You sound like a fool

King Lear appears to be a play of deception, where multiple characters masquerading their true selves and intentions. It seems to me that part of this masquerading has lead to a play filled with fools or at least play filled with those who speak like fools. While there is only character labeled fool at least two other characters seem to speak the same language or fill a similar role to a Shakespearian fool in this play. I believe those characters to be Edgar and King Lear himself. For the sake of focus though, this blog post will mostly focus on the similarities between Edgar and the Fool.
A Shakespearean fool is a normally a character whose language is characterized by rhyme, song, and wit. Sometimes the language appears to be absolutely nonsensical, however upon closer examination there appears to be some sort of truth either about the world of the play or about the world at large. The true fool of Lear is amazingly astute to the on goings of both. Within the rhyming madness and songs Edgar and Lear also shows awareness to their own worlds.
Edgar’s fooling under the guise of “Tom” at first appears to be the maddened words of a wronged son. For example in Act 3 scene 6 Edgar stars going on about dogs.
“ Tom will throw his head back at them- Avaunt you
curs!
Be thy mouth or black or white,
Tooth that poisons if it bite;
Mastiff, grey-hound, mongrel grim,
Hound or spaniel, brach or lym,
Or bobtail tike or trundle-tail,
Tom will make them weep and wail:
For, with throwing thus my head,
Dogs leap the hatch, and all are fled.
Do de, de, de. Sessa! Come, march to wakes and
fairs and market-towns. Poor Tom, thy horn is dry…”
Edgar’s language is characterized by a mix of both prose and verse. This is not dissimilar to the fool’s mix of prose and poetry seen throughout the play. A really wonderful example of the fool’s ability to jump from poetry to prose is within Act 1 sc 4. Prose is typically thought to be the language of comedy and the lower classes whereas verse is typically thought to be the language of truth and love. It takes true mastery to be able to switch so seamlessly between the two as shown by the true as well as Edgar. More so than a simple structure switch though what really is the mark of the Fool is the ability point out something true.
Fool’s often give away these truths in the form of soliloquies as does Edgar at the end of Act 3 sc7. To me the line “ Who alone suffers, suffers most I’ the mind…” encapsulates all the lovely profound thoughts often found in fool’s speeches!