The Fool: Shakespeare’s Looking Glass for Truthiness

In the first session of the Sharing Shakespeare series, moderators Donna and Bernie Grauer will use the plays “King Lear” and “Twelfth Night” to challenge participants to examine the role of the Jester, often seen as providing comic relief with low humor and malapropisms for the common folk.

The group will explore how Shakespeare transformed a caricature into one of the most sentient characters in the play. Does the Jester’s commentary on the moral landscape in the play fit with our own, or does it reflect an early modern one, foreign to us? Can we deduce that the Jester represents Shakespeare’s own judgments on the characters and their actions?  How do the Jester’s observations enhance our understanding of the character’s motivations, limitations and internal conflicts? Based on a close reading of the text, these questions and others will provide rich material for discussion.

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