Jan Kott on the "grotesque" King Lear and the Fool's role

[Jan Kott (1914-2001) was the Polish-born author of Shakespeare Our Contemporary (1965), who came to live and teach in the U.S. His essay "King Lear, or Endgame" assimilated the play to the "new theatre" of Brecht, Dürrenmatt, and Samuel Beckett, whose Endgame is referenced in the essay's title. Kott's essay is thought to have influenced Peter Brook's 1962 stage production and film of Lear (1962, 1971) and Kozintsev's 1971 film. In these short excerpts from the essay, he seeks to show how Lear offers a "grotesque" critique of conventional values, including that of life after death ("eschatologies"), and how frequently the Fool (identified as a species of Clown) is the agent of this critique. ]

          The world of tragedy and the world of the grotesque have a similar structure. Grotesque takes over the themes of tragedy and poses the same fundamental questions. Only its answers are different. This dispute about the tragic and grotesque interpretations of human fate reflects the everlasting conflict of two philosophies and two ways of thinking; of two opposing attitudes defined . . . as the irreconcilable antagonism between the priest and the clown. Between tragedy and the grotesque there is the same conflict for or against such notions as eschatology, belief in the absolute, hope for the ultimate solution of the contradiction between the moral order and every-day practice. Tragedy is the theatre of priests, grotesque is the theatre of clowns.

          This conflict between two philosophies and two types of theatre becomes particularly acute in times of great upheavals. When established values have been overthrown, and there is no appeal, to God, Nature, or History, from the tortures inflicted by the cruel world, the clown becomes the central theatre in the theatre. He accompanies the exiled trio -- the king, the nobleman and his son -- on their cruel wanderings through the cold endless night which has fallen on the world; through the "cold night" which, as in Shakespeare's King Lear, "will turn us all into fools and madmen. . . . "

         King Lear makes a tragic mockery of all eschatologies: of the heaven promised on earth and the Heaven promised after death; in fact -- of both Christian and secular theodicies; of cosmogony and of the rational view of history; of the gods and the good nature, of man made in "image and likeness." In King Lear both the medieval and the Renaissance orders of established values disintegrate. All that remains at the end of this gigantic pantomime, is the earth -- empty and bleeding. On this earth, through which tempest has passed leaving only stones, the King, the Fool, the Blind Man and the Madman carry on their distracted dialogue. . . .

          Buffoonery is a philosophy and a profession at the same time. . . The position of a jester is ambiguous and abounds in internal contradictions, arising from the discrepancy between profession and philosophy. The profession of a jester, like that of an intellectual, consists in providing entertainment. His philosophy demands of him that he tell the truth and abolish myths. The Fool in King Lear does not even have a name, he is just a Fool, pure Fool. But he is the first fool to be aware of the fool's position. . . . :
FOOL: Prithee, nuncle, keep a schoolmaster that can teach thy fool to lie. I would fain learn to lie.

LEAR: An you lie, sirrah, we'll have you whipped.

FOOL: 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. Thou hast pared thy wit o'both sides and left nothing I'th'middle. (1.4.148-157)
           A fool who has recognized himself for a fool, who has accepted the fact that he is only a jester in the service of the prince, ceases to be a clown. But the clown's philosophy is based on the assumption that everyone is a fool, and the greatest fool is he who does not know he is a fool: the prince himself. That is why the clown has to make fools of others; otherwise he would not be a clown. . . . Social pressures want to limit the Clown to his part of a clown, to pin the label "clown" on him. But he does not accept this part. On the contrary: he constantly pins that label on others:
LEAR: Dost thou call me fool, boy?

FOOL: All thy other titles thou hast given away; that thou wast born with.

KENT: This is not altogether fool, my lord.

FOOL: No, faith, lords and great men will not let me. If I had a monopoly out, they would have part in't, and ladies too. They will not let me have all the fool to myself, they'll be snatching. (1.4.127.9-127.16)

          In his very first scene, the Fool offers Lear his fool's cap. For buffoonery is not only a philosophy; it is also a kind of theatre. To us it is the most contemporary aspect of King Lear . . . . In King Lear it is the Fool who deprives majesty of its sacredness . . . .

          The Fool appears on the stage when Lear's fall is only beginning. He disappears by the end of Act III. He will not be seen or heard again. A clown is not needed any more. King Lear has gone through the school of clown's philosophy. When he meets Gloucester for the last time, he will speak the Fool's language and look at the stage the way the Fool has looked at it: "They told me I was everything. 'Tis a lie -- I am not ague-proof" (4.6.104-5).

                   -- Jan Kott, Shakespeare Our Contemporary. Trans. Boleslaw Taborski. (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1966) pp. 140, 147, 163-66.

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