Shakespeare's FoolsShakespeare used stupid characters in his plays to make points that he considered very important. I had previously assumed that Shakespeare was an artist who peppered his writings with observations about humanity and its place in the world to please critics. However, I discovered that he was a gifted writer who had a penetrating understanding of the condition of humanity in the world and who peppered his plays with fools and jokes aimed at the common man in order to yield to the intellectual level of his audience. Or, as Walter Kaufmann puts it in his essay “Shakespeare: Between Socrates and Existentialism,” Shakespeare “made himself comfortable with the absurdity of his audience: he gave his pearls a slight smell of stye before sink them.” Kaufmann continues his essay by saying that Shakespeare, unlike many modern artists, "took advantage of the challenge of a crude, lecherous, and vulgar audience and increased the richness and subtlety of the drama." (Kaufmann 3) Perhaps the best example of Shakespeare's use of the fool (and certainly the best of all the Shakespearean plays I have read) is Falstaff in I Henry IV. In "The Fortunes of Falstaff", Wilson states that Falstaff is the embodiment of the vice of Vanity: he is cowardly in battle, proud and conceited, dishonest, conniving, lacks respect for the property of others and only cares wine, tavern girls and comfort. It would be easy for a reader (or viewer) unfamiliar with Shakespeare to conclude, in our time, that Falstaff was included in the drama purely to provide entertainment value. However, Falstaff is also essential to the play in many ways. . It is necessary for the development of Prince Hal, ...... middle of paper ......han, I assumed it at first. Rather than being mere devices for the entertainment of his audience, Bottom and Falstaff (and many of his other characters) are used, in these cases, to contrast the other characters in his plays, to make important points that Shakespeare wants his audience to understand. They are an integral part of Shakespeare's drama.ReferencesKaufmann, Walter. “Shakespeare: between Socrates and existentialism” in From Shakespeare to Existentialism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980. Shakespeare, William. The comedy of errors. New York: Penguin, 1965. Shakespeare, William. Henry IV, Part I. New York: Penguin, 1965. Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night's Dream. New York: Penguin, 1965. Wilson, John Dover. "Of the Fortunes of Falstaff" in Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part I. Ed. Maynard Mack. New York: Penguin, 1965.