Shakespeare's Great Stage of Fools [electronic resource] /
Bell, R.author.
This lively, lucid book undertakes a detailed and provocative study of Shakespeare's fascination with clowns, fools, and fooling. Through close reading of plays over the whole course of Shakespeare's theatrical career,  Bell highlights the fun, wit, insights, and mysteries of some of Shakespeare's most vibrant and often vexing figures.
Description based upon print version of record.
Cover; Half title; Also by; Title; Copyright; Dedication; Contents; Acknowledgments; 1 In Quest of Folly; 2 This Great Stage of Fools; Bless'd Bully Bottom; Prepost'rous Puck; Condemned into Everlasting Redemption; Natural Philosopher, Material Fool; Nothing That Is So Is So; Holy Reasons and Superfluous Folly; 3 The History of Folly in the Henriad; Foolosopher King; Madcap Prince of Wales; The King's Farced Title; 4 Fools for Love: Fooling and Feeling; The Career of Humor: Much Ado, Mirth, and Matter; Faining and Feigning in As You Like It; Counterfeit, I Assure You
Whirligig of Foolery in Twelfth NightI Swear I Am Not That I Play; 5 Folly Is Anatomiz'd; Pox of Such Antic; O That I Were a Fool!; Geck and Gull, Fool and Knave; Thersites's Curses; 6 There the Antic Sits; Fortune's Fool; Antic Disposition; Thus Credulous Fools Are Caught; Lear's Shadow; 7 No Epilogue, I Pray You; The Folly of This Island; Motley to the View; Glossary;  or, A Rhetoric of Fooling; Notes; Bibliography; Index
Includes bibliographical references and index.
This lively, lucid book undertakes a detailed and provocative study of Shakespeare's fascination with clowns, fools, and fooling. Through close reading of plays over the whole course of Shakespeare's theatrical career,  Bell highlights the fun, wit, insights, and mysteries of some of Shakespeare's most vibrant and often vexing figures.
Literature, Modern.
Performing arts.
Poetry.
British literature.
Theater-History.
Early Modern/Renaissance Literature.
Performing Arts.
Poetry and Poetics.
British and Irish Literature.
Theatre History.