Fool-ish

I am so happy that I have to write this blog about the Fool in "King Lear" and that I don't have to do a whole project on it. Making the project into a blog made my entire week (thanks Nigel)!
The Fool in "King Lear" is an interesting character. During the small amount of scenes that he is in it seems like he is the (very cryptic and riddle-filled) voice of reason and responsibility for Lear as he slips down the icy slopes of old age. An interesting idea that I had not thought of when reading the play initially is that the Fool acts very much like how Cordelia would act in the same situation. The Fool is Lear's version on his youngest daughter and tries to steer him away from silly, and sometimes dangerous places and ideas. It is interesting because the Fool and Cordelia are never actually in the same place at the same time (meaning they are never in scenes with each other). This shows that, in a time and place where loyalty and love were hard to find, Lear was a good enough person to justify two completely separate people, who (as we know) do not know each other or have any connection other than Lear himself, giving their time, advice, care, and loyalty to him in his time of need .
Yet, as opposed to elaborating on the character of the Fool, Shakespeare does not write him into a good majority of the scenes. After the start of Act IV the Fool is not seen or heard from until the end when Lear, in all his grief and sadness, tells of how his Fool was killed. The genuine sadness and elegiac mood (nice word... I know) that surrounds Lear when he talks about the loss of the Fool shows how much of an impact he had on his king's life. When Lear dies it is a combination of many factors that include his old age, and death of his daughter, but also the death of the Fool, because to Lear the Fool represented Cordelia in times when actually having Cordelia there was not an option (because he banished her which is a whole other ball of wax that rolls into all of this). It was the Fool that helped Lear cope with the ramifications of his decision to send Cordelia away. Without the Fool I feel that Lear would not have lasted as long as he did simply because there would be no one there to comfort him, and to keep him from doing very stupid things. After both of his loyal friends and family members had dies there was no way for Lear to keep going without the support and comfort that both Cordelia and the Fool had offered him.
In "King Lear" the Fool is the most interesting and incomplete character simply because of the influence he had on the plot of the play and the main characters, and because of the fact that he had such an impact while only being included in a few of the scenes of the play. Frankly with the Fool it is not quantity it is quality...