As I was reading King Lear and found myself once again fooled by the complex nature of a Shakespearean fool’s language, it struck me that this has been consistent pattern throughout the semester. Fools, low rank characters and the dialogue of lowly regarded characters seem to give me the most trouble in pinning down meaning. Granted the language of the other characters (don’t you just love how I just other-ized royalty) has not been a walk in the park but for the most part their language has been relatively easier to comprehend. In Henry V we had Captains Gower, Fluellen, MacMorris and Jamy and their respective native dialects to keep our heads scratching. In 1 Henry IV we had Falstaff and all of his crazy references to revelry, mischief and play. Even Lucio and the two Gentlemen’s dialogue in the second scene of Measure for Measure stumped me at first. Put together a picture of the rich and thought provoking nature of the fool, the solider, and the bawd’s language develops. Low brow becomes high brow in Shakespeare’s world. In a culture like Britain where language and dialect literally determine social worth, it is pretty cool to see how Shakespeare challenges this unfair economy.
It’s no wonder that Lear is a physical tyrant to the fool. Lear is a man who not only wants absolute answers but the answers need be what he wants to hear. When the fool meanders around the point and suggests a contrary opinion, what is Lear’s response? “Take heed, sirrah: the whip.” Lear’s refusal to sympathize with Cordelia or Kent’s plainspoken and heartfelt motivations leads one to think that perhaps it does takes a fool’s puzzle to trap Lear into a web of truth and show him the lies of his ways.
3 comments:
Andre, I think you make some insightful observations in this post. The language of the Fool is often the most witty and complex--and also the most truthful and revealing. Because of his position on the margin of society, the Fool often acts as an objective judge or referee for the characters in the play. King Lear is blind to his own foolishness (he can't understand the true nature of his condition from within his condition) and it takes a Fool, someone on the outside his sphere of awareness, to point out his foolishness.
This draws our attention to something very important in the play--notice Lear's speech as the play goes on; as be loses more and more authority and power, it degrades, even at points into a kind of animalistic onomatopoeia. He also starts to talk in riddles, as the Fool often does.
There is the problem with the fool's wisdom. Even though he may be making points that are entirely apt and intelligent, he's not in a position to be making such observations. The fool saying what he's saying may just make people think the complete opposite way because it's the fool's job to utter jokes and nonsense. It's a real paradox, alright.
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