Fortune, Fate, and Fools

There is much discussion in King Lear over the wheel of capricious Fortune, whom brings the high low and the low high on a whim. This certainly happens in the context in the play. Edmund rises from the fall of Edgar and Gloucester (3.3 22), Regan and Goneril benefit from the loss of their father’s authority, Oswald usurps Kent whom beat him mercilessly in the first act, and perhaps most fittingly the Fool becomes the wise man and the King becomes the fool. According to Kent (2.2 149) and Lear (3.2 58) their changes in fortune are the result of outside circumstances such as fate conspiring against them, as though Fortune is just spinning a wheel to victimize them. The fool knows better: “Fortune, that arrant whore/ Ne’er turns the key to the poor” (2.4 50-51) The rises and falls depicted in the play are the results of conscious efforts by actors such as Edmund and the mistakes of fools such as Lear (as the fool repeatedly points out). It seems that the play suggests that fortune and fate are but excuses for those “down on their luck” to absolve themselves of responsibility for being at the bottom of the wheel. Edmund, born a bastard, can be said to have a ‘legitimate’ excuse for his misfortune yet he seizes the day and usurps both his brother and father through his cunning alone. He is unwilling to just accept the cards that fate has dealt him and turns his draw into a winning hand. Regan and Goneril seize the “wheel” from Lear and orchestrate the falls of their father and his followers Kent and Gloucester. Even with Regan, Goneril, and Edmund firmly in control of fate, Edgar is able to rise up and seize it from them as well. Lear and Kent, complaining about Fortune’s fickle hand, sit on their asses pretending to put the “pelican daughters” (3.4 72) on trial. What the wisdom of the play (and of the fool) seems to suggest is that it is action (or the lack thereof) that makes real changes in fortune rather than passive obedience to fate. Edmund knows this; the fool knows this; Edgar comes to realize this later. Lear thinks himself “The natural fool of Fortune” (4.6 185) while raving mad. The question is whether Fortune is a supernatural force or the representation of the ‘players’ on the political stage who shape the lives of their subjects. Indeed one could say that every character in Shakespeare is subject to fate simply because they are scripted and must follow the lines they are given. Gloucester’s eyes will be clawed out because he is Gloucester, Lear will surrender his throne to his treacherous daughters because it sets the author’s plot in motion. The fortunes of these characters change only when the play is edited or adapted differently, so in a sense the whims of fortune are equivalent to the whims of the adaptor for a play. Are we merely players on a stage acting out the roles that fate has given us, or are we actors writing our own scripts?

Cordelia and the Fool

I found it peculiar that the Cordelia disappears in Act I of the play, only to return in Act IV, while the Fool appears in Act II and III, and disappears once Cordelia returns. Simple coincidence? Maybe yes, maybe no.

When I first read Lear for English Lit. I, I was upset when the Fool disappeared in Act III because, for notable reasons, he was my favorite character. When I realized that the Fool and Cordelia were only in an act if the other was absent, I thought it was interesting so I researched it. I found that it is thought that during Shakespeare's time the actor who played Cordelia also played the Fool, so there's a more literal parallel. Also, the ending, when Lear says, "And my poor fool is hanged," (5.3, ln. 304) he is holding dead Cordelia in his arms; when the Fool departs from the play for good in Act 3.6, he says "And I'll go to bed at noon." (3.6, ln. 78). The Fool's line, metaphorically, could be saying that he'll take his life at noon, before the downfall, presumably, of King Lear. When Lear refers to Cordelia as a "fool", the footnote suggests that is relates to the Fool's disappearance in 3.6. I believe the Fool and Cordelia represent the faults of Lear throughout the play.

When the Fool leaves us in 3.6, he portrays a half-jokingly, resigned persona that deems Lear as almost hopeless. I see the Fool as another side of Cordelia, as the Fool delivers the more sarcastic, yet realistic lines to the King to remind him of his fault. When we see Lear next (without his Fool) he has gone completely mad. Without Cordelia or the Fool in his life, he has lost all hopelessness, and even though the Fool was constantly criticizing Lear when in his presence, it's almost as if King Lear had a dependency on the Fool, and when he left that's when his insanity ensued.

Also, being that both the Fool and Cordelia are the two characters who represent "truth", it could be said that their deaths add to the theme of hopelessness and despair that this tragedy projects. When they die, as does truth, and as the Fool's disappears, it seems to foreshadow to Lear that he is too late: by the time he realizes the truth, Cordelia is dead.