in the expressions and the turns of thought which characterise him throughout the play,—they are not the expressions of mania, nor yet of perfect self-possession; they are often, indeed, the expressions which one would expect of a feeble mind. Can one suppose,—to take only one example—that any sane man, even in the position of a Court fool, would insist, as mercilessly as the Fool does in the first scenes, upon the ingratitude of Lear’s daughters? None of Shakespeare’s other fools will be found to probe a wound so deep, but it is exactly what one would expect from a Fool whose brain is really slightly touched. It is true that he also diverts the King’s attention from his troubles in the same scenes, but it is only to return to them again with an even more piercing sting.
Still further, if we assume the actual imbecility of the Fool, a flood of light is at once thrown upon the question of his age—not that it matters in the least what his age is, but some critics have found a difficulty in reconciling the references which seem to make him now a boy, now a man. He is, in fact, a man, but his feeble intellect, together perhaps with a certain physical frailty, causes him to be treated occasionally as a boy, much in the same way that Antonio is treated by Lollio in the “Changeling.” We need not stay longer, however, to defend this view, for, as Dr. Bradley
says: “Arguments against the idea that the Fool is wholly sane are either needless or futile; for in the end they are appeals to the perception that this idea almost destroys the poetry of the character.”[125:1]
Alone, then, in this division of our subject, we place the Fool of “King Lear.” Demented persons may occur here and there in our plays (such is Cassandra in “Troilus and Cressida”) and there may even be some congenital imbeciles (as Cloten in “Cymbeline”). But such cases of dementia are hard to distinguish from those of mania. In both cases—especially in the second—it is often hard to say whether or no the author intended the idea of idiocy to be conveyed. So Lear’s Fool remains unrivalled and we are glad of it. For nowhere in drama is there a more delicate intermingling of laughter and tears, of terror and pathos, than in this play of “King Lear.” The Fool needs no more lengthy description. To see him (whether as we watch or as we read) alone suffices, and nothing else will do so. When we have looked on him, we have seen “sunshine and rain at once”; there is no “better way.”
FOOTNOTES:
[118:1] Strictly speaking, the insanity of the imbecile is congenital; the general conformation of his brain is faulty, and the mental phenomena of his condition are for the most part “dissociated from active bodily disease.” (See Encyl. Brit., s.v. Insanity.)
[119:1] Above, [p. 37 ff.]
[120:1] “Cymbeline,” iv., 2, 114.
[120:2] Ibid., iv., 1, 57.