The Fool Flashcards
Crown on Lear’s head (wit) v. King’s crown (natural order)
Both are broken = madness and disintegration of society
‘I’ll give thee two crowns’
Subjects bear brunt of contradiction between new order and old order
New order = lies
Old order = truth
Nothing = betraying both
‘whipped for speaking true, thoul’t have me whipped for lying, and sometimes I am whipped for holding my peace’
Disguise of cuckoo mirrors difference between appearance of G+R (as good kids) and reality
Suggestions of illegitimacy - cuckoo
latinate syntax presents inability of both orders to rule
‘the hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long that it’s had it head bit off by it young’
Inversion of natural order
‘when the cart draws the horse’
Oswald here is the dog bc he bears the truth of Goneril’s insubordination but is treated badly bc he bears it. Presents only lower classes as capable of truth
‘truth’s a dog that must to kennel’
Merlin’s time is the time of JI - this foreshadows similar transition from old order to new - tudor times seen as being end of chivalric old England (as seen in JI’s patronage)
Disguised criticism through oxymoron of real and mythical - England and Camelot
‘this prophecy Merlin shall make, for I live before his time’ (Fool)
‘I’ll drive ye cackling home to Camelot’ (Kent)
Implies that Lear is senseless: cannot smell sourness of G+R (crab apple) and cannot see worthiness of Cordelia
‘to keep one’s eyes of either side’s nose that what a man cannot smell out he may spy into’
‘she’s as like this as a crab’s like an apple’
Ambiguity - is Fool talking about old order or new order?
Mirrors nobles and merchants vying for monopolies in JI’s early reign (1602 East India Company granted trading monopoly)
‘they will not let me have all the fool to myself, they’ll be snatching’
Fool advises Lear to conform to new order and give up the old ways bc this own actions have destroyed old order
But Lear reduces this reasoning to nothing
Alliteration of ‘n’ presents new order as nihilistic (without emotion), but the necessity of it
‘have more than thou showest, speak less than thou knowest’
‘this is nothing, Fool’
‘can you make no use of nothing, nuncle?’
Ambiguity regarding who is the fool and who is the wise man - presumably the fool is Lear - link to A2S2 - ‘if I had a monopoly out they would have part on’t’
‘that’s a wise man and a fool’
Foreshadows lust of G+R towards Edmund and the fact they have not returned to their roots and realised sufferings of lower classes as Lear has presents their lust and sinfulness as ultimately self-destructuve
Also critique of JI’s court as sexually deviant w homo
‘brave night to cool a courtisan’
Oxymoronic nature of Fool’s rhyme presents conflict between old and new orders and the resultant descent into anarchy portrayed by the latinate syntax
Mirrors step into the Stuart era
‘when priests are more in word than matter, when brewers mar their malt with water…’
‘then comes the time, who lives to see’t, that going shall be used with feet’
Tarot card of the fool
Upright = beginnings, innocence, spontaneity, free spirit Reversed = naivety, foolishness, recklessness, risk-taking
Fool is Lear’s inner self - he begins as a king (reversed) and ends at his roots (upright - when he dies)
Sun reps beginning of journey and facing north-west - direction of the unknown
Stepping off the cliff will take him to the material world - Lear did this in the beginning when he gave up England to the new order
Mountains behind fool rep realm of spirits that he has to work to regain - Lear regains this in death when he has repented
