April Fool's Day has a long history, associated with the "allowed fool" or jester tradition, and related to our own freedom of speech. (An account of this history is on my Captain Future's Dreaming Up Daily blog today.)

The fool and the clown are also important in the history--and pre-history-- of theatre. These days we're most familiar with the figure of the fool in Shakespeare. The Fool is a character in the comedies of As You Like It and Twelfth Night, and the tragedies of King Lear and Hamlet. But the various aspects of the Fool, and the contrast with the King, or the law, is important in other plays in the Shakespeare canon as well.

In Shakespeare the Thinker, his new (and last) book, the late Shakespearian scholar A. D. Nuttall, writes of the many ways these themes weave through the cycle of histories which includes Henry IV, Part One. Richard II (the monarch of the play of that title which directly precedes the Henry IV plays) is a paradoxical character, sympathetic at times because he is philosophical and poetical, yet as a king he is ineffectual, indecisive (he sees too many ironies to act) and impulsive, given to arbitrary and quixotic decisons. (Nuttall says that the only actor equal to playing all this colors of Richard II was John Gielgud.)

But Bolingbroke who deposes him, is a practical man of action. His despair over the frivolities of his son, Prince Hal, are expressed at times in connection with Richard, who he compares to a Fool rather than a King. He is afraid Hal will be the same kind of monarch, ruled by folly.

The Fool character in the Henry IV plays is Falstaff, of course. (The photo is Ralph Richardson portraying Falstaff). In Shakespeare's time and place, as in our own, clowns were popular on the stage. Shakespeare used this appeal but gave it dramatic and thematic meaning. Falstaff is therefore a complex character. Like the Fool in the court jester tradition, he sees the folly of human vanities--in this case especially, of war. Like the trickster characters of many nations, including the Coyote and Raven in Native cultures, he is also a creature of guile and appetite, undone by his own vanities and vices. But like many fool characters, he represents the joys of life as well. His role in Prince Hal's life partakes of all these, and more.

The Endless Stage

I saw two shows on local stages this weekend, Shakespeare's Henry IV Part I at North Coast Rep, and Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac performed by the Young Actors Guild of North Coast Preparatory, at Gist Hall Theatre. As it happens, roles in these two plays were notable triumphs for the great English actor, Sir Ralph Richardson (seen here in a 1981 photo by Lord Snowden.)

Richardson played Falstaff in Henry IV Part 1 twice. The first time he was a new member of the Old Vic in 1930, and shared the stage with Laurence Olivier as Hotspur. The next time was in 1945 and 1946, in both parts of Henry IV, with Olivier as Hotspur in Part 1 again. Richardson's interpretation was new: he played Falstaff not as a belching vulgarian, but as a dignified lover of anarchy, a portly Quixote. He won great acclaim in both London and New York when the Old Vic was in repertory there in 1946, and returned the role, fallen into disrepute in modern times, to the ranks of the great parts.

He played Cyrano later that year. When the roles came up for the Old Vic season that fall, he had first choice as senior member. He chose Cyrano, although Olivier coveted the role. Olivier knew that Richardson wanted to play Lear, so he chose that role, assuming that Richardson would want to trade. He didn't. Olivier's only stage Lear was controversial--some thought him too young, but others (including Noel Coward) thought it was a brilliant re-conception and performance. But Richardson's Cyrano was a unanimous triumph. As Cyrano is also a kind of Quixote (which he admits during the play), it seems Richardson found common threads of bedraggled honor and stubborn romance in both parts.

As it happened, Richardson was knighted during the run of Cyrano, so he became Sir Ralph Richardson then. This added its own panache to the role that personifies that quality.