THE FOOL: The Fool in King Lear is not nearly as fully fleshed out as Falstaff or even Mercutio, and in function is much closer to the older form of the malcontent which Shakespeare was using as his base. However, he shares with the two larger characters his ironic sense of a truth which often runs counter to the truth of heroes. In King Lear Shakespeare explores the possibilities of marginal characters, reshaping the malcontent archestpe in several different ways; not just the Fool, but Edmund (as the Iago-like expansion of the malcontent’s lively bitterness) and Edgar are variations on that theme. The Fool is distinguished from these other narginal commenters by his wit, which includes the sexual punning in which Mercutio reveled, and by his wry commentary on the faults of power. His jibes about power, truth, and fools are far less oblique though no less witty than Falstaff’s pokes at honor and royalty, and less bitter though more embellished than Mercutio’s attack on the feud of honor that caused his meaningless death. The Fool, loyal to Lear and inseparable from him, nonetheless has a view of the throne which not even the other supporters of Cordelia share. His loyalty is made clear in lines like his “advice” to Kent, “Let go thy hold when a great wheel runs down a hill, lest it break thy neck with following; but the great one that goes upward, let him draw thee after” (II.iv.72-5). This is advice for “none but knaves” (II.iv.76-7), and “The knave turns fool that runs away;/The fool no knave, perdy” (II.iv.84-5). When Lear goes out into the storm, the Fool is there to coax him inside, to keep life in a body whose owner is overcome with madness and grief. He knows the danger of Lear’s dangerous combination of madness and power, and states it whenever he appears in the play: “…an thou canst not smile as the wind sits, thou’lt catch cold shortly” (I.iv.103-4). His relationship with Lear is often as dicey as Falstaff’s with Hal, and he, like the lusty knight, seems incapable of changing his tune; when the king threatens him, he responds, “I marvel what kin thou and thy daughters are. They’ll have me whipped for speaking true, thou’lt have me whipped for lying; and sometimes I am whipped for holding my peace. I had rather be any kind o’ thing than a fool; and yet I would not be thee, nuncle” (I.iv.186-91). In this speech the Fool not only defuses Lear’s anger with his wit, but even continues to make the same kind of pointed remarks that got him in trouble in the first place. Though his role in the play is far more circumscribed than those of Mercutio and Falstaff, he, like them, represents “the loyal opposition” to the ideals of the heroes.