Shakespeare's Fools Trivia Quiz

Answer: King Lear

The play "King Lear" is packed with fools and madmen - King Lear himself is in his second childhood, Edgar is disguised as Poor Tom, a "Bedlam Beggar" or madman, and Shakespeare plays these characters off against one another and the Fool to explore the themes of folly and madness. Lear's Fool's disappearance is never explained in the play.

At one point Lear says "And my poor fool is hanged" but as he is cradling the dead body of his daughter Cordelia at the time, it's unclear to whom he is referring. An intriguing idea is that Shakespeare had written the parts of Cordelia and the Fool to be played by the same actor as they are never onstage at the same time. Cordelia's folly, of course, is to give an understated but truthful answer to Lear's question of how much she loves him, whilst her wicked sisters give effusive, extravagant and fake responses.

Answer: Launce

Launce is Proteus's fool in "The Two Gentlemen of Verona". Speed is another fool in the same play, but he's employed by Proteus's friend-cum-rival Valentine. Grumio features in "The Taming of the Shrew" where he's employed by Petruchio. Laucelot Gobbo is in "The Merchant of Venice" - similar name and a not dissimilar soliloquy, but no dog! Shakespeare only used a dog onstage just the once.

He'd learned: never act with animals; Crab always steals the scene!

Answer: Prince Hal in "Henry IV Part Two"

You could imagine any of these four characters (and indeed, many others) telling Falstaff exactly the same thing, given that Falstaff is a drunken, lecherous, cheating, sponging, thieving old rogue. In fact, this is Prince Hal speaking - technically King Henry V because this is after his father has died. Assuming the responsibilities of the crown, he rejects his one-time drinking buddy in a speech which starts "I know thee not, old man. Fall to thy prayers." Harsh!

Answer: Will Kemp and Robert Armin

All these actors are listed as performing in Shakespeare's plays at the Globe as part of The Lord Chamberlain's Men and later, with even more exalted patronage, The King's Men. Richard Burbage was the company's leading actor, playing heroic and romantic roles.

He was the son of its founder James Burbage and brother to another shareholder who was not an actor, Cuthbert Burbage. Will Kemp was the first prominent comedian in the company, expert in clowning and also a notable musician (a famous jig was named for him).

He was later replaced by Robert Armin, a subtler actor more suited to playing witty fools. History does not record exactly who played which roles in any play, though there is a long-standing tradition that Shakespeare himself played the ghost of Hamlet's father in that one about a melancholy Dane.

Answer: Feste in "Twelfth Night"

Feste is my favourite character in the whole canon of Shakespeare's fools and jesters. He is sardonic and witty, describing himself as Lady Olivia's "corrupter of words", but can sing a good love song too (and make a bit of money from it); he's the fool who's no-one's fool, though at the end of the play he's one of the outcasts along with Malvolio and Sir Andrew Aguecheek - "For the rain it raineth every day".

Answer: The Comedy of Errors

"The Comedy of Errors" has not one but TWO sets of identical twins, both pairs having been separated at birth and grown up in different countries, not knowing they have a brother. By a small coincidence, each of the well-born twins is named Antipholus and each of the low-born ones is called Dromio, and each Dromio is servant to one of the Antipholuses (or should that be Antipholi?). Guess what! they all end up in the same place being mistaken for one another.

The Dromios are the clown characters, but their masters behave almost as absurdly. How did the Bard get away with plots like this?

Answer: Trinculo in "The Tempest"

Arguably, Trinculo is, as his name suggests, more a professional alcoholic than a comedian, but technically he is officially Alonso's Court Jester. From what we see of Alonso in the play, it's hard to imagine him being amused by anything or anyone, but to be fair, he's been shipwrecked, his son's been drowned and he'll never see Naples again (or so he thinks), so it's no wonder he's a gloomy cove.

It's also quite a stretch of the imagination to envisage Trinculo cracking a successful joke, come to that - fairer to say he IS the joke, perhaps.

As for the wrong answers, Gobbo is a page boy, first to Shylock and then to that young upstart Bassanio; Bottom is a weaver by trade and an actor by ambition; Dogberry is the first comic policeman in fiction, as far as I know - inept, hapless but ambitious, he'd think of himself as a kind of distant fore-runner of Nicholas Angel, but is more of a Danny Butterman. ("Hot Fuzz")

Answer: The Shepherd's Son

Yes, surprisingly the Clown is the Shepherd's Son, who is a gentle-hearted chap but is often the fall-guy for others' jokes and deceits, especially the wiles of Autolycus, the Rogue, who is much more like the typical jester. When Autolycus first meets the Shepherd's Son, he pretends to have been robbed and beaten, and picks the Shepherd's Son's pocket when he helps him to his feet.

He brazenly blames the supposed robbery on - Autolycus, "a fellow that I have known go about with troll-my-dames"! No-one in that part of the country has ever seen Autolycus, though they've certainly heard of him, so he gets away with the deception, though he nearly comes unstuck when the Shepherd's Son kindly offers him money - the money Autolycus has just stolen! The senior Shepherd is a serious-minded chap and rather more "with it" than his son, and Archidamus is a minor lord.

Answer: The Countess of Rouissillon

This so-called comedy and little-performed play expresses a pretty jaded outlook on marriage, and the Fool expresses some outspoken and cynical ideas. When he asks the Countess if she will allow him to marry his girlfriend, she asks why he wants to marry her.

His reply: "I am driven on by the flesh; and he must needs go that the Devil drives." The Countess appears shocked but as she goes on to force her son Bertram to marry a woman he doesn't love, her own view of the purposes of marriage could be questioned.

His way of dealing with the problem is to run away. The bride in question, Helena (the really virtuous character in the play, supposedly), eventually wins him back through that cunning ploy known as "the bed trick" (Bertram thinks he's sleeping with the woman he fancies but it's actually Helena and in the dark of night, he doesn't notice the difference). Unsavoury ... Arguably the most memorable character in the play is Parolles, who is a lying, cheating, cowardly braggart. Critics have labelled this a "problem play" and it isn't hard to see why!

Answer: Hamlet

The Gravediggers are not digging a grave for any man, but for "One that was a woman but, rest her soul, she's dead" - namely, Ophelia, Hamlet's one-time girlfriend. Yes, it's that Yorick moment: cue the Hamlet Cigar music and the skull. If you've never seen the play (how not?!), imagine Baldrick as the chief gravedigger and Blackadder as Hamlet and you'll get some idea of their conversation. Hamlet himself is a laugh a minute, rather manically amid the gloom. "Macbeth" leavens the bloodbath with a brief stand-up comic routine by a drunken porter.

In "Romeo and Juliet", the Nurse is really the funniest character but I guess the Clown actor Will Kemp is likely to have played her cheeky servant Peter. "Othello" lists in its Dramatis Personae a Clown as Servant to Othello, but I really don't remember anything he says or does so I think it's a pretty thankless role in that unfunny play.