The Drunk And The Fool Essay

The Fool and the Drunk The fool is a frequent character type in the work of William Shakespeare. The Shakespearean fool is usually a person of lower social standing, able to use their brains to beat out people of higher social standing. In a sense, they resemble the fools, and jesters of Shakespeare’s time, but their abilities are exaggerated for theatrical effect. Trinculo and Stefano provide a comic fool to the other pairs of higher social and powerful standing, such as Prospero and Alonso. Trinculo and Stefano discredit the squabbles and pressure between Prospero and the other aristocrats through their own.
The Stefano-Trinculo-Caliban subplot mirrors the one of Antonio-Sebastian in the sense of the dark, murderous, conspiratorial aspects of the play. The main difference being the aspect of humor and comedy Trinculo and Stefano add to their subplot. Caliban initially stumbles upon Trinculo and Stefano, from the beginning, setting himself and his scheme up for failure. Although not the main reason for his failure, Norton does admit that their foolish nature does lead to the downfall of Caliban’s plan. As the final characters introduced in the play, Act II Scene II, Stefano provides comic relief immediately to the intense scene being played out around him. All other characters in the scene have taken cover from the storm circling …show more content…
Similarly, Caliban, Stefano, and Trinculo continue patrol the island purposelessly, Stefano, continuing his drunken stupor describes how the island would be if he able to rule it— this mirrors the conversation between Gonzalo, Antonio, and Sebastian in Act II, scene i. The mirroring of this plot by Stefano and Trinculo, the drunks, later in the play could be a way to comically discredit the plan, to foreshadow the plan unsuccessful since two drunks were able to think of it as