MAD FOLK IN COMEDY AND TRAGEDY.
(ii.) IMBECILITY.
“I ask’d her questions and she answered me
So far from what she was, so childishly,
So sillily, as if she were a fool,
An innocent.”
(“_Two Noble Kinsmen._”)
Of the few sketches of imbeciles which we find in the drama under
consideration there is hardly one which can properly be called a
full-length portrait. As a class, the idiots come in for a fair
share of attention; the “fool” as well as the “madman” is shewn us
in the asylums of Fletcher and Middleton, but no dramatist seems to
have thought the tragic or the comic possibilities of the “lunatic
lean-witted fool” sufficiently promising to justify the inclusion
of him as a prominent character of a play. This is not altogether
surprising; the imbecile—we shall take the term as nearly as possible
in its precise signification[118:1]—was not considered as an ordinary
madman; he was treated like the half-developed creature he really was,
looked after more carefully than the madman, and trained in simple
things just like a child. So the fool occupied a subordinate place, in
drama as well as in life.
The word “fool” as has been explained,[119:1] is used in our plays
in more senses than one, and a few characters who answer to the
description “simple,” “idiot” or “imbecile” may now be mentioned. They
demand little space, for, though serving a dramatic purpose, they have
little interest or importance in themselves. Nearest sanity is Pogio of
Chapman’s “Gentleman Usher,” whose half-witted condition seems to be
largely pose; it is a strange way of carrying out his own dictum that
“gentility must be fantastical.” Bergetto, too, in Ford’s play, “’Tis
pity she’s a Whore,” though consistently spoken of as “fool’s head,”
“dunce” and the like, could hardly be called anything more serious
than a foolish fellow. Jerome, in Chettle’s “Tragedy of Hoffman,” and
Cloten, the “empty purse” of Cymbeline, have both something of the
true congenital idiot about them. With Jerome, however, our judgment
is influenced more by impression than by anything he says or does in
the play. Hoffman and others call him an “idiot,” and he himself owns
“They say I am a fool,” after which he speaks of seeking out “my notes
of Machiavell.” But this is mere foolish talk, as, indeed, are most
of his speeches. In a quaint scene he addresses the people as their
King, but is outdone by a later speech of Hoffman’s, which he himself
solicits saying, “I charge you all, upon pain of death, that you hear
my cousin.” The action of a fool, indeed, but was it not also the
action of honest Brutus? Therefore we must cling to our estimate of
Jerome, framed from his own speeches, as justification for including
him in this category. Both the actions and the words of Shakespeare’s
Cloten are those of a man mentally deficient; Guiderius was not far
from the truth when he said:
“not Hercules
Could have knock’d out his brains, for he had none”;[120:1]
and everyone who knows him wonders
“That such a crafty devil as is his mother
Should yield the world this ass.”[120:2]
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 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.
[121:1] Cf. “Lear,” iii., 6, 54. The expression was proverbial, it is
true.
[121:2] “Tempest,” i., 2.
[121:3] It is interesting to compare the higher conception of Caliban
seen in Browning’s “Caliban upon Setebos,” where, though the brute
sprawls “with elbows wide, fists clenched to prop his chin,” in the
“cool slush,” he nevertheless reasons vaguely upon such problems as the
existence of evil, of pain, and of a law governing the universe.
[122:1] In “Have with you to Saffron Walden.” The “fool’s coat” is
often mentioned in our plays.
[123:1] “Shakespearean Tragedy,” pp. 311-12.
[125:1] “Shakespearean Tragedy,” p. 312.