A quaint pair of simples may be seen in Lyly’s “Mother Bombie.” Memphio, an avaricious old man, has a supposed son, Accius by name, whom he wishes to marry to Silena; both parties being mentally defective, the old man takes it for granted that their offspring will be sane. Silena is described as “no natural fool”; and though this would at first seem to be untrue, it becomes doubtful later if the author had any very clear idea of the nature of her malady. She begins by being “passing amiable, but very simple,” but

before long her condition approaches mania. Her first speech is typical: “My name is Silena. I care not who know it, so I do not; my father keeps me close, so he does; and now I have stolen out, so I have; to go to old Bombie to know my fortune, so I will.” Candius, who listens to her, thinks her at first a “fool,” but decides that as “so fair a face cannot be the scabbard of a foolish mind,” she must be mad. In her meeting with Accius, in the fourth act of the farce, she justifies this conclusion by mistaking him for a “joint-stool.”[121:1]

Before leaving the imbeciles, we must make a bare mention of Shakespeare’s Caliban—bare, because we are hardly justified in calling him a human being at all. The son of a witch,

“A freckled whelp hag-born—not honour’d with

A human shape,”[121:2]

he is only distinguished, as Coleridge says, from the brutes by his dim understanding (bereft, however, of moral reason) and the absence in him of all the instincts of absolute animals. Schlegel gives perhaps the best account of Shakespeare’s creation when he says: “It is as though the use of reason and human speech should be communicated to a stupid ape.”[121:3] Such

a being as this can certainly not be classed with such “simples” and “fools” as have just been mentioned.

To the ordinary reader of drama the word “fool” describes, not a natural imbecile, but a peculiar type of character in the tragedy and comedy of Shakespeare. The Shakespearean fool has a significance which it would be out of place to dwell upon here; he is, however, speaking generally, perfectly sane, and rather rich than defective in intellect. Thus he has nothing in common with the “naturall fooles . . . suted in long coats” mentioned by Nash,[122:1] and but little with the “fool” of many a country village. For this strange character is most often a half-demented fellow with a gift for making curt, cutting remarks, and a tongue which, since its owner fears nobody, invariably vents whatever his breast may forge. There would seem to be only one of Shakespeare’s fools who is really half-witted, and that one is, of course, the fool in “King Lear.”

This point is well made by Dr. Bradley: “To suppose that the Fool is, like many a domestic fool at that time, a perfectly sane man pretending to be half-witted, is surely a most

prosaic blunder. There is no difficulty in imagining that, being slightly touched in the brain, and holding the office of fool, he performs the duties of his office intentionally as well as involuntarily—it is evident that he does so. But unless we suppose that he is touched in the brain, we lose half the effect of his appearance in the Storm-scenes. The effect of those scenes (to state the matter as plainly as possible) depends largely on the presence of three characters and on the affinities and contrasts between them; on our perception that the differences of station in King, Fool, and beggar-noble, are levelled by one blast of calamity; but also on our perception of the differences between these three in one respect,—viz., in regard to the peculiar affliction of insanity. . . . The insanity of the King differs from that of the beggar, not only in its nature, but also in the fact that one is real and the other simply a pretence. Are we to suppose then that the insanity of the third character, the Fool, is in this respect a mere repetition of the second, the beggar,—that it is _mere_ pretence? To suppose this is not only to impoverish miserably the impression made by the trio as a whole, it is also to diminish the heroic and pathetic effect of the character of the Fool.”[123:1] If further proof were needed it could be found