The Fool’s apparent foolish remarks have a deep sense that exhibits his great insight into events when Lear warns him not to talk in this irresponsible manner and threatens to whip him, the Fool replies that a man who speaks the truth is surely treated like a dog who must be whipped out of the room, while a flatterer, who always speaks falsely, receives kindness and affection. Lear feels lacerated by this remark which, he says, is like ‘a pestilent gall’ to him. Lear means that the Fool’s attaching remarks on him are painful to him. It can be depicted that the Fool is a keen observer of affairs and has a good deal of knowledge of human nature. His remarks and comments may appear to be foolish and absurd on the surface, but there is a good deal of sense in what he says.
The Fool provides repeated reminders to Lear of his imbecility. The Fool continues to harp on Lear’s folly in having given away all his power and authority to two of his daughters, and in having kept nothing for himself. The Fool is absolutely right in his criticisms of Lear’s action in having divided his entire kingdom between his daughters and not having taken any precautions for his own safety and comfort. The Fool helps reminding Lear of the folly that he has committed. For instance, he goes on to recite a few verses the meaning of which is that Lear was an absolute and bitter fool for having given away his entire state. When Lear asks if the word ‘fool’ is being used for him, the Fool replies: ‘All thy other titles thou hast given away; that thou wast born with.’ This remark means that Lear has given away his royal titles and that he is now left only with the title of a ‘fool’ which belonged to him from his birth onwards, a born fool. Kent then intervenes to say to Lear: ‘This is not altogether fool, my Lord’, meaning that the Fool is not entirely foolish and that there is much sense in his apparently foolish remarks. The Fool thereupon says that he is not entirely foolish for the simple reason that lords and great men do not let him keep all the folly for himself but insist on taking away some of his folly for their own use:
‘No faith, Lords and great men will not let me….they will not let me have all the fool to myself; they’ll be snatching.’
(I.iv.145-148)
Turning to Lear, the Fool then says that, if Lear gives him an egg, the Fool will give to Lear two crowns. On being asked how he will do this, the Fool replies:
‘When thou clovest thy crown i’th’ middle, and gavst away both parts, thou bor’st thine ass on thy back o’er the dirt. Thou hadst little wit in thy bald crown when thou gav’st thy golden one away.’
(I.iv.152-156)
This is a bitingly appropriate speech which simply means that Lear committed a blunder by having given away his golden crown, and that all he now deserves is the two halves of the shell of an egg to serve as crowns for his head. In this speech, the Fool also compares Lear to the man that who was such a fool that he carried his donkey on his back in order that the donkey should not feel tired of walking over the long distance. The Fool then goes on to recite a verse in a poetical manner which Lear questions, to which the Fool replies as follows:
‘I have used it, Nuncle, e’er since thou mad’st thy daughters thy mothers; for when thou gav’st them the rod and putt’st down thine own breeches,
[Sings.] Then they for sudden joy did weep
And I for sorrow sung,
That such a king should play bo-peep,
And go the fools among.’
(I.iv.163-169)
In this speech once again, the Fool is reminding Lear of the blunder he had committed by giving away his entire kingdom and his property. ‘Making his daughters his mothers’ means giving to his daughters the authority which only a mother is entitled to exercise over her children. Lear, by giving to his daughters all his authority, armed them with the power to control him like a mother does to her children. Lear now once again threatens to whip the Fool, whereupon the Fool says:
‘I marvel what kin thou and thy daughters are. They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true, thou’lt have me whipped for lying, and sometimes I am whipped for holding my peace….Thou hast pared thy wit o’both sides and left nothing i’the middle.’
(I.iv.173-179)
This is an extremely sharp speech in which the Fool describes the different points of view of Lear and of Lear’s daughters and in which the Fool once again reminds Lear of the folly Lear had committed in giving away all his possessions.
Lear’s misery is aggravated by the Fool’s sarcastic remarks. Shortly later, we find the Fool warning Lear in a mocking vein that Lear’s other daughter, Regan, would prove to be no better than the one whom he is leaving. This is the comment that he makes on Regan: ‘She will taste as like this as a crab does to a crab.’ The Fool then tells Lear why a snail has a house. The reason is that the snail needs some place where it can put its head; the snail knows that it must not give its house to its daughters. Thus here again the Fool is reminding Lear of his folly in not having kept a house for his independent stay. Even the dirty-looking snail is wiser than Lear, says the Fool. The sarcastic remarks of the Fool aggravate Lear’s misery, so that Lear begins to think that he is probably going mad, and so we see Lear pray to heaven not to let him go mad.
‘O let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven! I would not be mad.’
(I.v.43-44)
While Lear is challenging the elements and grieving his sad plight, the Fool speaks again and points out to Lear the advantage of having a house which can provide shelter to a man under such conditions.
‘O, nuncle, court holy-water in a dry house is better than this rain-water out o’door.’
(III.ii.10-11)
The sense in the Fool’s remarks cannot be missed by anybody. Lear also could not miss the point of the Fool’s remark which shows the Fool contributing to driving Lear to madness.
The tension of the play is also relieved by the Fool’s wit. Later in the play, when the Fool finds Kent in the stocks, the Fool feels greatly amused and bursts into laughter. He then makes the following witty comment on Kent’s plight:
‘Ha, ha, look, he wears cruel garters. Horses are tied by the heads, dogs and bears by the neck, monkeys by the loins and men by the legs. When a man’s overlusty at legs, then he wears wooden nether-stocks.’
(II.ii.198-201)
Behind this speech there is no motive or purpose. The Fool has just made an intelligent remark which amuses us and which therefore relieves the tension that has been growing in the play on account of the increasing misery of Lear.
The Fool is very canny and wise. In a conversation with Kent, the Fool warns Kent against following the king whose fortunes have begun to decline. Worldly wisdom demands that a man should follow only him who is rising in life and not him who is going downwards. In this speech and in the verses which he recites on this occasion, the Fool is making fun of those who stick to a great man in his prosperity and adversity.
‘Let go thy hold when a great wheel runs down a hill lest it break thy neck with following it, but the great one that goes upward, let him draw thee after…. That sir which serves and seeks for grain, And Follows but for form, Will pack when it begins to rain’
(II.ii.261-269)
The Fool holds a great sense of loyalty to Lear. He remains with Lear through thick and thin, thus showing his deep attachment to the King who is soft with the Fool. The Fool’s remarks do aggravate and intensify the king’s misery, but the Fool’s intention was not to upset deeply the king with sarcasms. There is no spite in the Fool towards the king. The Fool is compelled by the force of habit to comment mockingly on every situation; and the king’s folly where he gave away his kingdom so unthinkingly, and provokes him to express his reactions, which he does spontaneously and without planned purpose.
The Fool puts Lear’s actions in their true perspective. There are, says the Fool, two kinds of fools:
‘The one in motley here, the other found out there.’
Lear: ‘Dost thou call me a fool, boy?’
Fool: ‘All thy other titles thou hast given away; that thou wast born with…That such a king should play bo-peep, And go the fools among.’
It is the Fool alone who from the first sees the true nature and extent of Lear’s folly; ‘May not an ass know when the cart draws the horse?’ He sums up Lear’s mistake: ‘Thou mad’st thy daughters thy mothers!’ The reversal of proper natural order is crudely emphasised: ‘Thou gav’st them the rod and putt’st down thine own breeches’. Like the hedge-sparrow in the song, sings the Fool, Lear has had ‘it head bit off by it young’, and the result is, ‘So out went the candle and we were left darkling’-Lear’s abdication leaves the kingdom without the placement of a new leader. In the first scene of the play, Lear has described Cordelia’s fortune: ‘Nothing will come of nothing’. Now the Fool asks Lear in his turn:
‘Can you make no use of nothing, Nuncle?’
And Lear unwittingly describes his own fortunes:
‘Why no, boy, nothing can be made out of nothing.’
Again and again the speeches of the Fool show Lear’s actions in their true light. But when Lear’s wits gone the Fool fades from the play.
A major function of the Fool in the play was his importance in Lear’s character development. The Fool makes the folly of the king the target of his humour; the harmless words he throws out conceal a deep significance and also, to cheer the suffering of his master, and to lighten the burden of his own grief. The Fool emphasises the tragedy of the events and relieves it. He emphasises the tragedy because it is in his character, he exposes with freedom of speech the folly of his master’s action and its consequences. His aim seems to be to induce Lear to ‘resume’ his power. Hence he harps continually on about the folly of what Lear has done and expresses the regret to which his master is ashamed to admit. Lear’s cause becomes lost in the second act. His mind is lost and now the Fool seeks to divert his master- ‘to out-jest his heart struck injuries’ the Fool has assumed here the role of the comforter-as soon as Lear realises that he has done wrong. The Fool is the cause for Lear’s enlightenment and realisation. Once Lear comprehends his mistakes earlier outlined by the Fool, he begins to reform his ways. ‘I am a very foolish, fond old man’. After Lear’s moments of madness, he begins to see things in context. ‘Go to, they are not men o’their words: they told me I was everything; tis a lie, I am not ague-proof.’ After Lear’s rage and madness provoked by the Fool, he is then able to realise his situation. In Act four Scene seven we see the king long back the child he banished, Cordelia, in realising he was in the wrong all the time. ‘I think this lady To be my child Cordelia.’ The Fool was the only character possible of depicting the truth successfully to Lear, as Cordelia was banished for this from the beginning, and as we have observed, is one of the main factors to Lear’s character development.
Part of the Fool’s significance in the play is as mentioned before to provide comedy. The Fool makes a large number of sarcastic remarks on the folly which Lear has committed by giving away all his power and authority to two of his daughters, and keeping nothing for himself. Each of the Fool’s remarks is a sharp reminder to Lear of the blunder and the folly of which he has been guilty. An example is:
‘I have used it, nuncle, e’er since thou mad’st thy daughters thy mothers; for when thou gav’st them the rod and putt’st down thine own breeches’
(I.iv. 163-165)
The Fool goes on making more remarks of the same kind. It is the light-hearted nature of his speech that adds a comic effect in the play and the audience of the play.
As Lear suffers tremendously during Act three, his ‘injuries’ are beyond the Fool’s power to alleviate, and ceases to be necessary to the scheme of the play. No words of his are needed to emphasise its self-evident tragedy, the king’s madness is emphasis enough, and nothing can relieve its sheer affliction. So, the Fool is no longer needed in the play and drops out of the action.
The Fool in King Lear does not make use laugh audibly, but his witty comments do indeed relieve the tension, which might otherwise become unbearable. Beyond this, he serves to highlight vividly the king’s folly. The Fool is like a mirror, striving to show Lear his true image. When Lear is able to realise his mistakes the Fool becomes his master’s helper. With Lear’s madness, the Fool’s role ends.