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Alice Equestri
“Armine... thou art a foole and knaue”.
The Fools of Shakespeare’s Romances
Carocci editore
Volume pubblicato grazie ad aia e Carocci
in quanto vincitore dell’aia/Carocci Doctoral Dissertation Prize 2015.
1a edizione, luglio 2016
© copyright 2016 by Carocci editore S.p.A., Roma
Impaginazione e servizi editoriali:
Pagina soc. coop., Bari
Finito di stampare nel luglio 2016
da Grafiche VD srl, Città di Castello (PG)
isbn 978-88-430-8071-7
Riproduzione vietata ai sensi di legge
(art. 171 della legge 22 aprile 1941, n. 633)
Senza regolare autorizzazione,
è vietato riprodurre questo volume
anche parzialmente e con qualsiasi mezzo,
compresa la fotocopia, anche per uso interno
o didattico.
Contents
Preface 7
Acknowledgements 11
1. Actor and clown in Shakespeare’s romances 13
1.1. Armin, the new clown 13
1.2. Erasmus, wise fools and Armin’s descending parabola 18
1.3. Life and times of Robert Armin 24
1.4. The clown in print: Armin’s works 27
1.5. Armin in the romances, 1608-12 31
1.5.1. Pericles / 1.5.2. Cymbeline / 1.5.3. The Winter’s Tale / 1.5.4. The Tempest
2. The underworld fool: Pericles and The Winter’s Tale 51
2.1. Boult 53
2.2. Autolycus 69
2.3. Boult, Autolycus, criminality and folly in Shakespeare’s age 97
3. The natural fool: Cymbeline and The Tempest 105
3.1. Cloten 107
3.2. Caliban 139
3.3. Cloten and Caliban: disability, depravity and devilish mothers 168
4. Armin’s last fools in Shakespeare: drawing conclusions 175
Bibliography 185
Index 197
Preface
Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest are a group of plays
which have caused quite a controversy among recent criticism as concerns
the choice of a conventional label that best describes their genre1. Dowden
in 1877 first called them romances, a label that was supposed to emphasise the
uncommonness of the circumstances and the “grave beauty” or “sweet sereni-
ty” of their atmospheres2; a label that is still widely used, but which in Shake-
speare’s time indicated chivalric tales in verse, and not drama. If on the one
hand the plays have a lot in common with Greek romances, through medie-
val romances, contemporary prose or verse romances (e.g. Sidney’s Arcadia,
Spenser’s The Faerie Queene) and Elizabethan dramatised romances (Clyomon
and Clamydes, Cambises, Love and Fortune, Mucedorus), on the other the term
is a little restrictive to account for the freedom Shakespeare shows in han-
dling its conventions3. The other label with which these plays are commonly
referred to is tragicomedies, which aptly takes into account the literary influ-
ences of other authors, such as Beaumont and Fletcher, who were testing this
dramatic mode in Shakespeare’s time, after borrowing it from the Italian tra-
dition, that found its greatest representative in Gianbattista Guarini, the first
theorist of the genre (Compendio della poesia tragicomica, 1601) and the author
of the tragicomic play Il pastor fido (1590)4. However, such a label adds the is-
sue that other plays could fit into this category, such as All’s Well That Ends
Well, Measure for Measure, Troilus and Cressida or The Merchant of Venice. So
sometimes the two names have been combined into romantic tragicomedies.
Other scholars have preferred the “neutral” designation “late plays” which, if
on the one hand keeps problems of genre reasonably at bay, on the other may
include also the texts written after The Tempest and shifts the question on-
1. For an overview of such issues see Mowat (2003), McMullan (2009) or McMullan
(2007a).
2. Dowden (1877, pp. 55-6).
3. For Shakespeare and romance, see Felperin (1972, pp. 3-54). Also Cooper (2004).
4. On tragicomedy see Foster (2003, esp. ch. 3 on Shakespearean tragicomedy), Hartwig
(1972), Hirst (1986), Herrick (1962, ch. 8).
8 “armine... thou art a foole and knaue”
to the definition of what “late writing” exactly means in connection with au-
thorship and style; Pericles, as a collaborative work, certainly complicates fur-
ther such an assessment5. So, any name we give to these plays – romances, tra-
gicomedies, romantic tragicomedies, tragicomic romances, late or last plays, late
Shakespearean comedies etc. – is at once cogent and problematic. Yet, having to
choose a designation, I will stick mainly with the traditional romances, for rea-
sons of clarity, completeness and conciseness. This term actually includes the
concept of tragicomedy: comparing these texts with the plots of pre-Shake-
spearean plays like Mucedorus, Placy Dacy or Love and Fortune, Barbara Mo-
wat argues that “romance stories as dramatised on the early English stage are in
essence tragicomic” in the sense that they “preceded formal ‘breakdown’ into
tragedy and comedy”6.
However, whatever term is used to refer to Pericles, Cymbeline, The Win-
ter’s Tale and The Tempest, few critics currently disagree with the grouping of
these plays. Scholarly estimates have it indeed that they were all written be-
tween 1607 and 1611, after the period of the great tragedies, in a row broken
only by a possible revision of King Lear in 1610. Even if they may share some-
thing with earlier texts, their themes and general tone sets them quite some
way apart from what came before: the blend and juxtaposition of tragic and
comic elements are certainly at the core, in that beginnings that portray emo-
tions typical of tragedies, though deprived of the same sense of greatness7,
lead to potentially disastrous consequences that are resolved through reun-
ion, forgiveness and reconciliation, which pave the way for the conventional
comic ending with marriages. These plays stage actual and feigned deaths,
tempests and shipwrecks, savage beasts, royal children lost in early child-
hood, the relationship between fathers and daughters, cross-class romantic
unions, perilous quests, great geographical distances, the passing of time and
marvellous sea, mountain or country sceneries. All of this is accompanied by
a powerful evocation of wonder, the supernatural element, music, masques
and spectacular stage effects, which were designed to take advantage of the
newly acquired Blackfriars Theatre and entice the more refined tastes of its
audience.
Given their hybrid and experimental nature, it is compelling to explore
more in depth the role and nature of mirth and merriments in these texts,
to see how they interact with the tone and issues of the plays. My focus will
thus be the character that in most of Shakespeare’s plays is devoted to laugh-
ter-making and witty satire: the clown or fool. Of course in the romances,
like in the previous texts, we may find more than one character endowed with
5. McMullan (2007a, p. 122). Also McMullan (2007b) or McDonald (2006).
6. Mowat (2003, p. 140).
7. Mowat (1976, pp. 7-30).
preface 9
comic traits, yet only one of them in each play has the star clown part and of-
fers the most effective potential for laughter; that was specifically the part that
Shakespeare assigned to the leading comedian of the company – which in the
period of the late plays was Robert Armin – conforming to his persona and
performance style.
So, approaching Armin’s parts in the romances I asked myself some
questions: does the clown look more like the clown in the tragedies, who
usually appears in an isolated scene at the turning point of events to pro-
vide the audience with comic relief, or does he resemble more the clown
of the comedies, where he usually has a greater part? Does he join in the
general marvel? What kind of themes does he bring into play? Do his skills
or functions change in relation to the new dramatic and theatrical experi-
ence Shakespeare offered to his audience? What kind of response does he
call for? What is the effect of “mingling kings and clowns”, an often quoted
critique by Sir Philip Sidney to what he called “mongrel tragi-comedy”8?
Besides, given that Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest
were not only among Shakespeare’s last texts but also, as far as we know,
among the last plays of the King’s Men that starred Armin, did the play-
wright exploit the style of the actor playing the clown in the same way he
did in the previous texts? And did the actor, approaching the end of his ca-
reer, have anything new to offer the playwright? Thus the first chapter of
my book focuses on the relationship between actor and role: details on his
life, writings and performance style are used to identify the parts he was like-
ly to have played in Shakespeare’s romances (Boult, Cloten, Autolycus and
Caliban). The following chapters are devoted to a thorough discussion of
each of the four characters, who are grouped according to their social roles.
So the second chapter examines the criminal fools in Pericles and The Win-
ter’s Tale, where Boult and Autolycus are respectively a brothel male-bawd
and an eclectic rogue, while the third chapter considers Cloten and Caliban
from Cymbeline and The Tempest, characters who display or are scorned for
their real or alleged natural folly. In each case I consider the relationship be-
tween the role and Shakespeare’s sources, the influences from previous com-
ic traditions, and how the character elicits laughter. An important part of
the chapters, however, is dedicated to a contextualization of the characters
in the social, historical and cultural environment of the period. I also em-
phasise the links between the characters and the outlook of Robert Armin
as expressed in his works, in order to give a further contribution to recent
trends in research that view Shakespeare’s work as the result of a collabora-
tion with his actors and in particular with his leading comedian, who – it is
important to note – was the only published member of the company in the
8. Sidney (2002, p. 112).
10 “armine... thou art a foole and knaue”
period besides the playwright. Finally, the conclusive chapter lists the anal-
ogies between the characters and the differences between them and the pre-
vious roles created for Armin in Shakespeare.
My reference edition of Shakespeare’s plays is The Oxford Shakespeare: The
Complete Works, edited by Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor (2005). Bible quota-
tions are from the King James Version (The Holy Bible, 1611).
