Send in the Clowns
Shakespeare's fool is one of his most variable stock characters. While all his fools range from the courtly jester (Fest in Twelfth Night) to the seeming idiotic gloryhound (Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream), they all embody a few basic traits. They are not always light and comedic, but they are always witty and humorous. They are always in control of their situation, and they are always the smartest person onstage. He is at once the lowest class person onstage at any given moment and simultaneously by far the most intelligent. The fool serves as a means to question authority.To look at them and criticize the very things in them which seem foolish. However, those of higher station are so blinded by their own faults and their status, that they are unable to grasp the truth behind what the fool is telling them. It is this miscommunication which we as an audience find funny. Send in the Clowns explores the variability in Shakespeare's fools, showing a progression from the courtly fool to the characters who briefly "play the fool" for their own purposes. The show caps off with a provocative question: is it better to be the fool? Send in the Clowns, while by all account hilarious and entertaining, also asks the audience to be a little more foolish in their own lives.