Touchstone: Critic in Motley

Abstract

A spirit of self-mockery and light, ironical humor is best suited to satire on literary forms and fashions. One feels that Peele's OldWives Tale would have been immeasurably improved as parody had there been a motley fool lurking in the shadow of a great oak, waiting to guide us through the enchanted forest. One of the virtues of Shakespeare's As You Like It is that it has just such a wise fool. Jaques, in commending Touchstone to the Duke, gloats over his discovery, “He's as good at anything, and yet a fool” (v.iv.109). This is as far as Jaques may go in magnanimity. Earlier in the play, Rosalind hails the jester as “Nature's natural the cutter-off of Nature's wit” (I.ii.52). And Celia welcomes him with even less grace, for, says she, “always the dulness of the fool is the whetstone of the wits” (I.ii.58). Except for the Duke, whose penetrating comments on the witty fool are well known, the noble characters in the play seem to regard Touchstone as a natural or dull fool who sometimes serves to sharpen the wits of his betters.