Festival of Fools

In groups, students will physicalize and enact text for the following characters: Lear, Gloucester, Cordelia, Goneril, Regan, Edmund, Edgar. Students will choose text that specifically demonstrates each character’s folly. In enacting these textual chunks, students will understand how different definitions of fool run throughout the play. Also, students will recognize that each character has his or her folly; folly is not limited to a few characters. The purpose of doing this exercise is to synthesize all the different definitions of fool and also show how each character’s folly contributes to the outcome of the play.

This lesson will take 50 minutes.

Folger edition of King Lear
Available in Folger print edition and Folger Digital Texts

1. Group students into groups of 3-4 and assign each group a specific character.
2. Ask each group to pick a passage from Lear that demonstrates that character’s folly or a time when that character acts like a fool. The passage should be composed of that character’s own words. They may cut lines as they wish.
3. Students should then enact the passage in the following manner.
4. All students will begin in a freeze frame – a tableau of the action to come.
5. Then, student 1 will first physicalize the first chunk of text and then freeze for 3 seconds. Student 2 will do the next chunk of text and then freeze for 3 seconds. This process will continue until the passage is enacted and all students are in a ending freeze frame pose.
6. Present the scenarios to the class.
7. Ask the classmates, after each performance, to describe, from the performance, the nature of the folly being depicted. Also ask classmates how that folly might have affected the outcome of the play. Such questions can be asked in a “What if” format. For example, “What if Gloucester had not been duped so easily? Would Edmund have continued his fight for power and position?”
8. End class by asking each student to answer the question, “I learned from these performances that…”