Fooling Around

The front page of Robert Armin's Foole upon Foole, written in 1600

When Robert Armin, an actor from Shakespeare's own company, wrote Foole upon Foole in 1600, he was bringing personal experience to the page. Since 1598, he'd been developing the roles of key fools in Shakespeare's plays, such as Touchstone in As You Like It. Though Armin's text refers to six kinds of fools, there were two that most Shakespearean scholars will agree are prominent: the artificial fool and the natural fool. About those two types, Armin said the following:

Natural Fools are prone to self-conceit;

Fools artificial with their wits lay wait

To make themselves Fools, liking the disguise

To feed their own minds and the gazer’s eyes.

Essentially, the distinction is this: the natural fool incites his betters to raucous laughter because the fool himself doesn't know any better, while the artificial fool studies his art to learn how to amuse his master while also exposing the master's shortcomings and often teaching a lesson. When I first introduced this idea to my senior elective students this week, we came up with examples from current media; John Stewart serves as an apt example of an artificial fool who uses humor to reveal truth while someone like Robin Williams, perhaps, is solely there to amuse us without a larger message in mind. Though my class will begin reading As You Like It next week, they haven't yet encountered Touchstone, Jaques, or William (all of whom are notable fools in that play), so I was finding myself at a loss to offer more examples to clarify the understanding of the somewhat perplexed students before me. 

And then, like the proverbial lightning bolt, it struck me: the cats.

Earlier in my teaching career, I used to tell stories about my cats all the time; when I taught at boarding school, they'd sometimes even show up for class themselves, perching on the windowsill after having stealthily stalked me all the way from my apartment across campus. Now that I'm in my thirteenth year of teaching, though, my stories have become far more erudite; no longer do I discuss silly cats, as I've moved on to my equally silly husband and our adventures together. However, when Rosie's furry little face popped into my mind during the discussion on fools, I couldn't resist.

The first stage was simply to admit that our three cats--Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and Osric--are indeed named after characters in Shakespeare's tragedy, Hamlet. (In fact, I might argue that all three are natural fools, unwittingly bringing humor to dark moments in the play, but that's a topic for another post.) After my students had processed this information--with some good-natured teasing thrown in, of course--I used my clearest, most logical tone to explain my comparison. Rosie--our little furball who not infrequently walks off the back of the sofa, not realizing the end of a tangible support is imminent--is a clear example of a natural fool. Ozzy, on the other hand, is our little artificial dude, the one who studies the world around him closely, then attacks his sisters by using their own tricks against them. 

Rosie, surfing away on a clearly precarious wave of boxes, much to our amusement.

Ozzy, dutifully studying the world outside to learn from the lightning-quick machinations
of the kamikaze squirrel who regularly throws himself at our window.

I'm not sure how much I helped my seniors, except for arming them with the knowledge that their new English teacher may very well be a headed for a future as a crazy cat lady. However, when I told the story to Jeff over dinner that night, he took such delight in his eccentric and fur-covered wife that he made me promise to blog about it.

You thought this was going to be an esoteric post, didn't you? Nope--I'm just fooling around.

Ozzy, studying from the best: Twelfth Night's Feste.