter ego.
     • Or a second, more sane self
   • L 'My poor fool is hanged'
     • Disappears in Act 3 Scene 6
   • Lear is becoming mad and the fools occupation is madness

3. Affinities with animals and punishment

   • Whipping
     • 'whipped for speaking true'
     • 'have me whipped for lying'
     • 'whipped for holding my peace'

4. The Fool moves between different styles of humour, stand up comedy, sexual innuendo, proverb and verse.

5. F 'This fellow has banished two on's daughters and did the third a blessing against his will'

6. Mixture of nonsense and sense

7. 'So out went the candle and we were left darkling'

   • Spoken as Goneril begins to undermine Lear's sanity
     • Eerily prophetic
   • Thematic connection of darkness and light
     • 'Lear's shadow'
       • Lear has created a figurative darkness to fall on the kingdom by his action
     • Child's terror of the dark

8. Fool as the chorus

   • The fools humours are like a trickle of sanity running through the play.
     • A reminder that despite the insanities or cruelties the world continues as usual.
   • Fool has a vision elevated to a level of omniscience

9. Counterpoint with the language of evil that remains horribly sane

10. all licensed fool

    • The fool tests the boundaries of Lear's lenience toward his humour.

11. 'He that keeps nor crust, nor crumb'

    • Crust: outward show
    • Crumb: inner workings of kingship

12. F 'I'll give thee two crowns'

    • Division of the kingdom

13. 'The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long, That it had it's head bit off by it's young'

    • Cuckoo throws the eggs out of other birds nests to make way for its own eggs
    • Feeding imagery

14. 'Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise

15. Whoop, Jug, I love thee!

    • Prostitute
      • Foreshadows Edmonds affair with Goneril and Regan,
        • Using sexuality to manipulate
          • Love and lust