Fools and Clowns

So many fools, so little time....

I've been giving a lot of foolish thought to clowns lately or maybe clownish thought to fools. In the Shakespearian sense more clowns exist on this earth do than fools, although everybody is somebody's fool.  Shakespeare in his plays has two characters designated as Fools but seven characters designated Clowns. 

Do the Math. If everybody is somebody's fool then everybody according to Bard logic must also be surrounded by three and a half clowns. Half-clowns bug me because they are almost always foolish.

One of Shakespeares clowns, the clown in All's Well That Ends Well, finds ultimate recourse when he realizes that his hapless behavior may be viewed by some as not only entertainment but also a source of pathetic wisdom, thus a way of generating income. Often, when we realize how foolish we have become, a promotion often follows. An upwardly mobile and monetary move from clown to fool is no accident. A line must be crossed.

Where then, is that line between clown and fool?

Irony is that line.

The major difference between clowns and fools is consciousness of irony. Clowns are omissionally unconscious of irony. The blood of fools is filled with it.

Irony itself is a tricky subject. Irony can be faked ignorance used to provoke or confound. Irony can also be a way of expressing in which implication is intended and formulated to be the opposite of the literal meaning of whatever is being expressed.

Take this test. Ask somebody how they like their job and when they say "I love this job", decide wheter you are talking to a clown or a fool.

Fools get the joke. Clowns live the joke.

Fools are professionals and intentionally witty. Clowns are accidental and unintentionally bumbling. Call a clown a wit and you'd be half right. Call a half clown a half wit and you'd be a quarter right. Clowns are less frightening than fools unless you happen to be near a clown attempting to light a gas grill. At moments like that, clowns can become very threatening very quickly. No wonder Kramer, a modern day fool, is famously afraid of clowns.

Clowns can be threatening to fools when a fool's obvious irony is taken at face value by clowns and construed to mean the opposite of what the fool is implying which is, of course, the opposite of what he's expressing. Clowns in their unsophisticated, blundering sincerity and confused sense of justice can and often do cause a fool to laugh all the way to the hospital, or the police station or the petard.

Clowns are ridiculous but worthy, virtuous and sensible to a fault. Clowns gracefully accept their own clumsiness. Buster Keaton made a living and crated an art form out of falling down and getting back up in fron of a camera. Clowns are more long-suffering than profound. Clowns, even when cowardly, often emerge as unitentional heroes. 

Fools in their profundity are are more mercurial, more objective, more liable to despair. A clown is blunt, a fool is sharp.

Perhaps my favorite clown is the clown from Titus Andronicus who innocently, clownishly, naively delivers a taunting message from Andronicus to the murderous Saturnius while obliviously carrying two pigeons in a basket is promptly hung for his troubles. I'm sure that clown had no idea why he was being hung and even less of an idea why onlookers were laughing at his execution.

Clowns are like that.

You gotta love that freakin clown.

Finally, ther is Trinculo in The Tempest. Trinculo is technically a fool but in his buffoonery and lack of conscious irony, he more resembles a clown.

I myself alternate between clown and fool. Usually, I'm unaware of my own foibles so my wife won't let me get near our gas grill. 

But every once in a while, well....essays like this are written by fools like me but only a clown can walk into a tree.