SOURCE: "Shakespeare and Two Jesters," in Hebrew University Studies in Literature and the Arts, Vol. 11, No. 2, Spring, 1983, pp. 161-79.

In the following excerpt, Butler describes the influence that rival jesters Robert Armin and John Stone (circa 1600) had on Touchstone's evolution into a "new-style" fool

My two jesters are Robert Armin, who joined the Chamberlain's Men in ca. 1600, generally accepted as the first interpreter of Touchstone, Feste, and Lear's Fool; and John Stone, a great, but neglected, tavern fool. They were both well-known, and rivals, about the year 1600. I shall attempt to show their influence in one play only, As You Like It, and on Touchstone in particular.

Robert Armin is in some respects the most remarkable among the first actors of Shakespeare's plays. He was, like Jonson and Shakespeare, an actor-playwright. His literary legacy is considerably larger than that of the only other Elizabethan fool to commit himself...