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SHAKESPEARE’S ART OF POESY IN KING LEAR
anonymous play does not really display any close connection between wisdom
and folly, which would ultimately contribute to the protagonist’s recognition
of his own hamartia.
Twentieth-century Shakespeare criticism has thoroughly explored the
dramatic function of the Fool in general and the possible adaptations of this
role by Robert Armin, the official fool of Shakespeare’s company in particular.
A detailed discussion of this would digress too far from the main focus of
my contrastive textual analysis. Regarding the literary antecedents of this
character, Enid Welsford explains that a direct connection can be traced
between Shakespeare’s representation of the court jester as the “sage-fool”'?°
with Erasmus’ Moriae Encomium, a grammar school text book with which
Shakespeare must have been familiar.’ The sage fool thus partly stands for
“the truth teller whose real insight was thinly disguised as a form of insanity,”!”
but he is also supposed “to emphasize one peculiarly dreadful instance of the
reversal of position between the wise and the fool.”!*? His main theatrical
function provides a direct tie between the audience and the stage and entitles
him to the role ofa social critic, a feature to which Gonorill refers when calling
him Lear’s “all-licenc’d foole.”!?*
Elaborating on Enid Welsford’s idea of the Erasmian connection, John X.
Evans further refines the notion of folly in King Lear and argues that it is
ultimately understood as a virtue that defines authentic Christianity," and
even direct intertextual links can be detected between Shakespeare’s and
Erasmus’ work. Evans’ main focus is not the Fool but Cordelia, whose strong
moral determination represents the Erasmian idea of “pious folly,’1°° which
aims to eliminate mundane desires and intermediate feelings like filial love
and maintains a direct connection with the “highest good.”'”” Thus Cordelia
becomes a Christ-figure whose task is to redeem her father from his folly, an
idea which is supported by the similarity between her words and behavior
and some Biblical passages. To single out an example which has become a
bit of a commonplace in the secondary literature on King Lear, Evans notes
the resemblance between Cordelia’s refusal to answer her father’s question
130 Enid Welsford: The Fool: His Social and Literary History, Gloucester, MA, Peter Smith, 1966, 256.
1231 T. W. Baldwin: Shakespeare’s Small Latin and Less Greek, Vol. I., Urbana, Illinois University
Press, 1944, 436.
132 Welsford: The Fool, 248.
18 Ibid., 256.
134 Shak-speare: His True Chronicle, sig. D1v.
John X Evans: Erasmian Folly and Shakespeare’s King Lear: A Study in Humanist Inter¬
textuality, Moreana 27:103 (1990), 4.
186 Tbid., 12.
187 Ibid., 14.
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