Shakespearean romp refuses to pity the Fool
Tuesday, February 17th, 2009
Karl Marx famously said that history repeats itself, once as tragedy, twice as farce. King Lear may not have been an actual English regent, but he looms larger than most historical royals as the title role in one of Shakespeare’s greatest plays. And if the Bard gave King Lear his tragedy, cult author Christopher Moore somersaults in for the farce with Fool.
The comedic novelist offers a bawdy, balls-out take on King Lear with a loose version of the plot from the point of view of Lear’s fool. The tragedy’s jester provides the perfect point of entry for a post-modern goof on King Lear, since the role’s rather ambiguous in the play, with an indeterminate age and a tendency to pop in and out of the action. Moore officially gives him a name — Pocket — and a sense of humor that elicits belly laughs from the kind of modern audiences unlikely to giggle at codpiece jokes.
Moore retains the play’s basic outline, including Lear’s vain, disastrous decision to divide his kingdom among his daughters and cast out good-hearted Cordelia while trusting her flattering elders, Goneril and Regan. In the play, Lear’s pride, cruelty and poor judgment bring doom upon his family and England, but Fool reveals that Pocket was the well-intentioned puppet master behind the vicious actions of Goneril, Regan and Edmund, the black-clad bastard.
