A Study Of The Clowns And Fools In Shakespeare’s Plays

The stage comics have always been underestimated by critics in literary history, and Shakespeare’s clowns and fools are no exceptions. However, Shakespeare seemed to be particularly interested in these stage comics. Nearly all of his plays, from his earliest play 2 Henry VI down to his last romance The Tempest, contain such characters. These fools certainly should not be ignored on Shakespeare’s "great stage of fools". They have evolved from farcical characters to those with profound significance, gaining importance in the structural and thematic functions of Shakespeare’s plays. It would be an oversimplified conclusion that his clowns and fools merely existed to provide comic relief to his audience. However, many critics go to another extreme. Influenced by Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of the carnivalesque, they have regarded the clowns and fools as Shakespeare’s mouthpiece for social criticism because of their skeptical opinions or even subversive remarks about the accepted authorities and social norm. Such interpretations lay much emphasis on the social-political aspect of these characters, and neglect the European fool tradition, on which Shakespeare’s clowns and fools had their roots.This dissertation employs New Criticism as its main approach and takes occasional use of approaches such as historical-biographical criticism to explore the clowns and the fools in Shakespeare’s play. Based on its analysis of Jack Cade in Shakespeare’s history play 2 Henry Ⅵ, Touchstone from his comedy As You Like It, the Fool in his tragedy King Lear, and Autolycus in his romance The Winter’s Tale, this dissertation attempts to explore the structural and thematic functions of Shakespeare’s clowns and fools. With their roots in the fool tradition, domestic and European dramatic traditions, they are significant cultural symbols on the Elizabethan-Jacobean stage. On the one hand, they are the reminders of human folly; but on the other hand, they are wise and insightful "natural philosophers". Though they vary in their theatrical forms and functions, the clowns and fools, with their particular perspectives and traditional licence, help to expose the folly of their social betters. Their folly is a mirror through which the audience gauges the noble characters and events in the plays. Shakespeare uses his clowns and fools to trans-valuate the accepted ideas and opinions and to encourage new interpretations of Shakespeare’s plays.