SOURCE: "Playing the Fool: The Pragmatic Status of Shakespeare's Clowns," in New Theatre Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 1, February, 1985, pp. 98-104.

In the following essay, Mullini investigates Shakespeare's use of fools to disrupt hierarchical order and the conventions of language.

The title of this paper suggests most of the dramatic and metadramatic features of the fool character. In the fictitious world the fool plays on various levels: the fool-actor reproduces on the stage his acting role, carrying into the dramatic world his heritage of social satire. At the same time he mirrors the historical figure of the court-fool from which he draws his line of behaviour: a player, a specialized one, heir to the ancient mimus and the medieval histrio, whose person is strictly linked to the world of dramatic illusion, plays himself in an illusory scene, creating a breach in the illusion itself. That scene being taken from the...