The Wisdom of Foolishness
If man is to live a godly life, one must equip himself with wisdom to distinguish between the fool and the holy fool. The idea of fools presented in William Shakespeare's Hamlet, King Lear, and William Wordsworth's “We are Seven” are most properly called holy fools. The use of the fool within King Lear is to understand the complexity and beauty of the human person by bringing us out of the banal and into the transcendent. Shakespeare's holy fool is one who elucidates the true psychophysical state of a subject in an elusive and enigmatic way. A fool is one who cannot choose between heaven and hell, so he settles for earth and thereby chooses nothing. Paradoxically, the wise fool is one who understands his folly, and orders his soul in union with Divine wisdom. Within the motif of these texts, holy fools engender the world with confusion yet uphold the density and wonder of the mystery of reality.
The fool is one who cannot choose between heaven and hell, so he settles for earth and thereby chooses nothing. A fool according to Saint Thomas is one who has “dullness of sense in judging, and chiefly as regards the highest cause, which is the last end and sovereign good” (Aquinas, ST.II.II.Q46.A1.C). The fool is perfectly shown in Hamlet through the character of Claudius. In Hamlet, King Claudius is a man who kills his brother to usurp the throne. He is shown to be a man of deception but is perceived as upright. For example, after trying to pray and repent of his guilt he states “My words fly up, my thoughts remain below. Words without thoughts never to heaven go” (Shakespeare, Hamlet, 71). Claudius is struggling with his complete union to worldliness. His ambition and hubris are effects of his choice to choose himself and no other. By isolating the finite good, Claudius has a merely myopic and horizontal focal point. The articulation between the fool and the holy fool cosmologically speaking is that the fool acts upside down for its own sake, whereas the righteous fool acts upside down to temporarily subsist within the inverted reality to turn those enslaved to it right side up. The text of King Lear exemplifies this principle by stating “Tell me, my daughters, since now we will divest us both of rule, interest of territory, cares of state, which of you shall we say doth love the most?” (Shakespeare King Lear 2). King Lear exchanges his authority as king to whoever can flatter him most. It is not until his daughter Cordelia refuses by saying nothing that leads Lear to exclaim, “Nothing will come from nothing, speak again” (Shakespeare King Lear 4). The fool chooses something but that something is eternally finite and will perpetuate to nothingness. King Lear is given flattery by his daughters because he lacks true affirmation of his being. Cordelia, who reacts correctly, is scorned for her lack of vicious flattery. This is the tragedy of the fool; he would rather submit to his passions than have the burden of fighting for redemption. He has apathy for everything and zeal for nothing.
Furthermore, the holy fool is one who embraces his idiosyncrasies and orders his soul unitarily with the highest good. The holy fool can thereby be said to be a wise man who has built his house on solid rock. Saint Thomas defines wisdom as “he who knows the cause that is simply the highest, which is God, is said to be wise simply, because he is able to judge and set in order all things according to Divine rules'' (Aquinas, ST.II.II.Q45.A1.C). The holy fool is one who understands his identity relative to the first cause who is God. Immanent within the motif of King Lear is the paradoxical juxtaposition of Godliness and worldliness. Wisdom is unearthed by Cordelia when she claims, “[U]nhappy that I am, I cannot heave my heart into my mouth: I love your majesty according to my bond; nor more nor less” (Shakespeare King Lear 4). Cordelia shows throughout King Lear that she will not sacrifice her identity to please the world, and this is what gets her killed. Consequently, Cordelia dies a martyr and Lear must sorrowfully hold his foolishness in his hands. The text also elucidates wisdom in King Lear's fool when he states, “Have more than thou showest, speak less than thou knowest, lend less than thou owest, ride more than thou goest” (Shakespeare King Lear 21). The fool in this passage ironically accepts his role as servile, yet gives Lear advice on how to be wise. The paradox of this worldview is that the fool reorganizes the cosmic order by descending into darkness and appearing as the darkness while bearing the light. Lastly the perception of the dignified man from “We are Seven” expands what has been said above. The dignified man converses with the little girl who claims that her deceased siblings are still alive, and he repudiates her; he sees her simplicity and ardent belief as foolish because his perspective provides him with the inability to see vertically. The little girl, through her simplicity, can see through the tragedy of suffering to light, whereas the complex intellectual is left to see rationalistically, which severs his sight. Therefore, when one appropriates himself as a fool, one increases in wisdom.
The holy fool is necessary because he engenders the world with confusion, yet upholds the density and wonders at the mystery of reality. Implicitly present is a distinction between essentially acting the fool and accidentally being regarded as a fool. This maxim is shown in King Lear when Cordelia is banished to France for being regarded as a useless fool. Lear asserts, “[B]etter thou hadst not been born than not to have pleased me better” (Shakespeare King Lear 9). Subsequently, King Lear, who later regrets his decision of perceiving Cordelia as a fool, deems her wise. It is Cordelia who ends up bringing Lear back to sanity through the sacrifice of her heart. Concomitantly Cordelia was accidentally being regarded as a fool while acting wise, because the holy fool is disguised in a cloak of darkness to bring others out of darkness. In this, “the fool reveals the secret in an upside-down world” (Pageau, Jonathan, The Fool in Scripture and Culture). The upside-down world is brought upright through the character of Shakespeare's fool. In King Lear, the fool predicts the unfolding of the story through jesting. When Lear disposes of his kingdom to his daughters the fool says to Lear, “[S]irrah, you were best take my coxcomb” (Shakespeare King Lear 21). The fool informs the king of his foolish decision and predicts the falling apart of England, all while remaining a lowly ironic fool. The juxtaposition of the upside-down world and the right side up world is also shown within Hamlet’s Denmark. Hamlet throughout the whole play is seen as mad because he desires justice for what Claudius did to his father, but at the end Hamlet proves his sanity by bringing justice to the usurper of the throne. Hamlet brings order to the chaos of Denmark in unconventional ways. The holy fool never fits within the category of human wisdom because Godly wisdom transcends human understanding.
The holy fool is an enigmatic and abnormal figure within the world of beings. The holy fool will always appear when the world desperately needs a figure of redemption. The world of Shakespeare’s and Wordsworth's works consisted of fools and holy fools to unveil and conceal a mystery that is foreign to man. The holy fools Cordelia, Hamlet, and the little girl are beacons of light and order, whereas Lear, the dignified man, and Claudius are tools of destruction and chaos. Simultaneously the holy fool is wise and foolish; he is a paradoxical figure that can turn the world right through the medium of a joke. The unconventional holy fool is necessary to shine the light on the idiocy of foolishness. He restores order through the gift of wisdom and eradicates the darkness of folly by instilling wonder. The holy fool will always be a figure that is unexpected and unknown because he is the manifestation of the wisdom of God.
Works Cited:
Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologica, ST. II. II.
Pageau, Jonathan, The Fool in Scripture and Culture. 20 January 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxltkn90Qag.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Dover Publications, 1992.
——— King Lear. Dover Publications, 1992.