Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 10 Number 1, April 2009
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The Wisdom of Shakespeare’s Fools
by
Dian Duchin
Reed
Independent Scholar
In many of Shakespeare’s plays, only the character of the Fool escapes the dramatic whirlwind that tosses the other characters around. Dressed in multi-colored clothing and a cap with bells, the Fool’s very appearance seems to say: Pay no attention to the man telling the jokes—just laugh. And yet, hidden within the jokes are hints to Shakespeare’s philosophy, his attempt to ponder such perennial puzzles as Who am I? and What does it all mean? Among his characters, it is the Fool who provides answers to these questions—answers that satisfy, mystify, and amuse at the same time. Shakespeare’s Fool suggests expecting the unexpected and laughing at—or, even better, with—it.
As Shakespeare is fond of pointing out, designated Fools are special, but commonplace fools are exceedingly common. When Hotspur is about to die, he tells Hal, “You’ve made me time’s fool.” After killing Tybalt, Romeo says, “O, I am fortune’s fool.” Death is not necessary for this revelation; life suffices for fool-making. Maria fools Malvolio through forgery, just as Edmund fools Gloucester. Oberon fools Titania to keep her in line, just as Puck plays pranks on the village women. Iago dupes-to-death both Othello and Roderigo, and a disguised Hal robs Falstaff solely for the pleasure of hearing Falstaff’s overblown retelling of the event. The plays seem intent on proving how easily one’s senses can be misled; they portray the ubiquity of iniquity—or at least duplicity—for the sake of fun, revenge, or profit.
To be human, it seems, is to be flawed. In the words of the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, “We normally allow a whole series of illusions to stand between ourselves and reality. Built out of genetic instructions, cultural rules, and the unbridled desires of the self, these distortions are comforting, yet they need to be seen through for the self to be truly liberated” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1993, 55). Such distortions make people easy to fool as well as inclined to fool others. Every human appears to be life’s fool, and no one more so than the serious, wise person who hates the idea of acting like a fool.
As Twelfth Night’s Feste the Fool puts it, “Better a witty fool than a foolish wit.” He demonstrates his own wit and wisdom to Viola, commenting that an intelligent person can turn a sentence inside out like a kidskin glove. Viola appreciates the difficulty of the Fool’s art with words, noting that the Fool must study his victim well to attain the proper effect. As she puts it, the Fool must, “like the haggard [wild hawk], check at every feather [of the prey bird] / That comes before his eye.” Not only does it require intelligence to observe another person’s mood, characteristics, and circumstances, it also requires as much work as a wise person takes to perfect a respectable art. To be a proper Fool, she concludes, one must be wise, which is why a successful Fool like Feste appears intelligent. But the reverse is not true. When a wise man acts like a fool, she adds, he appears to lose his intelligence.
As Viola says, Feste, the intelligent Fool, has worked hard to acquire his verbal and perceptual skills, and he obviously takes great joy in his work. This combination is similar to what Csikszentmihalyi found in his interviews with Nobel Prize-winners and other creative leaders in different fields: “One of the most common tropes in the nearly hundred interviews I conducted with such persons…was: ‘You could say that I worked every minute of my life, or you could say with equal justice that I never worked a day.’ …For such individuals, flow is a constant part of their professional activity…the joy of extending the mind’s reach into new territories” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997, 61). Flow, as Csikszentmihalyi describes it, refers to feelings that include “concentration, absorption, deep involvement, joy, a sense of accomplishment…what people describe as the best moments in their lives” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1993, 176). “To experience flow,” he claims, “one must begin with a certain level of skill, training, and discipline.” He chose the word “flow” for these “memorable moments” because when people have these experiences, they are “acting spontaneously, as if carried away by the tides of a current” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1993, 177). While people describe such experiences as “the best moments in their lives,” finding actual words to convey the experience to others is difficult at best. Feste himself affectionately claims, “Words are very rascals.” When Viola asks the reason for this, Feste answers: “I can yield you none without words, and words are grown so false I am loath to prove reason with them.”
Shakespeare underscores the challenge of using words in a meaningful way by having his other characters approach the difficulty of language with less grace. Falstaff decides that “honour” is nothing but “A word… Air,” and by doing so dumps the baby and the bathwater down the same drain, denying the value of both. Goneril declares the limits of words when she tells her foolish father, King Lear, “Sir, I love you more than words can wield the matter,” but then she goes on to contradict herself with an extravagance of deceitful verbiage. To Lear’s demand that Cordelia also declare the greatest love for him, his wise daughter responds, “Nothing, my lord.” After incurring Lear’s displeasure for this answer, Cordelia can only reply, “I cannot heave / My heart into my mouth.” Her love, she finds, is “More ponderous than [her] tongue.”
Thinkers throughout the ages have long known that words can’t be used to describe what lies beyond words. As the psychologist Stephen Wolinsky points out, all “thoughts, experiences, descriptions of experiences, and the ‘I’ ‘you’ call ‘you,’ are stuck in language; hence they can be only metaphors, by their very nature” (Wolinsky, 2002, xii). Later in Twelfth Night, Feste alludes again to this linguistic insight. Assuming the role of Sir Topas the curate, Feste intones to the captured Malvolio, “‘That that is, is’; so I, being Master Parson, am Master Parson; for what is ‘that’ but ‘that,’ and ‘is’ but ‘is’?” These lines comprise a witty wink at the verbal difficulties several of the world’s great religions and philosophies have encountered. The Hindu Veda’s Thou art that attempts to convey in words the equivalency of the individual self to Ultimate Reality. When Moses asks the Jewish God’s name in Exodus, the reply can only be expressed as I am that I am. And, perhaps even more relevant to Shakespeare, the first line of the Taoist classic Tao Te Ching is both mysterious and a pun: “The tao that can be tao-ed is not the constant tao” (the same character, tao, means both “way” and “name”).
Unlike the author of the Tao Te Ching, who is generally considered profound, Shakespeare has received harsh criticism for his own puns or quibbles. Samuel Johnson, for example, called Shakespeare’s quibbling “the fatal Cleopatra for which he lost the world, and was content to lose it” (Eastman, 24). It’s likely that Johnson deplored Hamlet’s response to a dug-up skull that might have belonged to a lawyer: “Is this the fine of his fines and the recovery of his recoveries, to have his fine pate full of fine dirt?” Nothing profound there, only foolish wit. No, it is instead from the mouths of witty Fools that Shakespeare’s puns can drop like jewels, even if they are uncut and unpolished.
Othello’s Clown delivers such puns. Cassio asks the Clown, “Dost thou hear, my honest friend?” The Clown answers, “No, I hear not your honest friend, I hear you.” Professional Fools delight in taking everything hyperliterally. In other words, they are skeptics who emphasize the wisdom of assuming nothing beyond the reports of one’s own senses. When Desdemona later asks the Clown where Cassio lies (that is, where he lodges), the Clown says that “for me to devise a lodging and say he lies here, or he lies there, were to lie in mine own throat.” A similar exchange takes place in All’s Well That Ends Well. Paroles tells the Fool Lavatch, “thou art a witty fool. I have found thee [seen through you].” Lavatch replies, “Did you find me in yourself, sir, or were you taught to find me?” Paroles: “In myself, knave.” Lavatch: “The search, sir, was profitable, and much fool may you find in you, even to the world’s pleasure and the increase of laughter.” Skeptical Fools, who always remain in control verbally, seem to perceive any situation from more angles than the normal person. In contrast, common fools are misled to such extremes as to appear ridiculous (Titania swooning over the ass, Bottom) or pathetic (Othello, his handkerchief, and his “honest friend” Iago).
At the extreme end of skepticism lies solipsism, the belief that only the self exists or can be proved to exist. A recent writer, Douglas Adams, in his Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, created a similar skeptical Fool character, who is known only as “the ruler of the universe.” When asked for his name, he says, “I don’t know. Why, do you think I ought to have one? It seems odd to give a bundle of vague sensory perceptions a name.” When he’s asked, “How long have you been ruling the Universe?” he replies, “Ah, this is a question about the past, is it? … How can I tell that the past isn’t a fiction designed to account for the discrepancy between my immediate physical sensations and my state of mind?” Unlike Shakespeare’s common dupes, the ruler of the universe knows that only one thing is certain: “My Universe is what happens to my eyes and ears. Anything else is surmise and hearsay … it’s folly to say you know what is happening to other people. Only they know. If they exist” (Adams, 243–245).
To such a solipsist, life must seem like a waking dream, in which all of the characters are products of the dreaming-yet-awake self—not so very different, really, from the day-to-day work of a playwright. Not only is Shakespeare well aware of himself as having created and determined the fate of every one of his characters, he also wants his audiences to be aware that each character is no more than an ephemeral creation. Hence all those wonderful hints: the plays within plays, the people watching or spying on other people (while the audience watches all of them), the male actor playing a female character playing a male character. Sometimes Shakespeare grows impatient with hints and puns and simply says what’s on his mind: each human is at the same time audience, actor, and fool (or, if fortunate, Fool). In As You Like It, Jacques notices that “All the world’s a stage, / And all the men and women merely players. / They have their exits and their entrances, / And one man in his time plays many parts.” King Lear puts it this way: “When we are born, we cry that we are come / To this great stage of fools.”
Even more bluntly, in The Tempest Prospero declares, “Our revels are now ended. These our actors, / As I foretold you, were all spirits and / Are melted into air, into thin air; / And like the baseless fabric of this vision, / … shall dissolve; / And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, / Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff / As dreams are made on, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep.” Macbeth echoes the thought: “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player / That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, / And then is heard no more. It is a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing.”
This was the kind of philosophy that George Bernard Shaw dismissed as “Shakespeare’s despair.” Shaw himself preferred “Bunyan’s striving for the Celestial City” and dismissed Shakespeare’s plays in general as “Much-Adoodle-do” (Eastman, 172–173, 165). Shakespeare, however, does not stop at despair, but rides this train of thought to a different terminus. In his plays, it is the foolish wits like the aforementioned Macbeth, Prospero, and Jacques who take themselves so dead seriously, and not the Fool, who is both a clever observer and bold articulator of what he sees, yet at the same time insists on “the world’s pleasure and the increase of laughter.” If Shakespeare is saying (to paraphrase Descartes), I act, therefore I am, does acting necessarily imply make-believe, a role? How real are these roles? Hamlet is amazed when the visiting player shows so much emotion over nothing—over an imagined Hecuba. Of course, from the perspective of the audience, both Hamlet and the player are acting their respective roles. Is there any real difference between them?
A psychologist like Wolinsky might argue that all humans are playing roles, whether they are aware of it or (more likely) not. He refers to this state of being as a trance identity. “In a nutshell, to be in a trance identity means that we have fused or become one with a set of experiences that defines how we view ourselves. Whether that identity is ‘I am a loser’ or ‘I am a competent editor,’ in both cases one’s experience of self is narrowed and circumscribed” (Wolinsky, 1991, 17). Furthermore, he says, “When we are attached to our identities of role (‘I am a mother’), career/job (‘I am a dancer’), self-image (‘I am a loser’), or oppositional (‘I must succeed’), our attention is certainly reduced to those few inner realities that define the identity” (Wolinsky, 1991, 221). “Once you shrink your sense of self down to become this belief or that belief by identifying with it, you find yourself completely isolated inside the experience. There is no context to provide perspective or resources” (Wolinsky, 1991, 58).
Perspective is critical, then, in determining what is “real.” Within Shakespeare’s plays, the Fool alone remains outside the frame, looking in, commenting on what he sees. But actually the Fool is simply another actor playing a role—a role written by Shakespeare. Finding what’s real, therefore, can be like peeling away the layers of an onion. Is there anything in the center? Or is it just layers all the way down? And does the peeling necessarily require tears? The Fool waggles his jingle bells and declares that the answer to the last question is No.
In Wolinsky’s words, the Fool occupies “a no-position position,” in which “there is a sense of flow, a sense of perceptions coming and going, a sense of being and perceiving without judgment or identification.… By contrast, in trance states of identification we constrict our focus of attention and fuse with each and every occurrence in the day; our sense of self and well-being fluctuate commensurately” (Wolinsky, 1991, 41). Wolinsky’s “no-trance state” and a meditative state are “different words describing a similar phenomenological experience. This natural state has no boundaries that separate the individual from the rest of the cosmos. Pain and problems arise only when we leave this state and identify ourselves with limiting ideas” (Wolinsky, 1991, 39).
Of course, Shakespeare’s Fool is only a created character, but it is one that points a finger at the moon, that is, at an otherwise indescribable ideal. Because the Fool lives in Wolinsky’s no-trance (or natural) state, “there is no interruption of any motion—of any thought, feeling, sensation or physical movement. What causes interruptions? Our judgments about what we are thinking and feeling, our internal censor who evaluates and identifies with this side of the coin instead of that side of the coin.” In a trance, he continues, “You are not in touch with the fact that you are the creator of the trance you are experiencing. In a no-trance state, you are aware of yourself as the creator of the experience, which then moves you beyond the experience” (Wolinsky, 1991, 49).
It is interesting to compare Shakespeare’s Fool and his no-position position with the Fool card of the Tarot deck. The Tarot’s Fool, who has worn a jester-like costume since 1500, could be said to represent contentment that requires no prior cause. In the more recent Waite-Smith deck, the Fool card is numbered 0 (in earlier decks, it is usually unnumbered), emphasizing the fact that it has always stood apart from the rest of the cards. The Fool appears blissful, his eyes gazing up, despite the fact that he is striding in the direction of a precipice.
Clearly, he exists in some different reality; cliffs and falls are for others to worry about. The situation is different for King Lear’s blinded Gloucester, who can even believe in the reality of the non-existent cliff-edge Edgar leads him to. “Methinks the ground is even,” says Gloucester. “Horrible steep,” replies Edgar, and Gloucester is convinced. It is only after Gloucester “leaps,” faints, and recovers that he comes to appreciate the miracle of his life. Lear later summarizes this epiphany: “A man may see how this world goes with no eyes,” which is what the Fool does when he looks upward toward a reality that has more importance than the ground under his feet.
Is becoming such a Fool an impossible dream? Csikszentmihalyi says, “The person without an ego—if he or she actually exists—is a great rarity, an exemplary specimen that is a useful model to show us that this also is a possibility. But it is not likely to be the way of the third millennium” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1993, 81). Wolinsky believes the ideal of the Fool is only “possible for a ‘zen child.’” The closest human approximation, he says, would result from “a child reared in a carefully controlled environment that taught him/her from Day One not to judge, only to be. In this response modality, a child told that he is ugly places no negative judgment on being ugly and so is completely willing to experience the experience labeled ‘I’m ugly.’ No later problems crop up, because there was no negative judgment on the experience and hence no resistance of it.” Paradoxically, he adds, it is resistance to painful experience that “fuels and sustains the very experience we try so hard to avoid, ignore, wish away. In essence, all the ‘voices’ that badger us within our own minds are resisted experiences” (Wolinsky, 1991, 119-120).
Even if Fool-consciousness is simply an ideal to aspire toward, it seems logical that any increase in consciousness would be better than business as usual, better than being apathetic, greedy, and self-centered, an entranced consumer of “goods” and electronic entertainment. This is quite an aspiration. According to Csikszentmihalyi, to recognize such a challenge, “one has to know how to let go of the tried and true, be open to possibilities, seek out novelty, be curious, be willing to take risks, and be experimental” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1993, 237). The rewards of such effort are commensurately great and might be summed up as wisdom. Csikszentmihalyi believes that wisdom, which “leads to inner serenity and enjoyment, …deals not with the variable, superficial appearance of experience but tries to grasp the enduring, universal truths that lie below it.… Anyone who is not taken in by the veils of Maya, who looks beyond appearances and does not automatically follow the dictates of instincts and society, has attained a degree of wisdom. The first step to wisdom is to realize that we cannot trust implicitly our senses and our beliefs, yet to still be eager to understand the reality that lies behind our partial perceptions of it” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1993, 242).
“In every culture,” says Csikszentmihalyi, “the sage has been regarded as a person who is in the enviable position of being serenely happy.” As he notes, Sophocles said, “Wisdom is the supreme part of happiness,” and two thousand years later Montaigne wrote, “The most manifest sign of wisdom is a continual cheerfulness.” Csikszentmihalyi adds, “Being aware that the self is an illusion, [the wise] know not to take it too seriously. They relish being alive, but they perceive that there is more to life than the small part that is revealed to us, and that most men cling to so desperately. Flow is the usual condition of their existence; no wonder the rest of humankind envies their happiness. But the envy is usually tempered with contempt. Ever since the Greek milkmaid laughed at the philosopher who, absorbed in his study of the stars, fell into the courtyard well because he failed to notice what was right in front of his nose, the wise have been ridiculed for their concerns with the reality that lies behind appearances, while overlooking the obvious and the concrete. True, there is a price to pay for wisdom. The rewards and comforts of ordinary life are neglected, and in terms of the reality shrouded in Maya’s veils, the life of the sage is wasted. Thus, paradoxically, it takes a great deal of self-assurance to relinquish the yoke of the self. But those who succeed in doing so seldom regret it” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1993, 243-244).
The cheerful Fool of the Tarot bears an uncanny resemblance to the Greek philosopher who was more concerned with the stars than with the courtyard well at his feet. Tarot cards, in addition to their use in fortunetelling, have been used to play games. During the game, the Fool acts like a wild card, but with a difference. For one thing, the Fool doesn’t outrank any other card. It is, however, worth a lot of points. The player who is dealt the card always gets to keep it, regardless of what happens to the other cards in that trick. In other words, the Fool simply does not play by the same rules as the other cards. It beats nothing and is never beaten (Little, tarothermit.com/fool.htm).
To beat nothing implies that the Fool cares little for power, and to never be beaten implies that the Fool can not only roll with the punches but laugh at them. This is exactly the type of person needed in the third millennium, according to Csikszentmihalyi. “The type of ego that might pull us through,” he says, “is one secure enough to forego desires beyond what are necessary… it will be satisfied with what is unique about itself and its experiences. And despite greater individuality, it will be a self identified with the greatest common good… with the principle of life itself, with the process of evolution.… The first stages toward constructing such a self involve clearing the mind of the illusions that drain psychic energy and leave us impotent to control our lives. These illusions are the inevitable consequences of being born of flesh, in a human culture, with a brain complex enough to have become conscious of its own workings. They are inevitable, but they are not inescapable.… [W]e begin to see behind our acts the control being exerted by genes, by the culture, and by the ego… People who lead a satisfying life…do what they do because they enjoy meeting the challenges of life, because they enjoy life itself. They feel that they are part of the universal order, and identify themselves with harmonious growth. It is this kind of self that will make survival into the third millennium possible” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1993, 81-82).
Feste the Fool demonstrates the two-in-one response of beating nothing and never being beaten when he meets a man (the twin, Sebastian) who looks exactly like Cesario, but insists he is a stranger. Feste does not become upset (unlike the serious Antonio, who later finds himself in the same position), feels no need to be in control of what’s happening, but instead makes a joke of the situation: “no, I do not know you… nor your name is not Master Cesario…: nothing that is so is so.” By definition, the skeptic doubts that real knowledge of things is possible, and so the skeptic Feste, on a different occasion, also tells Viola, “Who you are and what you would, are out of my welkin.” Of course, Viola herself readily admits, “I am not what I am.”
Shakespeare’s other characters do not cope as well with the matter of identity and role. After willingly giving up his crown and unwillingly losing his power, King Lear feels as if he’s lost in a bad dream: “Ha! waking? ‘Tis not so. / Who is it that can tell me who I am?” The Fool tells him, “Lear’s shadow.” Likewise, the powerless Richard II knows “not now what name to call myself.” After murdering Desdemona, Othello finds he can only call himself “he that was Othello.” To protect himself from his deluded father, Edgar turns into Poor Tom, which is at least something, since “Edgar I nothing am.” And Hamlet, grieving his father’s death, says, “’Tis not alone my inky cloak … / Together with all forms, moods, shows of grief / That can denote me truly. These indeed ‘seem’, / For they are actions that a man might play; / But I have that within which passeth show.” That is the tragic view of identity, or sense of self: it is fragile, insubstantial, and indefinable. (The comedies, on the other hand, approach the same powerful issue of the constraints of self-identity from another direction, with the use of twins, love potions, and impersonations.)
After noting William James’s definition (“A man’s Self is the sum-total of all that he can call his.”), Csikszentmihalyi adds, “The problem is that the more the ego becomes identified with symbols outside the self the more vulnerable it becomes.” Reflecting the conclusions of Shakespeare’s characters who have lost great power or great love, James further declared that the sudden loss of a person’s possessions results in a “shrinkage of our personality, a partial conversion of ourselves to nothingness” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1993, 79). Othello describes his Desdemona—whom he is about to lose to his own jealousy—as the “cunning’st pattern of excelling nature,” in recognition of her status as a unique, individual human being. At the same time, he knows that each life is as tenuous as a candle flame (as does Macbeth, with his bleak “Out, out, brief candle”). Othello realizes that if he puts out Desdemona’s light, “[he knows] not where is that Promethean heat / That can [her] light relume.” Of course, Othello’s jealousy actually causes the death of Desdemona, just as Lear’s insecurity has brought about the death of Cordelia, after which Lear moans that she will “come no more. / Never, never, never, never, never.” At the moment Lear realizes this, he dies of grief. It is as if the current absence of Cordelia and Desdemona reminds both Lear and Othello of their own failure to love during the loved one’s previous presence.
The Fool Feste, on the other hand, advises people to make the most of love while it still exists. His song presents this alternative perspective: “What is love? ‘Tis not hereafter, / Present mirth hath present laughter. / What’s to come is still unsure. / In delay there lies no plenty.” Once again, the Fool asserts that the only thing certain is what the senses report in the present tense. The future and the past are out of our welkin. It is present action that demands the closest scrutiny. Even within the limitation to the present, further limitation occurs in the ability to judge good and bad. Othello and Lear again provide examples, believing the false to be honest, and the good to be false. Hamlet, that champion of thought, says, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” The Fool might take this one step further and say there is nothing either good or bad because people lack the privileged perspective necessary for true comprehension. “Truth’s a dog … must be whipped out” of its kennel, says Lear’s Fool. He urges Lear to understand the enigmatic truth of his situation. By giving his kingdom to Goneril and Regan, while banishing Cordelia, Lear has “banished two on’s daughters, and did the third a blessing against his will.” As Csikszentmihalyi says, for the average person, “Our view of the world becomes polarized into ‘good’ and ‘bad’; to the first belong those things that support the image of the self, to the second those that threaten it” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1993, 79). Perhaps because the Fool understands the difficulty of judging good and bad, he appears to take no sides. Feste, for example, is willing to play Sir Topas to teach a lesson to the falsely imprisoned Malvolio, but he is also willing to help Malvolio escape by bringing him pen and paper and delivering his indignant letter to Olivia. Despite this ability to be “for all waters,” the Fool does not lack feeling. For days after Cordelia has been banished, it is observed that her father’s Fool “much pined away.” And later, when Kent learns that Lear is out in the “impetuous blasts” and “eyeless rage” of the storm, Kent wonders, “But who is with him?” The answer: “None but the fool, who labors to out-jest / His heart-struck injuries.” There in the barren landscape, swept with wind and rain, the Fool sings his philosophy to Lear: “He that has and a little tiny wit / … / Must make content with his fortunes fit, / Though the rain it raineth every day.” This is not despair, this is the way to contentment.
The decision to make one’s contentment fit one’s fortunes—whether they be stormy or sunny—brings to mind the Tarot’s Fool, who chooses bliss in place of the concepts of good and bad. It’s a choice that’s obviously not meant for everyone. For over a century, audiences rejected the Fool’s advice and insisted on viewing Nahum Tate’s rewrite of King Lear, which ended with Cordelia saved and good triumphant over evil (Greenblatt, 2311). Well, that’s one way to go through life—insisting that good always triumph. Unfortunately, one person’s victory always means another’s defeat. Logistically, good can’t triumph for all of the people all of the time, and setting aside such expectations therefore seems like a prudent unburdening. In the words of the Hindu guru Satchidananda, the only way to avoid disappointment is to stop making such “appointments.” By eliminating expectations of what is good or bad, a person can actually change the experience of events. “How much stress we experience,” says Csikszentmihalyi, “depends more on how well we control attention, than on what happens to us. The effect of physical pain, of a monetary loss, of a social snub depends on how much attention we pay to it, how much room we allow for it in consciousness. The more psychic energy we invest in a painful event, the more real it becomes, and the more entropy it introduces in consciousness.… It is better to look suffering straight in the eye, acknowledge and respect its presence, and then get busy as soon as possible focusing on things we choose to focus on” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997, 128). To do this requires work. A Fool must always work in order to perfect his skills; intelligence and talent alone are not sufficient. “Being able to remember, to abstract, to reason, to control attention are some of the most important functions that set people apart from their primate cousins,” observes Csikszentmihalyi, but “these abilities do not become effective unless developed through appropriate, socially constructed activities—that is, through patterned, voluntary investments of attention that result in learned skills” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1993, 170).
Perhaps, then, the best way to make contentment fit with one’s fortunes (though the rain it raineth every day) is to simply obtain an umbrella and stop complaining. Or, better yet, start singing in the rain as Gene Kelly did: “I’m laughing at clouds / so dark up above, / the sun’s in my heart / and I’m ready for love. / … / come on with the rain, / I’ve a smile on my face.” There’s something admirable about ceasing the search for control over life and simply making the best of the present moment. But singing in the face of rain and threatening clouds is not considered quite right in conventional thought. Comedy is comical, and tragedy is tragic, and never the twain shall meet, insist the neoclassical critics. Philip Sydney, for example, deplores Shakespeare’s mixing of tragedy and comedy, “mingling kings and clowns” in “mongrel tragi-comedy” (Eastman, 13). Shakespeare, however, seems to imply that heaviness benefits from levity, both in the theater and in life itself. The wisdom of Shakespeare might therefore be considered comedic enlightenment, as opposed to the strictly solemn variety, which is wisdom that has lost its light. Dogma can never be more than frozen wisdom, no longer flexible enough to respond to life’s dance.
There will always be those who prefer predigested predictability (like dogma and sitcoms) to uninhibited unpredictability (like dancing and exploration). “Most of us,” says Csikszentmihalyi, “have learned to save up our attention to cope with the immediate demands of living, and have little of it left over to be interested in the nature of the universe, our place in the cosmos, or in anything else that will not register as a gain on our ledger of immediate goals. Yet without disinterested interest life is uninteresting. There is no room in it for wonder, novelty, surprise, for transcending the limits imposed by our fears and prejudices” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997, 126).
Life can’t help but dance, even as the music keeps changing. Each living thing bears a unique and “cunning’st pattern of excelling nature”; each living thing eventually ceases to exist. When Hamlet examines skulls in the graveyard, he imagines their original owners: Alexander the Great and Yorick the Fool. Which of these two men, he asks rhetorically, would have laughed to know that he would eventually turn into a clod of dirt that could be used to stop up a bung-hole? While not everyone can (or wants to) achieve the fame and power of Alexander, everyone can appreciate life’s small joys. The critic Alfred B. Harbage describes Shakespeare’s goal as “the enjoyment of life in the simplest and most available ways… Nothing but living itself will do. The goal, unlike fame or wealth or power or position, is the one thing the spectators as a whole have some hope in achieving” (Eastman, 341–342).
Who are we? What does it all mean? It’s a waste of time, Shakespeare suggests, to obsess about such insoluble problems instead of appreciating the miracle of life on a moment-by-moment basis. As Rosalind says in As You Like It, “I had rather have a fool to make me merry than experience to make me sad.” In this regard, Csikszentmihalyi cites the following pertinent Buddhist advice: “Act always as if the future of the Universe depended on what you did, while laughing at yourself for thinking that whatever you do makes any difference.” Csikszentmihalyi believes that “It is this serious playfulness, this combination of concern and humility, that makes it possible to be both engaged and carefree at the same time” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997, 133).
Csikszentmihalyi has also developed some suggestions for guiding humankind to a more harmonious future. First, he says, “it is essential to learn to enjoy life. It really does not make sense to go through the motions of existence if one does not appreciate as much of it as possible. It is difficult to trust a righteous person who seethes in inner misery… Flow is not only its own reward, but it may be the best recipe for social order.” Second comes the importance of “seeking out complexity,” which he defines as a “continuing curiosity and interest.” Third is a “mastery of wisdom and spirituality,” which is “the ability to see beyond the appearance of things.” And, finally, “invest psychic energy in the future,” which is another way of saying endorse “the collective well-being of all life—whatever strange forms that may take tomorrow” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1993, 248-249).
Being a playwright and poet rather than a psychologist, Shakespeare did not make lists like this one in response to his own philosophical enquiries into and beliefs about consciousness. Instead, he enfolded his thoughts in the cocoon of his imagination until their metamorphosis into the “gilded butterflies” of his plays was complete. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Theseus describes how “The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, / Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven, / And as imagination bodies forth / The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen / Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing / A local habitation and a name.” By hinting at what lies beyond both reason and common expectation, Shakespeare briefly allows the viewer to attain the privileged perspective of a Fool.
Afterwards—and there is always an afterwards to a staged play—normal life returns to sweep the viewer into its embrace again. Hopefully, one is changed by the play. Hopefully, one is a little more willing to expect the unexpected and “out-jest / His heart-struck injuries.” One thing seems certain: the jewels of wisdom that drop from the mouths of Shakespeare’s Fools—though uncut and unpolished—deserve a careful appraisal.
Works Cited
Adams, Douglas, 1985, The Original Hitchhiker Radio Scripts, New York: Harmony Books.
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, 1993, The Evolving Self: A Psychology for the Third Millennium, New York, NY: HarperCollins.
______, 1997, Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life, New York, NY: BasicBooks.
Eastman, Arthur, 1968, A Short History of Shakespearean Criticism, New York: Random House.
Greenblatt, Stephen, ed., 1997, The Norton Shakespeare, New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company.
Little, Tom Tadfor, 1999 (accessed May 1, 2008), The History of the Fool Card, http://www.tarothermit.com/fool.htm
Wolinsky, Stephen, 1991, Trances People Live, Falls Village, CT: The Bramble Company.
______, 2002, You Are Not, Capitola, California: Quantum Institute Press.