Robert Armin - A New Fool

A New Fool

Armin may have played a key role in the development of Shakespearian fools. "If any player breathed," Hotson tells us, "who could explore with Shakespeare the shadows and fitful flashes of the borderland of insanity, that player was Armin". Robert Armin explored every aspect of the clown, from the natural idiot to the philosopher-fool; from serving man to retained jester. In study, writing, and performance, Armin moved the fool from rustic zany to trained motley. His characters—those he wrote and those he acted—absurdly point out the absurdity of what is otherwise called normal. Instead of appealing to the identity of the English commoner by imitating them, he created a new fool, a high-comic jester for whom wisdom is wit and wit is wisdom. When Robert Armin replaced Kemp in the Chamberlain's Men, it was considered the "taming of the clown". Armin's new style of comedy brought into play the "world-wisely fool". This urged Shakespeare to create Feste in his Twelfth Night, who was a philosophical social insurgence. He had a place everywhere, but belonged nowhere. Ken Kesey told an interviewer of this notion of a fool. "That fool of Shakespeare’s, the actor Robert Armin, became so popular that finally Shakespeare wrote him out of Henry IV. In a book called A Nest of Ninnies, Armin wrote about the difference between a fool artificial and a fool natural. And the way Armin defines the two is important: the character Jack Oates is a true fool natural. He never stops being a fool to save himself; he never tries to do anything but anger his master, Sir William. A fool artificial is always trying to please; he’s a lackey."