The Fool has hinted at Lear's redemption in two early jokes. The references are not very clear, but an audience accustomed to Biblical allusions would have picked them up:
"Dost thou know the difference between a sweet fool and a bitter one?" the Fool asks Lear, early on while they are still at Goneril's. When Lear fails to see what is coming, the Fool makes up a rhyme:
Fool. That lord that counselled thee to give away thy land,
Come place him here by me; do thou for him stand.
The sweet and bitter fool will presently appear,
The one in motley here, the other found out there. (I.iv.137-140)
"Dost thou call me fool, boy?" asks Lear, getting the point, or at least part of it. The contrast between sweet and bitter slid by without our noticing its reference. Historically these adjectives were applied to the fruit of two trees, the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden and the cross upon which Christ is crucified, a kind of metaphorical tree. It is spoken of as such in Acts 10:39, where Peter says Jesus is the one
"whom they slew and hanged on a tree." The metaphor suggests a contrast with the Tree of Knowledge, whereby the first parents committed the sin now being redeemed. A popular medieval romance, the Golden Legend, even identified the two trees, saying that the wood of the tree of knowledge became the wood of the cross. In the Renaissance this story was the subject of a famous fresco cycle by the Italian painter Piero della Francesca.
The point is, first, that the fruit of the tree in the Garden is "bitter fruit," because of its result, Adam and Eve's expulsion from the Garden and humanity’s life of woe ever since. Second, Christ on the cross is "sweet fruit," because eating that fruit, accepting Christ, gives eternal life.
A medieval example of the contrast, and the identification of the trees, is in a hymn by Cardenal. We shall see shortly how this hymn amplifies the Fool's words and indicates Lear's process:
This fact was miraculous, Aquest fagz fo meravilhos,
That on that wood where Qu’el leinh on pres death had its birth mortz naissemen,
There was for us both life and forgiveness, Nos nasquet vida e perdos,
And rest in place of torment. E repaus en loc de tormen.
On the cross everyone En crotz pot trobar veramen
Who deigns to seek may find Totz homs, que querre l’i denha,
The fruit of the tree of knowledge. Lo frug del albre de saber.
…Christ died on the cross for us, Cristz mori en la crotz per nos,
And dying, destroyed our death; E destruis nostra mort, moren;
And on the cross he vanquished E en crotz venset the proud one, l’ergulhos,
On that wood where he used to vanquish men. El leinh on vensia la gen.
And on the cross he wrought salvation; Et en crotz obret salvamen,
On the cross He reigned and does reign, Et en crotz renhet e renha,
And on the cross went to redeem us. Et en crotz nos volc rezemer.
He culls the sweet fruit who Lo dous frug cuelh qui takes the cross la crotz pren And follows Christ to wherever he may lead, E sec Crist vas on que tenha,
For Christ is the fruit of knowledge. Que Cristz es lo frugz de saber.
(Press 1971, 303-305)
In the first stanza, the phrase
"rest in place of torment" describes what we get when we find that "kingdom of God" within. It is also the
"sweet fruit" described in the last stanza. It is a this-life rest unaffected by accidents of fortune, including torture and death, by which one is no longer a
"fool of fortune" (IV.vi.195). It contrasts with the bitter fruit of suffering and death that resulted from the tree in Eden. At the same time the
"sweet fruit" is Christ himself, for
"the fruit of the tree of knowledge" is
"on the cross." Christ and
"rest" are the same.
Next, both fruits come from the same tree, as in the Golden Legend. The first stanza is clear on this point:
"On that wood where death had been born was born for us both life and forgiveness." The second stanza repeats the point: The tree where
"the proud one" defeated humanity, in the persons of Adam and Eve, is also, as the cross, the tree that defeats that "proud one."
The phrase
"the proud one" (“l’ergolus”) is ambiguous, given the time and place in which Cardenal was writing. In orthodox Christianity that phrase would mean the personage inhabiting the snake which led Adam and Eve astray. But in Gnosticism, and the Catharism of Cardenal's time, it is the Lord in the story, Jehovah, whose pride was wounded by Adam and Eve's disobedience, and who in retaliation
"vanquished men." It is Jehovah whose rule is defeated by the Christ whose
"perishable rags" (Robinson 1988, 42) hang on the cross. Christ's teachings lead humanity to the God of All, of whom Jehovah was ignorant.
The serpent, on this latter reading, might be Jehovah’s accomplice but might also be innocent of wrongdoing, even be Christ, or Sophia, as the Gnostic texts had suggested. An early 17th century alchemical engraving and a late 16th century German coin (
Fig. 26 and
Fig. 27; Campbell 1968, 153) do suggest just such a possibility, showing a serpent on a cross just like that of Jesus.
Figure 26. Serpent on crosst, from "Nicholas Flammel,"
Exposition of the Hieroglyphicall Figures which he caused to bee paimted upon an arch in St. Innocents Church-Yard, in Paris, London 1624.
The conventional interpretation of the image in
Fig. 26 is that Christ has undone the damage caused by the serpent. John 3:14 says, "
And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up." This verse compares Christ to the bronze serpent that Moses hung on a pole, that the Israelites might by seeing it magically be cured of the snake bites they had received for their lack of faith. Likewise Christ is lifted onto the cross to atone for Adam and Eve’s lack of faith in the Garden of Eden (Campbell 1968, 153-154). But meditation on the image might reveal another interpretation: perhaps Christ simply is the serpent of the garden, who gave liberating knowledge to Adam and Eve, after which Jehovah punished them.
Figure. 27. The Serpent Lifted Up. Hieronymus Magedeburger, Golden Thaler, Germany late 16th century.
The last line of Cardenal's song can similarly be taken in two ways. Christ is the
"fruit of knowledge" in the sense of being the outcome of the problem posed by the tree of knowledge in Eden. He could also be the
"fruit of knowledge" in another sense, in which Christ as salvation comes from knowledge as opposed to faith. Salvation--the
"sweet fruit"--is not in orthodox Christianity considered the result of knowledge--i.e. experience and thought--but rather something that may be acquired by belief and faith. Cardenal's words intimate something else, salvation by knowledge, gnosis, which the Cathars appear also to have experienced. (The Cathars did have their believers, credentes, but these, so long as they merely believed, could only look forward to a better reincarnation, one in which they would receive the saving knowledge.)
Cardenal's wording has much in common with a passage in the
Gospel of Truth, if I may quote again from that papyrus that lay buried so long beneath uncultivated land in the Nile Valley. This passage is one that describes Christ and his significance:
He was nailed to a tree; he became a fruit of the knowledge of the Father, which did not, however, become destructive because it was eaten, but to those who ate it gave cause to become glad in the discovery. (Robinson 1988, 41)
Here, too, Christ is a “fruit of knowledge"--again, not merely of faith. As well, Christ is the sweet fruit, i.e. the fruit that makes the eater "glad." This fruit contrasts, implicitly, with the bitter fruit, i.e. the fruit that is "destructive" to the eater.
Figure 28, "Enclose the old man and the tree in a house of dew, and eating of its fruit he will be made young." Emblem 9 of Michael Maier,
Atalanta Fugiens Oppenheim 1618.
In Maier's
Atalanta Fugiens, one engraving in particular fits this discussion. An old man sits in an enclosure, grasping apples on a tree (
Fig. 28 above; de Rola 1988, 75). The motto is
"Lock the tree with the old man in a bedewed house, and by eating o the tree's fruit, the old man becomes young" (de Jong 1969, 100). The dew is that of the "living water," Mercury, which enters the fruit. As in the case of the sweat bath (
Fig. 12), the enclosure serves to isolate the alchemist, just as the storm isolates Lear; it also serves to contain the moisture, resulting in a continual bath of falling dew, like the storm and the various characters' tears.
Maier makes no comment on one noteworthy feature in the engraving. There are two fruits: one almost in the man's mouth, a second in his other hand but still on the tree. In keeping with Lear's process, we might imagine the man biting into a bitter fruit first, before the Mercury has had time to heat up and penetrate the fruit. The dew is then first the cold rain and Lear’s own and his elder daughters' bitter tears; this dew characterizes the first fruit. Then later, as the enclosure heats, the due is the warm vapors provided by Cordelia's physician and the tender, warm tears shed in the reunion; the dew is now a kind of purifying steam bath, and the fruit eaten then a sweet one.
One application of the “fruit” image to the play is clear enough. Just as trees' fruit, when planted, are young trees, so people's fruit is their offspring, the "fruit of their loins." Lear ate bitter fruit in trusting his older daughters. His ignorance of what is truly sweet, as opposed to what appears sweet, is what makes him the "bitter fool," and the Fool, who knows better, the "sweet fool." Then Lear's very bitterness is the basis for new knowledge, by means of which later he recognizes the sweet fruit Cordelia.
In case the Fool's image did not stick in our peripheral consciousness the first time, the Fool has a second joke about sweet and bitter fruit, when Lear goes to visit Regan in hopes of a better reception than he got from Goneril:
Fool. Shalt see thy other daughter will use thee kindly; for though she's as like this as a crab's like an apple, yet I can tell what I can tell.
Lear. What canst tell, boy?
Fool. She will taste as like this as a crab [crab-apple, noted for its sourness] does to a crab. (I.iv.14-18)
The Fool's prediction of kindliness is ironic. Regan is another bitter fruit that seems sweet. First, Regan is as like kindliness as a crab is like an apple, which is not much. Yet a crab is an apple, a crab-apple (as Foakes points out in his note in the 1997 Arden edition). Then Regan will taste as a crab-apple will taste to someone like Lear, a crabby person, for she is as crabby, i.e. sour, as he is: In Regan he will taste a bitter apple. Since the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge was conventionally represented in Renaissance art as apples, a fruit expected to be sweet, we have again a reference to the fruit of that tree, which appears sweet but tastes bitter.
The contrast between the bitter fool and the sweet one, Lear and his Fool, reflects another contrast. First there is the god of Genesis, whom the Gnostics call "fool," who expels the companions he created out of the beautiful garden he made for them, and remains continually disappointed, both in humanity as a whole and in whatever chosen people he finds there. In contrast to this bitter god is what Paul calls
"the foolishness of God" (1 Cor. 1:25), which is "
wiser than men," namely,
"the preaching of Christ crucified" (1 Cor.1:23). This is the wisdom that does not care about the things of this world or the opinions of people attached to such things. It is a wisdom that the world calls foolishness.
Erasmus had famously contrasted this second type of foolishness to the first in his
Praise of Folly:
“The happiness which Christians seek with so many labours is nothing other than a certain kind of madness and folly” (1971, 202). As he observes, in his ironic style:
All mortals are fools, even the most pious. Christ too, though he is the wisdom of the Father, was made something of a fool himself in order to help the folly of mankind, when he assumed the nature of man and was seen in man’s form; just as he was made sin so that he could redeem sinners. Nor did he wish them to be redeemed in any other way save by the folly of the cross and through his simple, ignorant apostles, to whom he unfailingly preached folly. He taught them to shun wisdom, and made his appeal through the example of children, lilies, mustard-seed and humble sparrows, all foolish, senseless things, which live their lives by natural instinct alone, free from care or purpose. (1971, 199)
It is the foolish wisdom of Lear’s
"unaccommodated man," who has taken off his worldly clothing, or of France’s description of Cordelia as
"most rich being poor" (I.i.252).
In this regard the Fool of tarot deserves a closer look. The one we know, in bright Carnival-style harlequin clothes (
Fig. 3, in section 2), was not on tarot cards until the late 17th century (Kaplan 1978). Tarot is first documented in 15th century Italy; its Italian name was first carta di trionfi, then tarocchi, which became tarot in French (Dummett 1986). In the 16th century the decks rapidly spread throughout Europe, including England (Kaplan 1978). Again, let me emphasize that the game was one like Bridge, not fortune-telling (Dummett 1986). Meaningful images were put on the cards as a help to the memory. Our reason for looking at the images is to get a better idea of how the figure was conceived at that time.
With that in mind, Let us turn to three documented 15th century versions of the Fool card, plus an artist’s reconstruction of what another one probably looked like (
Figs. 29, 32, 34, 36). In all but one, what corresponds to the Fool is a beggar, dressed in rags and carrying a staff, as though for walking or self-defense. In relation to
King Lear, the figure of Edgar comes to mind, dressed in rags, wandering the heath, yet capable of killing an adversary if need be, as in fact he does when attacked by Goneril’s steward Oswald. In modern Sicily the card is called il Fuggitivo, “the fugitive” (Dummett 1986), a name especially apt for Edgar (but we do not know if this name goes back to Shakespeare’s time).
Figure 29, right, PMB Fool card, 1450s Milan..
Figure 32, center, "Tarot of Mantegna" Misero card, c. 1565 northern Italy.
Figure 30, right, Giotto "Stultitia" fresco, Padua .Scovegni Chapel c. 1305..
The earliest clearly datable card (
Fig. 29; Ennis 1987, 63) is from the so-called Pierpont Morgan-Bergamo (PMB) deck, from around 1440-1460 in Milan, done for the Visconti-Sforza ruling family of Milan. He was called the Matto, Madman. The figure is a thin beggar with his leggings falling around his ankles. Six feathers are visible sticking out of his head. As tarot scholars have observed, the figure resembles an allegorical figure representing folly, done as part of a famous fresco cycle by the painter Giotto in1302-1305 (
Fig. 30; von der Haegen 1998, 52). Giotto’s figure appears to be blessing a crowd, using a gesture normally reserved for the Pope—or for Christ in religious representations (e.g. Christ entering Jerusalem, in the same fresco cycle,
Fig. 31; von der Haegen 1998, 67)). He is a figure from traditional Carnival celebrations. A beggar was elected “King” or “Pope” and treated with mock dignity throughout. He wore seven feathers, one for each week of Lent. After Carnival, many people of all walks of life would wear similar simple white clothing as part of their Lenten observance (Kaplan 1978).
Figure 31. Christ entering Jerusalem. Detail of fresco by Giotto, Padua Scovegna Chapel c. 1305..
Another early card that has survived is not from tarot as such, but from a set of fifty cards that illustrated the “ten conditions of man,” the nine muses plus Apollo, the ten liberal arts, the “ten cosmic conditions,” and the “ten firmaments of the universe.” The deck is called the “Tarocchi of Montegna” and is in the style of Ferrara, Italy, around 1465 (Levenson et al 1973). (Andrea Montegna was a famous painter in Mantua at that time, but his style was quite different.) There are distinct correspondences between the images in this deck and those of tarot, including the first card, showing the lowest condition of man, the beggar (
Fig. 32; Innes 1987, 63). Captioned “Misero,” or misery, the figure leans on his staff half-dressed. Here something new has been added: A dog jumps onto his leg and another one sits in front of him. The stick would be useful for warding off the jumping dog, but he does not use it. He seems not to notice them. One leg appears to have a scrape on it, as though from a previous attack. Since dogs usually attack strangers, the implication would seem to be that he wanders dejectedly from place to place.
Figure 33. So-called "Chosson" Fool card, late 17th or early 18th century Marseille.
This latter aspect, the jumping dog, continued in numerous tarot decks to come. For example (
Fig. 33; from
http://tarotchoco.quebecblogue.com/arcanes-majeurs-photos-tarot-de-francois-chosson/ ), in the “Tarot of Marseille,” this image of late 17th or early early 18th century Marseille, the Fool is dressed in his customary motley colors, but still has the dog jumping at him, at either a purse or a bare spot on his leg, where the scrape had been on the “Montegna” card. is image may be as early as c. 1500.
Figure 34. left, "Griggonneur"/"Charles VI" Fool card, Florence c. 1460.and
Fig. 35, center, "Mantegna" Saturn card, c. 1465 northern Italy.
Fig. 4 repeated is at right, from Holbein's illustrations to Erasmus's
Praise of Folly 1515.
The third existing card (
Fig. 34, above left; Innes 1987, 65) is from the so-called “Gringonneur”or "Charles VI" pack, allegedly from 1392 but now placed at c. 1460 Florence. It is of a giant playing with an oversized string of beads or medallions, with four small figures gathering stones around its legs. According to Innes (1987), the giant resembles the huge figures paraded about at Carnival. However I think we can say more. The image of a giant with four figures underfoot occurs also in the “Montegna” deck—it is Saturn, shown there bringing a fifth small figure to his mouth; he also holds a serpent biting its tail and a scythe (
Fig. 35 above right; Innes, 35). As I see it, the “Gringonneur” Fool is a Saturn who is so busy eating one child he does not watch out for the others, who like David before Goliath can bring a giant down using mere stones. The chain that the Fool is playing with is identifiable from
Fig. 4 (from section 2), where a foolish king wears a similar chain across his upper chest. The “Gringonneur” image thus suggests a dictatorial ruler who thinks he is too powerful to worry about usurpers. Both the “Gringonneur” and “Montegna” images fit Lear precisely.
The earliest image of the Fool in his characteristic mode of walking with a stick over his shoulder is in the so-called Cary Sheet, c. 1500. It is on the right below,
Fig. 36, with that deck's Magician card, then called the "Bagatella", or "trivial performer," on the left.
Figure 36 (fragment on right). Cary Sheet Fool card, c. 1500, probably Milan.
There is an interesting theory about the Fool as wandering beggar (Kaplan 1986). The man could have been seen as a wandering heretic, from any of several sects, traveling secretly from village to village ministering to his flock. The Cathars had been the most numerous; a few had been rooted out of the Piedmont hills even in the late 14th century. The attacking dog suggests that the man is a stranger, as indeed the Cathars preached that humanity is on earth, subject to continual attack by agents of the “alien god.” What most suggests heresy is the dog, not seen in the Cary Sheet, but evident as early as the "Tarot of Mantegna" of c. 1465. It is an image that became associated with the Dominican Inquisition, which was called “the dogs of God,”
Domini canes in Latin, a pun on the name of the order. They had themselves portrayed in art (in the Church of Maria Novella in Florence0 as dogs tearing the flesh from wolves that raided their flocks. The message from this perspective is that the heretics and those who follow them are fools, for they sacrifice everything, including not only their goods and families but their very lives, burning at the stake, and then suffer eternally in Hell for their pains. Against this story, it must be said that there were many such beggars, including Franciscans and Domnicans as well as the homeless mentally ill, which is how "Tom"--Edgar in disguise--portrays himself in
Lear.
Ironically, however, that same figure is a fitting image for Christ, who also met an ignominious death at the hands of the authorities. He, too, possessed nothing, and risked his life traveling from village to village preaching his deviation from orthodoxy. From this perspective, the six feathers radiate out from the Fool’s head like a halo or a crown. Christ, of course, had his crown of thorns as “King of the Jews.” Giotto’s Folly was also a King, King of the Beggars, who reminded people at Carnival of the Lenten austerities to come. Giotto did his frescoes in the city of Padua, a mere 100 miles from where 200 Cathars had been burned en mass in 1278.
Other associations with heresy appear elsewhere in early tarot. The PMB deck, the one with the thin beggar having six feathers but no dog, has a card called the “Popess,” the lady Pope (
Fig. 37; Innes 1987, 21). According to Moakley and others, she isdressed in the habit of the Guglielmites, a heretical order of nuns that held that in the future women would be popes (Kaplan 1978). A relative of the Visconti family, Sister Manfreda, reportedly was elected Pope by the order and burned by the Inquisition in 1300 (Innes 1987).
Figure 37, left, PMB Popess card, 1450s Milan.
Figure 38, right, Giotto, fresco of Justice, Padua c. 1305.
Fittingly, the Popess card bears a resemblance to Giotto’s figure of Justice (
Fig. 38, von der Haegen 1998, 51; it also bears a resemblance to Giotto's figure of Faith); I detect as well a resemblance of Giotto's Injustice (
Fig. 39; von der Haegen 1998, 52). to Giotto’s Injustice (
Fig. 40, Innes 1987, 26)
Figure 39,
left, Giotto, Injustice fresco, Scovegni Chapel, Padua c. 1305
Figure 40, right, PMB Pope card, 1450s Milan.
Giotto’s figures certainly resemble these two cards more than they do any other cards, including ones named “justice,” “emperor” and “empress.” One might wonder whether Giotto’s figures, and the tarocchi cards that followed them, belie a sense that the woman pope is on the side of justice, while the male pope that promoted her death is on the side of injustice. Giotto did his frescoes a mere 100 miles from Verona, where the nun was burned, and less than five years after. After that, the Inquisition investigated the Lord of Milan himself, an earlier Visconti, for heretical connections, an action that would not have endeared the papacy to his successors.
I do not know whether Shakespeare was familiar with tarot, or with these images. We know only that tarot had spread to England by the 16th century. Even without tarot, the image of a wandering beggar being snapped at by dogs was common enough, in life as well as art (Dixon 2000, Ch. 3)—although perhaps not the association with heresy. But I do notice a loose parallel between Shakespeare’s play
The Tempest and the Visconti-Sforza dynasty which sponsored the early decks. In 14th century Milan, power was shared by two Visconti brothers. One was quiet and reserved, while the other was the real ruler, both lusty and ruthless (Kaplan 1978). This contrast resembles that between the two brothers Prospero, Duke of Milan in the play, and Antonio, his usurper brother, in
The Tempest. Filippo Visconti, for whom the earliest tarot decks on record were made, was the second son of a later Duke; he attained his position in 1412 after his older brother was assassinated. In Shakespeare’s play, the older brother Prospero is merely exiled when the younger seizes power. Filippo had an illegitimate daughter named Bianca whom he married to his most valued protégé, the commoner Francesco Sforza, son of the man who defied the Pope. The marriage was a happy one, and Sforza successfully established himself as Duke after his father-in-law’s death. These events loosely parallel Prospero’s daughter Miranda’s marrying the stalwart Ferdinand, who presumably will become Duke of Milan after Prospero’s death.
