The four fools in Shakespeare’s plays are the following: Feste, in Twelfth Nightįeste is probably the most famous of Shakespeare’s fools. There are many of them, the most notable of which are characters like Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing but, fools that they are in the modern sense of the word, they are not technically true Shakespearean fools. Some other of Shakespeare’s characters are often referred to as fools. The other characters refer to him as ‘the fool’ and we usually know him as ‘the jester.’ He does not normally have a dramatic role but some fools do.

He is usually the wisest character in the play.

He has licence to speak truth to power with no holds barred – in a context where no-one else dare do that, for fear of their lives – and he acts like the chorus in Greek drama – commenting on the characters and the action for the benefit of the audience.

The fool is a very important character in a Shakespeare play as he fulfils two important functions: He is not to be confused with a clown: in Shakespeare’s time ‘clown’ was a simple rural man – a yokel. The convention in Elizabethan drama is that the fool is the most insightful and intelligent man in the play. The fool in Elizabethan drama is someone employed to entertain a king or a duke or any other rich person who needs someone to entertain him. The word ‘fool’ is rather loosely used these days but it is a technical term in Shakespeare’s plays. Each Shakespeare’s play name links to a range of resources about each play: Character summaries, plot outlines, example essays and famous quotes, soliloquies and monologues: All’s Well That Ends Well Antony and Cleopatra As You Like It The Comedy of Errors Coriolanus Cymbeline Hamlet Henry IV Part 1 Henry IV Part 2 Henry VIII Henry VI Part 1 Henry VI Part 2 Henry VI Part 3 Henry V Julius Caesar King John King Lear Loves Labour’s Lost Macbeth Measure for Measure The Merchant of Venice The Merry Wives of Windsor A Midsummer Night’s Dream Much Ado About Nothing Othello Pericles Richard II Richard III Romeo & Juliet The Taming of the Shrew The Tempest Timon of Athens Titus Andronicus Troilus & Cressida Twelfth Night The Two Gentlemen of Verona The Winter’s Tale This list of Shakespeare plays brings together all 38 plays in alphabetical order.

Plays It is believed that Shakespeare wrote 38 plays in total between 15.

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