SOURCE: "The Tragi-Comic Dimensions of Lear's Fool," in Costerus: Essays in English and American Language and Literature, Vol. 5, 1972, pp. 197-226.

Below, Wood examines the Fool's function in King Lear, demonstrating the relation of the Fool to Lear's personal development.

For a century and a half—1681-1838—Nahum Tate's version of King Lear pre-empted the stage in preference to Shakespeare's text. Tate's version restored Lear his throne, betrothed Edgar and Cordelia, and omitted the Fool as indecorous to tragedy. The rich texture and meaning of the drama suffered as much, perhaps, from blotting out the Fool's role as by superimposing the happy and false denouément.

Critics have noted the many ways in which the Gloucester subplot adds overtones and complexity to the main plot and theme. Some hold that Gloucester's story illustrates not so much a less subtle and more physical level of the Lear tale as another...