The Fool and King Lear

King Lear is one of the well-known plays of William Shakespeare, and it has been a subject to many essays and articles for years. Lear, his men and his daughters go through a big tragedy in the play, and we are able to see the characters' inner worlds through different aspects of and elements in it. Like any good literary works, Shakespeare's plays use every scene, character and setting with an intention. King Lear is no exception. The most symbolic character in the play, the Fool, serves an important purpose: reflecting King Lear's inner turmoil and his inability to accept his mistakes.

Towards the end of the play, we see how much anguish Lear accumulated after realising how ungrateful and ill-mannered his two daughters were, and how badly and unjustly he treated Cordelia, his favourite daughter. The Fool never lets him forget his wrong behaviour, and how it will affect him through sarcasm and jokes. Any time he gets agitated, Lear turns to the Fool to find peace. During the storm scene, however, we see Lear ignore the Fool's advice on keeping his humility and go to his daughters for a roof over their heads. He refuses to accept that he lost his privilege by leaving his kingdom to his daughters, and does not acknowledge his mistakes. He claims that whatever is happening was on his daughters.

Yet, it gets visible and sensible to the reader/audience that he regrets his decision about Cordelia and others. The storm and the Fool's words that fall on Lear's deaf ear indicate that he is both in refusal and acceptance. As the storm continues, he gets more and more mentally unbalanced. The storm is a metaphor for Lear’s confused and stumbling mind from the start to the end, however, the fact that he starts to think only about what he did to and for her daughters and what they did to him gets obvious when he reflects his own problem and thoughts on Edgar who is disguised as a madman when he asks:

LEAR. Didst thou gave all to thy daughters? And art thou come to 

this? (3.4.47-48)

Even though Edgar’s story has nothing to do with his daughters, Lear insists on cursing “Edgar’s daughters” who caused him to get mad. At this point, Lear starts to turn into what the Fool has been mentioning since the moment he first came to the scene; a fool himself. The Fool tries to present a bridge between Lear and his soft and emotionally sensible side and fills Cordelia's spot. He constantly mentions Lear's mistake and never leaves Lear’s side until a little after the storm scene, which is the moment Lear meets with Cordelia again. He quotes:

FOOL. Why? For taking one’s part that’s out of favour. [To Kent]

Nay, and thou canst not smile as the wind sits, thou’lt catch

cold shortly. There, take my coxcomb; why, this fellow has

banished two on’s daughters and did the third a blessing 

against his will; if thou follow him, thou must needs wear my

coxcomb. How now, nuncle? Would I had two coxcombs and 

two daughters. (1.4.86-92)

Here, the Fool implies that Lear made a mistake by giving her daughters everything, and his words slowly start to reflect on Lear’s behaviour and mental state. Thus, one can suggest that the Fool plays a role as the embodiment of Lear’s emotional and mental condition.

Throughout the play we see how attached Lear is to the Fool, as well as how he aims to avoid turning into him. As William Empson mentions in his “Fool in Lear”, “Kent calls him mad and accuses him of folly as soon as Cordelia is cast off, and at the end of the scene Goneril and Regan accuse his bad judgment” (180). This sets the first stone on the way to becoming a mad man and a fool. Yet, Lear tries to escape this state. On the other hand, he does not give up on his fool. He wants the Fool with him again and again after Cordelia is gone. So, Lear is unconsciously aware of what he had done and that it has consequences, but he does not wish to surrender to them.

Another reason for his attachment to the Fool is the connection between the Fool and Cordelia. Lear banished Cordelia because she was honest with him and did not use fancy words to praise him and her love for him. The Fool, however, is kept close because he is honest and does not try to praise Lear. On the contrary, he tells his fault to his face. While Lear casts his daughter away because of his prideful character, he wants the Fool with him as his conscience and a reminder of his daughter, since he knows what he had done deep down. Cordelia and the Fool are parts of his character and his mental and emotional growth. 

When Cordelia is gone, the Fool is there as a reminder and compensation for Lear; when Cordelia is back, the Fool disappears; when both of them are gone, Lear himself dies. In the absence of Cordelia, the Fool helps him set his mind free by being there while getting mad. However hard he tries to resist the folly and madness, he turns mad. In the context of the story, being a fool, a clown is being set free and growing spiritually and mentally. Empson indicates this by stating, “But all the same, we are to be in no doubt that this divine goodness and gentleness in Lear has been learned through madness; not merely through suffering, but through having been a clown” (203). Later, when he finds Cordelia again and realises that he, in fact, is not childless, with his newly gained personality and freedom of mind, he plans to be with his daughter entirely. In the end, when Cordelia and the Fool share the same end, getting hanged to death, he loses everything that makes him who he is now and thus ceases to exist. He utters:

LEAR. And my poor fool is hanged. No, no, no life?

   Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life,

   And thou no breath at all? Thou’lt come no more,

   Never, never, never, never, never. (5.3.279-282)

This shows that after Cordelia and the Fool are dead, he has no hope and no will to live any more. The Fool will not be there to signify Cordelia’s existence and Lear’s faults, which means there is no hope of finding Cordelia again and no redemption will bring her back. Thus, Lear gives his last breath out of grief and despair after getting delusional when he thinks Cordelia may still be alive, which are the last remnants of his madness.

To sum up, it can be said that the Fool plays a significant role in Lear’s improvement and death in King Lear, as many other characters and objects do in other plays of William Shakespeare. He makes Lear be aware of what he did, provides a support for Lear during Cordelia’s absence and shows what Lear will become because of his mistake.