COMEDY

48 COMIC IDENTITYdancing, juggling, and musicianship. The marriage of clowning skillswith folly’s penetration of vanity and hierarchy meant that the clownsof the early modern stage became dramatically powerful characters,both agile performers and important narrative units, childishly amusingand insightful by turns.Shakespeare’s use of the clown is established in what is one of hisfirst plays, The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1592), where Launce isgiven a tenuous relationship to the plot that closely follows the actionwhile remaining separate from it. This allows a detached but parallelcommentary that unifies themes raised throughout the play’ssymmetrical pairings of high and low social groups. In the second halfof his career, as Shakespeare moved away from writing comedies toconcentrate on tragedies and romances, his use of the clown changes ina manner that reflects this new generic context. Around this time (1600),William Kemp, a bumpkin fool who had played most of the early clowns,was replaced in Shakespeare’s company by Robert Armin, who seemsto have had a much drier and more restrained style. Concomitantly,Shakespeare’s later clowns are darker figures, imbued with a sense ofmortality and melancholy. The porter of Macbeth (1606), for example,imagines himself as the gatekeeper of Hades, while the grave-diggers inHamlet make weary jokes about ageing and physical decomposition,and literally preside over the death of clowning as they dig up the skullof Yorick, Hamlet’s favourite jester, now only the memory of laughter.Both Othello (1604) and Antony and Cleopatra (1606–07) contain onlya single clown scene. In the first, the clown jests with Desdemona overthe whereabouts of Michael Cassio, a conversation that immediatelyfollows Othello’s decision to have Cassio killed. In the second, it is theclown who delivers Cleopatra the venomous asp and wishes her ‘joyo’the worm’ (Shakespeare, 1989:5.2.270). Both clowns prefiguredeaths, the contrast of the lowly with the elevated lending the mementomori a particular piquancy. The most powerful example of this is thefool in King Lear (1604–05), who is the only character after Cordelia’sbanishment able to speak the truth to the king. Lear’s fool is rarelyfunny, but he is frequently barbed and morbidly apposite, openlyabusing the old king: ‘FOOL. If thou were’t my fool, nuncle, I’d havethee beaten for being old before thy time. /LEAR. How’s that? /FOOL.Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been/wise’(Shakespeare, 1989: 1.5.36–39). As Lear’s rage becomes increasinglyimpotent and futile, the fool’s nonsense is the only appropriate retort.There is no use for him after the third act of the play, but he delivers aprophecy before he goes. Typically paradoxical and impossible, the