My Sweet Fool

Re-reading King Lear for the #ShakesMOOC has me very much aware of how long it’s been since I looked at this play. I know I read it senior year of high school, and it might have been included in my senior seminar in college. I know I haven’t looked at it since, because it did not feature in my graduate studies, nor has it been a play I’ve added to my “collection” as of yet.* So: best case scenario, it’s been 23 years since I looked at Lear; worst case, it’s been 27.**

And that’s a lot of time to forget lots of details.

How this has functioned for me mostly is characters, lines, events jogging my memory about a scene or two in advance.

For example, before picking up the play again, I had completely forgotten that there was a plot thread in the play involving Gloucester and his sons. As Gloucester introduced Edmund to Kent in 1.1, I remembered “Oh yeah, he’s gonna trick everyone into thinking the older son is disloyal.” When Gloucester tells Edmund of his intent to help the King in 3.3, I remembered “Oh damn, this gets ugly.” And finally, when Edgar (still pretending to be “Poor Tom”) agrees to lead the now-blind Gloucester to Dover, I remembered the bit of gentle trickery that would take place there.

Nothing has come back full-force, but most things are coming back into mind a tiny bit before they occur.

Except with the Fool.

Some things came back slightly in advance. When Lear calls for the Fool in 1.4.77-78***, I had a rush of memory. How much I loved this character, the amazing license he had to be a truth-teller, my then-teenaged obsession with how John Hurt played the role in that 1983 TV movie starring Olivier.

(Of course, that obsession with John Hurt has endured for decades, now, across all sorts of projects. “Imagine me saying the following…“)

And you’d think, what with the wave of affection that came rushing back to me, that I might have some clearer recall about the character, but no. I was caught completely off-guard, reading along and seeing an unexpected footnote for 3.6.84:

(the Fool’s last words)

Huh?!?

Now, after having read past the moment of this character’s sudden disappearance, and having aided myself with a trip to see Professor Google, I’ve caught up with the plot a bit.

The character really (and rather mysteriously) doesn’t return after that line — perhaps because the same actor was doubling both roles (JSTOR, Britain In Print), perhaps because the Fool is literally meant to be Cordelia in disguise (CordeliaKingLear, Parabasis, Ghostlight Chicago), and at bare minimum because the thematic richness of collision and contrast between the two characters would be lessened were they to appear on stage together (Sobran’s).

Speaking only for myself, I find the theories about role doubling, and the thematic counterpoint aided by such a casting choice,**** to be more convincing than any speculation about Cordelia literally disguising herself in motley. I’m also not entirely convinced by theories of the Fool being a figment of Lear’s imagination, playing out his guilt and regret for having banished his youngest daughter.

Having said that, I would be fascinated to see a production that tried any of these approaches. I might need to see when they’re next doing Lear down in Staunton.

* Though that will be changing this summer. (Yay!)

** Damn, I’m old.

*** All line references to the Signet Classic paperback edition, copyright 1998.

**** Another more recent example of this richness is the doubling choices created by Tony Kushner for Angels in America.

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Image credit: King Lear and the Fool by Flickr user Anthony Topper. Unaltered. Licensed through a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.