COMIC CHARACTERS OF SHAKESPEARE

The success of the comedies of Shakespeare, to a great extent, depends on his comic characters. The functions of comedians (the fools and the clowns) are invariably to make the audience laugh by their wit and humour; to keep the dialogue going in the intervals of action; to pun on words and extract fun from them and to moralise or sermonise or philosophise over certain situations and incidents or characters.
The Elizabethans as well as Shakespeare seem to have used ‘fools’ and ‘clowns’ indiscriminately. In fact, Shakespeare has portrayed only three major fools : Touchstone, Feste and the unnamed fool in King Lear. His introduction of comic characters in tragedies is to heighten the pathos of his plays by contrast or to provide comic relief from tragic tension. The grave diggers in Hamlet and the porter in Macbeth provide a good deal of fun. Very few readers of Othello remember the clown who makes a brief appearance. In Antony and Cleopatra, a clown brings asps to Cleopatra. The other clowns are Speed and Launce in Two Gentlemen of Verona and Launcelot Gobbo in The Merchant of Venice.
Touchstone of As You Like It is the first of Shakespeare’s great fools. He is the keen witted jester at Duke Frederick’s court. He ridicules folly and affectation and remains a touchstone for all the other characters in the play. Feste of Twelfth Night is the merriest and the most popular comedian. He is known for his verbal felicity and frequency of aphorisms. He always observes the mood of those on whom he jests. Like Touchstone in As You Like It he plays a prominent role in the play. The drunken Sir Toby, the foolish Sir Andrew, and Mavolio, the steward who is sick of self love provide comic relief.
Launcelot Gobbo of The Merchant of Venice is lovable and witty. But everything with him pertains to low life. His misuse of words – ‘incarnation’ for ‘incarnate’, ‘impertinent’ for ‘pertinent’, his palm reading and foretelling a glorious future and fortune for himself, his love for Jessica even after her marriage strongly qualify him to the title of a comedian in Much Ado About Nothing, the blundering constable Dogberry and his assistant, Verges are delightful comic creations. Shakespeare presents wit and pure comedy in Beatrice and low comedy in Dogberry and Verges.
Bottom in A Mid Summer Night’s Dream is the first of the really great comic figures. Puck describes him as ‘the shallowest thick skin of that barren sort’. One of the greatest comic characters in Falstaff in Henry IV. He is the most substantial comic character. He arouses uproarious laughter in the audience. He swears that he never lies but goes on lying.
Shakespeare’s genius is seen in his comic creations. The comic characters are in one way or the other, related to the main story. They are lively and life-like. A survey of Shakespearean plays reveals how the comic scenes and comic characters are more and more organically related to the main story and how they are purged of their grossness and vulgarity.
Coleridge feels that the place of the ancient Greek chorus is supplied by the fools of Shakespeare. Like the classical dramas, the fools expose the folly and affectation without any fear. In Shakespearean comedies, fools matter much and remain the source of some of his finest effects.
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