The anatomy of folly in Shakespeare's "Henriad"

Folly, as Johnson said of comedy, has been "particularly unpropitious to de finers," struggling to conceive a notoriously indeterminate term. "Folly" i s usually derogatory, pinned on any disbeliever or adversary, telling us as much about the judge as the judged, or ironically laudatory. While "folly" flaunts its maddening elusiveness, fools will rush in it-here wise men fea r to tread. This essay explores the concept of folly, investigates its pert inence for literary criticism, and tests its usefulness in a consideration of literature's greatest fool, Falstaff. The fool's cross-eyed vision always threatens to become a revelation; it-ha t starts as impish play may end as prophecy. Fools divide and confuse us, s o that we either scant or privilege folly by reducing it to diverting babbl e or magnifying it into encoded prophecy. A great fool has amazing powers o f disorientation: he is an avatar of disequilibrium. Disabled yet enabled, invincible yet particularly vulnerable, the fool is always double, both lig htning bolt and lightning rod: his bad luck might bring me good luck, so iv e make room for fools but keep our distance: there with/but for the grace o f God go I. The Fool has a strange duality, like the medieval monarch, two separate "bodies," one enduring, potent, capable of revival, personifying s urvival and adaptability; the other marginal, susceptible, provisional, eas ily hurt. Shakespeare's most majestic fool dramatises folly's powers, perils, and par adoxes. Foolishly immersed in the "lower bodily element," Falstaff imagines himself somehow freed from natural law; simultaneously Caliban and Ariel, he is enmired yet aloft, immanent yet transcendent, that quality wonderfull y characterized bt, Bradley as Falstaff's "inexplicable touch of infinity." When "Falstaff riseth up" from playing possum, his comic resurrection seem s the definitive triumph. "the true and perfect image of life indeed." This "great fool" not only affirms life but outrageously redeems it with "count erfeit" or bogus scriptural idiom. Falstaff robustly embodies the power of folly and dimly, occasionally perceives its limits. In 2Henry IV, obviously enfeebled, becomes more the object than the source of humor. The banishmen t of Falstaff is not humorous and it hurts. As a seemingly imperishable foo l, exuberantly enacting folly, Falstaff liberates life from fact. in defian ce of reason and pursuit of joy. Falstaff's force draws us all into the fie ld of folly, so that the great fool is our double whose loss we deplore.