Prince Kwame Adika

Prince Kwame Adika

Dr. Ron Strickland

English 378: Shakespeare on Stage

Term Paper

They Wore Not Motley in their Brains: An Analysis of the Role(s) of Shakespeare’s Fools

William Shakespeare’s reputation as a great writer hinges on many factors. Nonetheless, one of the most tangible of these is his in-depth understanding of human nature and the ease with which he demonstrates this through characterization in his plays. The man who created the likes of Hamlet, Othello, Cleopatra, and Macbeth was anything but a novice in his art. It is a credit to the genius of this great writer that four hundred years after he first wrote, his plays continue to be relevant to people from all walks of life and with all shades of complexion.

In all of his plays, it is obvious that one of the things Shakespeare strives for is economy. Characters appear on the stage because they have a role integral to the central issue(s) of the play. However, the role of the characters known variously as “clowns” and “fools” in Shakespeare is one that has come for a lot of controversy because of the meaning that both Elizabethan audiences and our own attach to their names. While some have argued that fools are none other than nuisances who obstruct our ability to understand the plays, others more generous, tend to see their role as being limited to comic relief. The arguments of this latter group derive from the belief that the length of Shakespeare’s plays required a high degree of spectator-endurance from audiences and it was only proper that the playwright included comic roles in order to help audiences overcome the boredom that might be generated by prolonged sitting to watch the plays.

Another argument is that by the turn of the 16th century when Shakespeare was writing, fools had become commonplace in the homes of royalty and aristocratic families where they became single actors of jocular tricks that kept their patrons on their toes all the time. By extension, it was only natural that Shakespeare who spent a great deal of his writing career either writing plays for members of the royal court/aristocracy or about them, would try as much as possible to be faithful to what happened in their Courts and homes. This view is shared by scholars as diverse as Busby (1923), Wiles (1987), and Otto (2001). The historical basis for this kind of argument is hardly refutable. As Goldsmith (1955: 5) notes: “The bald-headed fool began his theatrical career as a travesty upon the mythological Herakles and Odysseus and ended as the stupidus of the early Roman Empire.” However, the collapse of the Roman Empire would soon make the stupidus and all his other comrades of the Roman stage become wanderers who earned their living variously as jesters, jugglers or minstrels. By the beginning of the early Middle Ages however, these characters started looking for homes with princes or lords (Goldsmith 5).

The culmination of all these was that fools became royal guests who took permanent resident at Courts. Other prominent citizens kept fools of their own too. For example, Sir Thomas More and Queen Elizabeth had fools in their households (Goldsmith 6). These fools, who were often looked upon as imbeciles, were pampered to a large degree. In a period that marked the beginnings of the modern-nation state and the growth of powerful monarchs, the fools at court earned the enviable role of being the only ones who could criticize powerful individuals in society (including kings/queens) and get away with it.

The 16th century fool and his predecessors might have been sources of entertainment, but they were also known for other, less funny character traits. To quote Goldsmith again;

the fool of tradition, however, was something more than a humorous entertainer; he

was also the licensed critic of his master and fellows. Since he was not held

accountable for what his tongue wagged, the fool might clatter or speak unwelcome

truths with comparative impunity…(7)

This observation aptly applies to some of Shakespeare’s fools. A lot of them are particularly vitriolic critics of their masters, even if they do this criticism in hidden ways. Their mouths are against everybody just as everybody’s mouth is against them. They live in a world of their own in which they make the rules and are supreme managers of affairs.

For many of the audiences of Shakespeare’s day however, the first striking thing about these fools was their costumes. The fool’s uniform was symbolically his garb of office. These were the “motley” and the “coxcomb”. In spite of the fact that Wiles (9) contends that all “fools (were) initially in rags”, it is clear that these rags were of a very definite nature. When Lear’s fool first enters the stage, his very first action is to offer his “coxcomb” to a disguised Kent who had just offered to be Lear’s servant. His reason for this action is that Kent had become more deserving of this symbol of foolishness because he (Kent) had decided to take the part of someone who is out of favor. On the other hand, Feste in Twelfth Night, in a rather strikingly erudite rebuttal of Olivia’s claim that he is a fool, blurts out: “Misprision in the highest degree! – Lady, Cucullus non facit monachum; that’s as much as to say, I wear not motley in my brain.” (Act 1 Scene 5) Again, Wiles provides a good illustration of what “motley” means. Referring to Leslie Horton’s Shakespeare’s Motley (1952), he supports the view that: “(a) that the Elizabethan fool’s “motley’ was not a patterned cloth but a tweed of variegated threads; (b) that this “motley” coat was always a full-length coat; and (c) that this costume was the regular wear of Shakespeare’s fools” (182).

With his many-colored (“motley”) robe and his coxcomb (which doubled as a crown of sorts), the fool was easily recognizable on stage. Of course for audiences of Shakespeare, a further fillip to that ease of recognition was the fact that only two main actors; first William Kemp, and later Robert Armin played the roles of Clowns/Fools (Wiles vii-xii). In other words, the actors and costumes of Shakespeare’s fools were easily recognizable by his Elizabethan/Jacobean audiences. It follows that audiences of Shakespeare’s day were likely to associate with these fools trivial, irrelevant and at best comical roles within the plays. After all, what role else would Kemps, or Armin, or any other character in “motley” and “coxcombs” play?

But to look at a person’s costume or even their stage name and go right on to label them without any attempt to analyze their actual actions or character traits on stage is not only naïve but also intellectually retrogressive. To know and understand who these so-called clowns and fools were/are, we have to go back to see things for ourselves. By going back, I mean we have to look at these characters and their actions within the texts vis-à-vis the historical contexts within which they lived. Shakespeare’s Fools (and Shakespeare himself) lived out their lives in difficult socio-political times. Those were the days of absolute monarchs whose exercise of power was so extreme that they could easily snuff out dissent by killing those who they thought were opposing them. One could not easily criticize a ruling monarch or any powerful member of the society and expect to escape punishment. In many cases, people paid the ultimate price by being hanged in London’s (in)famous Tower. An interesting aspect to this situation can be seen in the story of the Puritan polemicist, John Stubbs who in the reign of Queen Elizabeth decided to lambaste the Queen’s proposed marriage to the French Catholic Duke of Alencon. It was effrontery carried too far, and he had to pay for it by having his hands cut off! (Greenblatt 20) Obviously, many others were not so lucky.

One would only expect it as a matter of course that other, less dangerous means of criticizing authority and society would be sought. This is where Shakespeare’s fools come in. Their philosophy is best captured in these lines by Shakespeare’s near-contemporary, John Ford, who in 1628 wrote:

This rule is certain,

“He that pursues his safety from the school

Of state must learn to be a madman or fool”

(Otto 177)

A close look at the Fools Shakespeare created would reveal that he was doing with them something very much akin to what Goldsmith(6) meant when he wrote about Early Modern Court fools : “ The freedom to engage in wanton talk, truth-telling, and parody proved an incentive strong enough to enlist many perfectly sane men in the ranks of counterfeit fools”. In order words, while Shakespeare did not have to enlist in any Royal Court to serve as a counterfeit fool, he obviously found room enough in the characters he called “fools” and through them, he launched verbal salvoes at society and its power-brokers without any fear of incurring the wrath of the authorities. He had learned enough from the mistakes of those who chose to launch a frontal, undisguised attack on their social betters. The lines below, quoted from a Chinese official of the Liao dynasty who found himself in an equally censored environment could as well sum up Shakespeare’s own sorties as a satirist who uses his fools as a front:

When I was young, I tried to put my ideals forward to my ruler but I couldn’t

succeed by direct means, so I started joking, hoping that one in ten thousand

times I might say something edifying, so is it any wonder that I am called a

jester? (Otto, 178)

The “fools” Shakespeare created are anything but stupid, mentally retarded fellows as their name would seem to suggest. Among the army of Shakespearean fools, we rather find characters who are formidable wordsmiths, intense social critics, deep-thinking philosophers, and very witty, intelligent individuals capable of punching holes into the ego-baskets of any self-proclaimed social illuminati.

For evidence to buttress these assertions however, we would naturally have to go to the plays. Within the limits that this paper allows, I proceed to discuss three of the more famous Court Fools Shakespeare created, namely: Feste (in Twelfth Night), Touchstone (in As You Like It), and Lear’s Fool (in The Tragedy ofKing Lear). Let’s begin with Feste. Cast more like a roving impresario who rules over his subjects by the power of his wits alone, Feste is an interesting character for many reasons. On more than one occasion in the play, he takes offense when he is referred to as a “fool”. Responding to Viola in Act Three Scene One, he argues that his role is no less than an accomplished “corrupter of words”. The meaning of this is very much open, but at the end of their interview, Viola is left in no doubt about the capabilities of the man. Thus she declares:

This fellow’s wise enough to play the fool;

And, to do that well, he craves a kind of wit:

He must observe their mood on whom he jests,

The quality of persons, and the time;

And, like the haggard, check at every feather

That comes before his eye. This is a practice

As full of labor as a wise man’s art

(Italics mine)

Viola’s fascination with Feste rests on her perception that he seems to display as much wit as supposedly wise people are capable of. But even long before Viola comes on stage to meet Feste and become one of his converts, he has shown us the mettle he is made of by easily disposing of his mistress, Olivia in Act One Scene 5. The challenge was to determine whether the Feste was really a fool or that cap could fit Olivia better. This encounter in itself is very suggestive in many senses. Feste’s very first words on entering the stage are: “Those wits that think they have thee (wisdom/wit); do very oft prove fools; and I, that am sure I lack thee, may pass for a wise man.” While everybody thinks they can easily take a swipe at fools and get away with it because they were wiser than them, Feste’s only claim to wisdom here is that he is “I am…sure I lack thee (wisdom/wit)”. That attitude is very much akin to that which was adopted by Socrates in his discourses with the Sophists of Rome. It is also very interesting to note that the very structure of the fool’s speech here in this scene is parallel to what rhetoricians today will call the Socratic Method. At the end of that scene, even Olivia is forced to admit her inferiority to the Fool’s wit. In spite of this however, Olivia downplays the effects of the Feste’s words by claiming that “there is no slander in an allowed fool, though he do nothing but rail”. To her, Feste’s words are of none other effect than “bird-bolts”.

From another angle however, Malvolio sees the same words as “cannon-bullets”. Malvolio’s extreme sense of self, his constant attempts to throw his weight about and impress upon others a sense of his importance would soon bring him into a head-on collision with Feste with disastrous consequences for him (Malvolio). If we consider the fact that Malvolio’s main occupation in the entire play is to maintain an order in which all other servants will be subdued while he gains social promotion by having “greatness thrust upon him”, we can relate his role to that of those lower servants within the society who admire royal/aristocratic values very much. Aristocracy-manqué or not, Malvolio becomes the butt of Shakespeare’s festive fool, Feste who is only too willing to overturn the social order on the twelfth night and bring down with it, all those in power or advertising pretensions to the same.

What makes Malvolio’s situation more ironic is that though he affects an air of superiority, he is not particularly intelligent. This weakness in him is recognized by Maria who hatches a plan to make him a “common recreation”. However, it is Feste again who takes the stage to perform the final coup de grace on this pretentious wiseacre. When Feste tells Malvolio in the jail scene that the only darkness that he (Malvolio) was in was that of ignorance, he could also have been talking to all of the audience who assume(d) Feste the character was a fool, just like Malvolio did. But in another sense, he is criticizing the very nature of society which allowed for such arbitrary definitions of people which have no bearing on reality. Malvolio’s lesson, if he ever learnt it, was that there was nothing intrinsically better about the so-called wise people than “fools” or other supposedly social deviants. In fact, madness, folly, honor are all very unstable variables subject very much to the whims and caprices of those who held the power to define others.

Touchstone’s role in As You Like It is very much similar to that of Feste in Twelfth Night. Like Feste, he displays extraordinary wit. Besides, though he does not refer to classical scholars such as Quinapalus and Pythagoras or speak Latin at will (like Feste does), his stock of vocabulary is just as awesome. In his baiting of both the Shepherd and William, his ability to “corrupt” words comes to the fore. In both cases, he is clearly a master of the situation chiefly because of his wits and his ability to commandeer all the empowering possibilities in words. In dealing with William in Act 5 Scene 1, he uses words as weapons, and the effect of this is so clear to us. In a flurry of linguistic acrobatics, he flows just as easily as a skilled pugilist would do in the moment of inspired sadism and in the process scares the young man (who doubles as his rival for the hand of Audrey) away.

Again, like Feste in Twelfth Night, he keeps juggling with the meaning of foolishness as opposed to wisdom. His lines “The fool thinks he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool” in Act 5, Scene 1 make us easily recall Feste’s words in Twelfth Night (Act 1 Scene 5) that “Those wits that think they have thee do very often prove to be; and I, that am sure I lack thee, may pass for a wise man”. Elsewhere in Act 1, the same fool complains that it is a pity that “fools may not speak wisely what wise men do foolishly”. In making such statements, both supposedly foolish men call into the question the notion that they are fools. Touchstone’s role goes beyond speaking out a disclaimer for his supposed foolishness, though. For if there is one character who serves as an effective critic of society in As You Like It, that character should certainly be Touchstone. Even Jacques, the melancholic philosopher who sees himself as a kind of social critic envies the ease with which Touchstone performs by longing “O that I were a fool! I am ambitious for a motley coat” (2.7.42-43). Touchstone, the man who was seen as having a great heap of wisdom and being capable of “unmuzzling” this at will does not play to anybody’s gallery. The first victim of his critical darts is the courtier, Monsieur Le Beau who comes enthusiastically to report that the ladies (Rosalind and Celia) had missed a sport that Touchstone sarcastically refers to as a scene of rib-breaking!