The Fool: The Only One Who Can Say What Is True

The Fool arrives in Act 1 Scene 4, after the abdication, and immediately starts telling Lear what he did wrong. His method is songs, riddles, and extended metaphors about eggs, but the content is always the same: you gave everything to your daughters, you have nothing left, you are a fool. He says it so many times in so many forms that it becomes impossible to ignore.

He is allowed to say these things because he is a fool, meaning he holds a licence for truth. That licence has a limit. By Act 3 Scene 6, in the farmhouse, he is still present. After that scene he is never seen again. He simply stops appearing, without explanation.

Shakespeare scholars have argued about this for centuries. Some think the line 'And my poor fool is hanged' (Lear's cry over Cordelia's body) suggests the Fool and Cordelia were played by the same boy actor in the original productions. Others think Shakespeare simply lost track of him. The most resonant explanation may be the simplest: in a play this dark, there is eventually no room left for a licensed truth-teller.