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SHAKESPEARE’S ART OF POESY IN KING LEAR
you laughe at a game, / Howe a wodcocke wrastled with a larke that was lame: / The
bytter sayd boldly that they were to blame; / The feldfare wolde have fydled, and
it wolde not frame; / The crane and the curlewe therat gan to grame; / The snyte
snyveled in the snowte and smyled at the game."!”
This passage is in fact an excerpt from Foly’s dialogue with Magnyfycence and,
according to Happé, the fact that the protagonist is captivated with Foly’s foolish
language clearly indicates that the allegorical prince himself becomes a fool."®
Third, alongside their highly entertaining verbal exchanges, Fansy and Foly
also perform stage tricks, the most memorable of which is when Foly pretends
to take a louse from Crafty Conveyance’s coat, a ploy that eventually makes
his victim undress.'!? On the whole, Happé concludes that Skelton’s use of the
jester figure differs from the Erasmian idea of the holy fool whose folly would
provide a “blessed insight into truth”’”° because in Magnyfycence Fansy and
Foly function to “articulate moral and philosophical concepts and are carried
forward by the author as a means of expressing the nature of folly and evil in the
play.”!*! Nevertheless, taking a social point of view, David Wiles remarks that
Skelton’s two jesters are presented as social climbers, who, alongside the serving
as characters who embody vice, also become household servants,’”? which is
perfectly in line with Beatrice K. Otto’s idea of the court jester mentioned above.
In The True Chronicle Historie of King Leir, there are some predominantly
comic characters, including Mumford, the Gallian king’s companion. Their
arrival in Britain in the guise of pilgrims, for instance, provides occasion for a
humorously clumsy conversation. Although Mumford’s verbal utterances are
not as elaborately amusing as Foly’s in Magnyfycence, by the end of the passage
he gains the telling pseudo name of “Jack”:
Mum. My Lord, how do you brook this Brittish ayre?
King. My Lord ? I told you of this foolish humour,
And bound you to the contrary, you know.
Mum. Pardon me for once, my Lord; I did forget.
King. My Lord agayne ? then let’s have nothing else,
And so be tane for spyes, and then tis well.
11
S
Skelton: Magnyfycence, lines 1826-1830; 1832-1838.
18 Peter Happé: Allegorical Kings as Staged by Skelton and Lindsay, in Peter Happé (ed.): Tudor
Theatre. Allegory in the Theatre. Lallégorie au theater, Collection Theta, Volume 5., Bern, Peter
Lang, 2000, 80.
Happé: Fansy and Foly, 435.
120 Ibid., 445.
121 Ibid., 440.
David Wiles: The Vice: from Mankind to the Merchant of Venice, in David Wiles: Shakespeare’s
clown: actor and text in the Elizabethan playhouse, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,
2005, 3-4.
119
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