There the Antic Sits

Abstract

How often motley Shakespeare runs with the hares and hunts with the hounds! Sir Philip Sidney’s Defense of Poesy (1595) deplores “mongrel” plays that “thrust in the clown by head and shoulders to play a part in majestical matters, with neither decency nor discretion.”¹ Though the 1623 Folio crisply distinguishes comedy, tragedy, and history, Shakespeare’s unruly hybrids (flagrantly violating neoclassical decorum) are more like Polonius’s Foolio: “tragical-comical-historical-pastoral … or poem unlimited” (Ham. 2.2.398–400). Barriers between genres appear as permeable as the wall separating Pyramus and Thisby. Shakespeare’s theater accommodates all manner of “strange bedfellows” (Tmp. 2.2.40) and mixes royalty and revelry, high tragedy and low farce. Mingling kings and clowns produces a kind of tragic motley and constitutes another chapter in Shakespeare’s anatomy of folly Most remarkable are the numerous affinities between Shakespeare’s tragic heroes and fools. Romeo is “fortune’s fool” (3.1.136); Hamlet plays the fool; Lear abides and cherishes his jester; Othello is gulled and grotesque. In Shakespearean tragedy, fooling matters seriously and fools take center stage.