The Fool

Question 1

Edward Dowden

Answer 1

“most pathetic of all of Shakespeare’s minor characters”

“his forced pathetic mirth”

Question 2

Nahum Tate

Answer 2

Removed the Fool completely. Does he feel that he wasn’t needed? Or that as the tastes of the audiences became more refined, he just wasn’t appealing? (In the restoration, only the rich went to the theatre.)

Question 3

S.T. Coleridge

Answer 3

“The Fool is no comic buffoon to make the groundlings laugh- no forced condescension of Shakespeare’s genius to the taste of his audience”.

Question 4

Schlegel

Answer 4

“After Kent, Lear’s most faithful associate, his wisest counsellor.”

Question 5

William Hazlitt

Answer 5

“Whose well timed levity comes in to break the continuity of feeling when it can no longer be borne, and to bring into play again the fibres of the heart just as they are growing rigid from over-strained excitement.”