Essay The Foolishness of Fools in Shakespeare's King Lear

The Fool is ironically different from his title. While the fool is commonly an idiot, Lear's fool seems to understand the political situation better that the king himself. His jokes and songs seem to be aimed at teaching Lear about the errors he has made rather than at making

Fool, a character that is literally nothing in society, embodies the role of a teacher, using his wit to teach a blind king how to open his metaphorically closed eyes in order to see truth. In conjunction with Rotman, I agree that Lear is “blind to the difference between silence and saying nothing” (81) and “between a sign and a sign about signs” (81) therefore, in order to understand the differences, he must first be made “to see is the nature of Cordelia’s ‘nothing’” (81). He fails to understand the signal that nothing was supposed to mean, because Lear was so focused on void and meaningless words. He is unable to understand signs, so Fool is there to bluntly clarify the meaning of nothing for him. Fool jests that he would never aspire to be Lear at the present moment because he has “pared thy wit o’ both sides, and left nothing i’ the middle” (KL.1.4.163-164). His better sense of judgement has been exhausted after dividing the kingdom between his two undeserving daughters, and disowning his only honest and good daughter. Because he has granted all of his power to the wrong people, Lear is unable to administer anymore rank over his daughters, and he has no freedom

King Lear's fool is undoubtedly one of the wisest characters in the play. He is not only able to accurately analyze a situation which many other characters are blind to, but he is also able to foreshadow the actions of many characters and many other incidents to come. The main instruction the fool gives to the king is to beware of doing things that are unnatural, such as giving his inheritance, (splitting his kingdom among his daughters) to his daughters before he his dead. By doing this unnaturally, Lear must face many adverse consequences, such as losing his identity, self-worth, and respect from his daughters.

Duplicity is a theme which dominates and defines the play King Lear. The rise of the Machiavellian Edmund and the fall of the eponymous tragic hero King Lear are both due to one major aspect of human nature, deception. The tragedy is set in motion by King Lear, who blinded by hubris, attempts to abdicate and retain power. His folly and hubris, allows him to deceive himself into believing the best way to divide the kingdom is to command his daughters to partake in a demeaning love test, where Goneril and Regan feed his ego with more acts of deceit. Edmund employs the same tactic of deception to manipulate his rise to power. He convinces his ‘blind’ father Gloucester into banishing his loyal son Edgar. Deception is also used for good in the play,

In working so hard to project this persona, Lear is untrue to himself, and loses sight of who he is. Even the scheming Goneril and Regan notice that their father “hath ever but/ slenderly known himself.” (I, i, 282-283) This makes Lear a very insecure person, which explains in part why he insists that his daughters stroke his ego before receiving any of his kingdom. His identity crisis is highlighted when he asks who can verify who he is, and the response by the Fool is: “Lear’s shadow.” (I, iv, 251) At this point in the play, Lear is sane and is still the monarch of the kingdom. Nevertheless, the Fool’s insightful comment insists that Lear is nothing more than a shadow of his true self. Plato would say that he is trapped in the shadow world of the cave, unable to grasp the true forms.[5] This self-imposed persona estranges Lear from his audience; his vulnerability as a human is masked by his rash behavior and unjust decisions. Bloom says that “before he goes mad, Lear’s consciousness is beyond ready understanding; his lack of self-knowledge, blended with his awesome authority, makes him unknowable by us.”[6] Without understanding a character, an audience is most definitely unable to sympathize with him, and here we run into a potentially problematic issue. Aristotle believes that

Likewise, the labels of foolishness and wisdom that are placed on characters are a false recognition of identity because of the misconception of what it means to be wise and noble or to be a foolish knave at the base of society. King Lear thinks of himself as wise at first, but ironically his fool proves to be wisest and claims that Lear’s actions regarding his daughters have only confirmed his folly. This makes Lear a clear example of what it means to be ignorant to the human idea

Fools. What does this mean? As the interviews were conducted, many people interpreted what they believe the definition of fools was to them. In the play, “Midsummer Night’s Dream” written by William Shakespeare, a famous line was spoken by Robin in Act III: “Lord, what fools these mortals be!” This quote was read by twelve different people in different age groups. They were also asked to give their opinion on the quote by agreeing or disagreeing . These interviewees taught the interviewer how there are more definitions towards the word fool and the reasons behind calling someone a fool with amazing real life stories and people.

Both Lear and Riggan are arrogant, egotistical and ultimately ignorant to the surrounding world. Iñárritu and Shakespeare utilise the dialogue of other characters towards the protagonists, in albeit different ways, to show this. Shakespeare utilises the Fool to provide commentary for the audience. In the court of the king, the Fool’s role was to provide entertainment through comedy, but Shakespeare portrays him as the only character telling Lear the truth and thus this is an example of dramatic irony. Through his anecdotes and commentary, the Fool reveals to Lear the truth, but in his ignorance the king does not acknowledge this. Iñárritu demonstrates this through the audial and visual manifestation of Riggan’s younger self. While Shakespeare uses the Fool to tell Lear and the audience the truth, Riggan’s subconscious furthers his disconnection from reality and self-absorption. Additionally, Shakespeare uses eyes as a motif to emphasise this fatal blindness, attributed to age. The plucking out of Gloucester’s eyes is also a direct link to this. Lear’s crown is also used as a symbol of Lear’s poor judgement; by splitting the kingdom between his daughters, Lear “clovest his crown i’ th’ middle”, which ultimately lead to the tragic consequences at the end of the play. Iñárritu explores a similar idea of a limited view of the world through

Edmund cunningly plays the two against each other and later goes further to usurp his father’s position. The confused and grief stricken Gloucester is then accused of treason after aiding King Lear, leading to him being brutally blinded and forced into exile. After becoming aware of his legitimate sons innocence, Gloucester is reunited with Edgar, only dies from the surprise it enduces. Quote: “As flies to wanton boys are we to th’ gods.

Shakespeare's tragedy King Lear can be interpreted in many ways and many responses. The imprecision’s and complication of the play has led

In act one scene four of Shakespeare’s King Lear, the Fool discusses the recent foolish actions King Lear has made. King Lear has just divided his kingdom among Goneril and Regan and banished his favorite daughter Cordelia. King Lear then tries to stay with his daughter Goneril, but she lies to him, says she is not feeling well, and refuses to speak with him or let him enter. King Lear questions why he is not being treated like a king and demands respect from his daughters. The Fool then explains to King Lear why he is a fool.

Madness in King Lear: Act 4 In Shakespeare's play King Lear, Shakespeare introduces many themes. The most important theme shown in King Lear is the theme of madness. During the course of this play madness is shown in the tragic hero, King Lear. King Lear develops madness right in the beginning of the play but he actually shows it in Act 4. In this act, King Lear is not only at the peak of madness but it is also shown him coming out of his madness as well.

King Lear is one main character that makes impulsive decisions without reflecting on the possible consequences. King Lear specifically makes rash decisions while being blind to the fact that the love from his two daughters, Goneril and Reagan, is fake. Within the first scene of the play, Lear asks his three daughters, Regan, Goneril, and Cordelia, “which of you shall we say doth love us most?” (1.1.52). This exact line is the very beginning of Lear’s blindness. Readers are able to recognize that Lear possesses a great amount of power as he refers to himself using the royal ‘we’. Throughout the rest of the play, readers see his deterioration of power until it becomes obsolete. Lear acts unwisely as he values the words that comes from his daughter’s mouths rather than the true meaning behind them. This is also represented when Cordelia simply answers her father’s question with “nothing, my lord” (1.1.92). This response from Cordelia causes Lear to feel humiliated and banishes Cordelia as he believes that “nothing will come of nothing” (1.1.95). Ironically, the word “nothing” carries a crucial meaning as it is associated with bad events and is the opposite of what Lear intends it to mean.

The use of the character and term ‘fool’ has a significance meaning in the work of Shakespeare. Essentially, a fool in the works of Shakespeare is a form of ridicule, where, the author puts certain members of certain in a ridiculed position. However, the author utilizes the character a ‘fool’ in a most humorous way such that the person depicted as a fool is not necessary so but a way of fulfilling a particular theme or direction of his works. In the play, King Lear, there is a specific character named ‘fool’, but also the term is used to refer another character based on a context or to drive a particular theme. Cordelia was called by his father, King Lear a fool at the end of the play. In this paper therefore, the focus is on circumstances under which Cordelia was both her own character and a ‘fool’.

In Act one, scene one, we are introduced to Gloucester and his parallel plot line before we introduced to Lear. We find Gloucester acknowledging his equal adoration between his two sons, the one legitimate, the other illegitimate. The moral code that informs King Lear dictates that illegitimacy bodes nothing but a disadvantage to the harmony of underlying order . Within the terms of the play, Gloucester's emotion is a fatal flaw of judgment. Paying close attention to language, Gloucester's unwitting mistake from Edmund's very first appearance; in a world where the only vocabulary of each character is a full expression of their position on the axis of good and evil, a reader cannot help but notice that Edmund's "... I shall study deserving..."(I.i.24) is a foreboding of the deceit and greed that will taint him for the rest of the play.