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Fool Characters In Shakespeare's Play

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Question 5
The Role of Fool in Shakespeare’s Plays

In many Shakespeare’s plays, fool characters or comic characters are always include regardless of the genre of the play. This shows the importance of a fool character in Shakespeare’s plays as general fools only appears in comedy. They are called the fools or jesters as their characters are very similar to a modern clown, they lack common sense and are alienated from the play. Fools are not just used by Shakespeare, but in many medieval plays as well. According to Wells, fool or comic characters in Shakespearian literature is “type-character, related to the domestic fools kept in royal and noble households. There were wise fools–intelligent men who employed as entertainers–and natural fools–idiots that kept for amusement” (Wells, 2013). Fools are not the minor characters who come up on stage and amuse the audience, they are essential in a play, especially in the comedy genre. “He was apart from the ordinary man, irresponsible, but adept at uttering home truths which others would be afraid or too proud to acknowledge” (Salingar, 1976). As different forms of fool characters existed, they have a distance role to perform in the play. In the William Shakespeare’s comedy, A Mid-Summer Night’s Dream, Nick Bottom is the popular fool character while in tragicomedy The Tempest, Trinculo and Stephano are the comic characters, this essay will focus on this three comic characters. This essay argues that the role of fool characters in

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