The World of Comedy -----the images of fool in Shakespearean comedies
...oberation our power and wit. Because of it we can find out our own beauty. Comedies of Shakespeare Shakespearean comedies are appraised so highly because he expresses the life ideal of humanism, advocates the release of personality. The freedom of love is the eternal theme of his comedy.(7) The young people breaks through the old radition, old convention, old ideas boldly and get the happy life through efforts and struggle. In Shakespearean comedies the penance of the devil in his soul and the allowance of the good sort are real contradiction. Shakespeare’s first comedies show even fewer signs of an aprrenticeship. The comedy of Errors, one of his early efforts in this genre, already displays a rare command of the resources of comedy---mistaken identity, madcap confusion, and threat of these early histories and comedies, and indicative of an extraordinary theatrical talent, Shakespeare’s achievement only a few years later would still have all but impossible to foresee. Starting with A Summer Night’s Dream he wrote an unprecedented succession of romantic comedies----The Merchant of Venice, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night---- whose poetic richness and emotional complexity remain unmatched. Whatever the truth of these speculations---- and we have no direct testimony either to support occurred in the same period a shift as well in Shakespearean comic sensibility.The comedies written between 1601 and 1604, Troilus and Cressida, All’s Well That Ends Well, and Measure for Measure, are sufficiently different from the earlier comedies----more biting in tone, more uneasy with comic conventions, more ruthlessly questioning of the values of the characters and the resolutions of the plots----to have led some modern scholors to classify them as “problem plays” or “dark comedies”. Another group of plays, among the last that editors of the first Folio, Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest, written between 1608 and 1611, when Shakespeare had developed a remarkably fluid, dreamlike sense of plot and a poetic style that could veer, apparently effortlessly, from the fortured to the ineffably, are now commonly known as the “romances”. The comic achievements of Shakespeare are less than the tragedy. But in his tragedies there are some comic elements such as the jester in King Lear.(8) The plots of Shakespearean comedies develop with heroes or heroine as the center. The major characters are often heroines who dominate, test, instruct and influence the other roles. The comic poets sagacious and humorous. (9)Yearning toward mysterious phenomena such as the subrogation of the seasons, birth and death, prosperity and downfall, illness and cure, he integrated his talents with the aspiration to nature skillfully through extradinary feats. This is first to the history of comedy.Shakespeare uses verse, blank verse, song and even prose in his comedies. He researched the integral pattern of comedy. The images of fool as means of comedies Sideshow and clown and circus in which clowns perform embody the basic category of comic performance. In Chinese drama, there are roles of “Sheng, Dan, Jing, Mo, Chou”. “Chou” means “antic”. The type of antic indicates that the antic must enter into the Chinese drama whether tragedy or comedy, who adjusts the atmosphere as an element of comedy. “Satire” is direct negation to negative objects. “Mock” is indirect and passive affirmation to negative objects. “Wit” is active and indirect affirmation to affirmative objects”.(10) For humor, because its objects are not embodied from affirmation and negation, it may be a transition tache. Humor is to not only affirm and eulogize but also negate and criticize, and even to affirm and negate or not to affirm and negate simultaneously. What is a fool A good artistic work often makes the appreciator into the artistic world heartly through the great power of artistic impressiveness, the one who experiences the emotional change such as joy, anger, sorrow with the characters. In many plays, there appears some clowns. If being in real life, we may reproach and criticize them. But in artistic works they become the objects of being appreciated. This is the case of transforming ugliness into beauty. The ugliness in comedy is made after being negated and criticized. The purpose is to cause the spectators laugh and affirm the beauty. What is a fool? In some dictionaies, there are various definitions. (11) A fool is a person without much sense; stupid or rash person; person whose conduct one considers silly. A fool is also called a jester. A jester is a person who jests, especially in olden times a man whose duty was to make jokes to amuse the court or noble household in which he was employed. In general, there is a conclusion: A fool is a special servent who is employed by a ruler or noble especially in olden times, whose duty is to make jokes to amuse his masters. Fool is also called professional clown, profssional fool, professional entertainer. Once “The Rebellious Merrymaking” enters into theater comedy, he will appear in the face of antic, whether too frank to bear or too bright to withstand or too contemptible to prevent. Whatever he is comic or facical, in some degree, antic disclose or trample the social index----self-banished, or sometimes self-corruted whatever the type of comedy is, antic and his self-exposing are necessary. In the history of western culture, there is a distinction between natural fool and artificial fool is absolutely high. The artificial fool is under discussion.(12) In the history of European literature the earliest image of fool is in Homer’s epic “Iliad”. In olden Greek new comedy and Olden Roman comedy, there appears an image of tricky mentor who is similar to fool. In the period of latter medieval and the Renaissance, stage fool appears. A case in point, the fool plays in France including sottise and farce, which relate to the pageant of the Fool’s Day, the carnival plays in Germany which are a kind of fool plays and the commedia dell’arte (the Italian term for professional comedy; a form of improvised comic performance) and latter, customs comedy and character comedy. Uses of fools in Shakespearean works Let’s come back to Shakespeare , among the fools the most excellent is the Shakespearean fools. As observators to real life and commentors to humanity, the fools often serve as the prolocutors of Shakespeare. In the plays consciously or unconsciously, more or less they advocate the perspectives of the author to the world. The Shakespearean works include history plays, tragedies, comedies and romance plays. We can find out that the Shakespearean fools appear merely in the latter period of his maturity and earlier period of his prosperity. The characteristics of these fools develop from easiness and happiness to blues and agony, from pragmatism and calmness to impenerability and sagacity. Therefore, the fools are direct reflections of the ideological process of Shakespeare. The ideas and emotions of these fools develop and change along with Shakespeare’s. In the fools’ body there lives a mocking Shalespeare. So why does Shakespeare choose the fool as his prolocutor of mocking? There are many reasons. The first, this depends on the fool’s speciality including his special identity and status and the relative freedom of speech. The second is Shakespearean experiences. In his personal experiences we can see the shadow of fools. He was from the underclass and ever an inferior servant. He was not well-educated but he was envied and attacked by the socalled University Wits because of his talents. He was ever employed as a poet by others and even a servant of the court. Even though Shakespeare had the superficial glory, his heart was deeply suffering.(13) All of these, living state and spiritual feeling were similar to the fool’s. His heart was dense with pathos and reluctance. Shakespearean fools have many features. (14)First, special social status and sober self-consciousness. Fool has some priviledge such as having no idiographic work. They have better treatment and freedom of speech and even can speak what other servants can’t say, tease and scold others. Shakespeare emphasized the fool’s priviledge in his plays. TOUCHSTONE : Mistress, you must come away to your father. CELIA : Were you made the messenger? ----As You Like It , Act 1,Scene 2 If Touchstone often does it, Celia can’t say that. Furthermore, there are some cases that can indicate that. JAQUES :To blow on whom I please; for so fools have; And they that are most galled with my folly, They most must laugh. And why, sir, must they so? The 'why' is plain as way to parish church: He that a fool doth very wisely hit Doth very foolishly, although he smart, Not to seem senseless of the bob: if not, The wise man's folly is anatomized Even by the squandering glances of the fool. Invest me in my motley; give me leave To speak my mind, and I will through and through Cleanse the foul body of the infected world, If they will patiently receive my medicine. ----As You Like It, Act 2, Scene 7 OLIVIA: Oh, you are sick of self-love, Malvolio, and taste with a distempered appetite. To be generous, guiltless and of free disposition, is to take those things for bird-bolts that you deem cannon-bullets: there is no slander in an allowed fool, though he do nothing but rail; nor no railing in a known discreet man, though he do nothing but reprove. ---Twelfth Night, Act 1, Scene 5 Shakespearean fools are not real fools.(15) They embodies sober self-consciousness to his status.Because their career is discriminated by the society. In their hearts, thay are dense with bitterness. Among these fools Touchstone is the most one. TOUCHSTONE : The more pity, that fools may not speak wisely what wise men do foolishly. ----As You Like It, Act 1, Scene 2 Fool : I marvel what kin thou and thy daughters are: they'll have me whipped for speaking true, thou'lt have me whipped for lying; and sometimes I am whipped for holding my peace. ----King Lear, Act 1, Scene 4 Self-deprecating is an arm of fools. They laugh at others and themselves, or protect themselves and reduce their “sinfulness”, or express their self-esteem and self-respect. More time this self-deprecating has considerable self-respect. Fool: I had rather be any kind o' thing than a fool: and yet I would not be thee, nuncle; thou hast pared thy wit o' both sides, and left nothing i' the middle: here comes one o' the parings. Thou wast a pretty fellow when thou hadst no need to care for her frowning; now thou art an O without a figure: I am better than thou art now; I am a fool, thou art nothing. ----King Lear, Act 1, Scene 4 Second, fools are stand-bys to life and commentors to humanity. They are only to be “condiment” of oher people. They are always excluded from the development of plots and imbroglio of characters. They hardly participate in the decision of important things. Their behaviors have no influence to the end of plays. We can see the name “Touchstone”, from the beginning, it discloses the role of it----a touchstone of humanity. At his debut Sshakespeare said through Ths Sisters’ mouth: CELIA: No? when Nature hath made a fair creature, may she not by Fortune fall into the fire? Though Nature hath given us wit to flout at Fortune, hath not Fortune sent in this fool to cut off the argument? ROSALIND: Indeed, there is Fortune too hard for Nature, when Fortune makes Nature's natural the cutter-off of Nature's wit. CELIA: Peradventure this is not Fortune's work neither, but Nature's; who perceiveth our natural wits too dull to reason of such goddesses and hath sent this natural for our whetstone; for always the dulness of the fool is the whetstone of the wits. How now, wit! whither wander you? ----As You Like It, Act 1, Scene 2 Shakespeare indulged the speech of fools. And this is Shakespeare’s intention and he wants to express thr theme of the play through the fools’ mouths. THERSITES: Lechery, lechery; still, wars and lechery; nothing else holds fashion: a burning...