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King Lear: The Fool's Wisdom
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William Shakespeare’s tragic play King Lear is riddled with characters blinded by ignorance and stupidity. Oddly enough the one character who possesses the wisdom and insight to realize the tragedy and chaos that is about to ensue is the Fool. Though he appears to do naught but vomit senseless babble, he in fact sees and speaks the reality of what is happening in the kingdom.
Crucial to the Fool’s monologue are the images he presents as he informs Lear of the destruction of the kingdom around them. He gives the noteworthy examples of priests who preach with words instead of meaning, and brewers that dilute their mead with water. He presents other images all of which follow the same pattern of things happening out of the ordinary, signs of a failing kingdom. The existence of these images makes the Fool’s speech far more easily to visualize and therefore add much more power to his ideas. The images also serve the purpose of misguiding those who listen to him so that only the clever will see past the words and grasp his true intentions. Because of this, most people in the kingdom believe that he is nothing more than a Fool. As an intelligent reader, however, one can comprehend the true wisdom of the fool. Even more important than imagery, however, is the Fool’s use of dramatic irony in his monologue as he describes the fall of a kingdom, the very same fall that is taking place in Lear’s own domain, to the king himself who does not even realize what is being said. This royal ...
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