Reviewed by Jesse Steele

Fool is Christopher Moore’s completely irreverent retelling of Shakespeare’s King Lear, told from the viewpoint of Pocket, King Lear’s fool. To start at chapter one would be to miss all the hilarious things that come before it, so let’s start with the page directly following the title page, which is this:

“WARNING: This is a bawdy tale. Herein you will find gratuitous shagging, murder, spanking, maiming, treason, and heretofore unexplained heights of vulgarity and profanity, as well as nontraditional grammar, split infinitives, and the odd wank…if that’s the sort of thing you think you might enjoy, then you have happened upon the perfect story!”

Following the warning and table of contents, we find a page for the cast of characters (the bit about the ghost is funny), then a map of Britain in Lear’s time which includes the fictional abbey of “Dog Snogging”, where Pocket was apparently born, raised and educated. From there we move to the “stage” page, which describes the setting as “a more-or-less mythical thirteenth-century Britain…generally, if not otherwise explained, conditions can be considered damp.”

And then to Act I. In each “act” or chapter of the book, Moore uses a quote from the original Shakespeare work on the opening page.

Act I: “When we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools. --King Lear, Act IV Scene 5”

Act I is entitled Always a Bloody Ghost.

First sentence(s): “Tosser!” cried the raven. There’s always a bloody raven.

We immediately meet Pocket, King Lear’s fool, on the wall of Lear’s castle, arguing with a guard about why Pocket has taught a raven to talk and why when he talks he calls people tossers, which Moore has numbered and footnoted (as he does throughout the book) with the following: “ 1. Tosser—one who tosses, a wanker.”

Pocket then goes on to talk about how there were even ravens in Lear’s castle a thousand years ago, before George the II, idiot king of Merica, destroyed the world. This, all on the very first page.

In Act I Pocket establishes himself as our narrator, and he immediately displays his bawdy sense of humor and flair for insults. As Pocket wanders the castle looking for his apprentice, Drool (who is Pocket’s opposite, being large and very dim-witted), we meet and/or learn about all of the major and minor characters involved in the drama to come, including Jones, Pocket’s jester-head-on-a-stick. All of the original Shakespearean characters are represented, including all three of Lear’s daughters and their respective husbands and suitors (we also learn that the majority of the male characters want Pocket dead because of some joke at their expense), but there is also a new cast of “common” characters—Bubble the head cook, Taster the king’s food taster, Squeak the kitchen maid, and so on. We begin to see that this will be a sort of commoner’s behind-the-scenes telling of this familiar story.

We learn that Pocket was given his name by the nuns who raised him because he is very small as an adult, and as a child he fit into the abbess’ apron pocket.

We also learn that Pocket is firmly in Lear’s favor, and that none of these noblemen, thought they have the right to kill any commoner, will dare harm Pocket because their king adores him.

Pocket also shows us in Act I that he adores Cordelia, Lear’s unmarried daughter, and doesn’t wish her to be married and leave the castle.

And the ghost makes her first appearance and her first prophecy, so the closing line of Act I is the title: “There’s always a bloody ghost.”

Act II:

In this case, the title of the act is the Shakespeare quote:

“Now, gods, stand up for bastards!” King Lear, Act I Scene 2, Edmund

First sentence: “I found Drool in the laundry resolving a wank, spouting great gouts of git-seed across the laundry walls, floors, and ceiling, giggling, as young Shanker Mary wagged her tits at him over a steaming cauldron of the king’s shirts”

In Act II we get to know Drool, Shanker Mary, and Edmund, the bastard son of the duke of Gloucester, whom Pocket severely insulted from the castle wall at the opening of Act I. We learn that Drool’s special gift is mimicry—he can imitate any speaking voice he hears exactly.

It’s also established in chapter two that the religious climate of thirteenth-century Britain is one of tenuous coexistence between Christians and Druids, and that people’s religious loyalties seem to change depending on what’s convenient for them.

And we find out Pocket is called the “Black Fool” because Lear has had a suit made for him of all black to match his dark wit instead of the usual rainbow-colored fool’s suit.

Pocket spends the majority of Act II trying to avoid being killed by Edmund the bastard, and we spend the entire chapter in the laundry room with Pocket, Drool, Shanker Mary and, eventually, Edmund. There is a fight, and Act II ends with Edmund just regaining consciousness after Drool knocks him over the head—but not before Shanker Mary finds a letter in unconscious Edmund’s coat, and Pocket opens it and begins to read (which is a shock to Mary since most commoners can’t read, but Pocket was educated in the nunnery).

Act III:

Title is again a quote from the original play: “Our darker purpose” King Lear, Act I, Scene I, King Lear

First sentence: “ ‘Well this is a downy bit of goose toss if I’ve ever read it,’ said I.”

In Act III, Pocket discovers that the letter in Edmund’s jacket is one Edmund has written to his father, begging to be recognized and given half his brother’s title and lands. Pocket reveals that he has a special talent for forging other people’s handwriting, and Edmund has a sample of his brother’s writing, so Pocket convinces Edmund to let him write a letter in Edgar’s hand that makes it look like Edgar wants Edmund to help him kill their father and take his land. That way they can leak the letter and Edgar will be disinherited and Edmund will get everything when their (old and widowed) father dies. Pocket’s motivation for helping Edmund is two-fold. First, he doesn’t want Edmund to kill him, and second, he wants Edmund to stop his brother Edgar from marrying Cordelia and taking her away from the castle.

In this chapter we also learn a great deal more about Pocket’s life in the abbey, and we meet the Anchoress, who is the reason Pocket became a fool instead of a priest.

At the end of Act III, the ghost comes back with another prophecy.

Act IV:

Again, title = quote.

“The dragon and his wrath” King Lear, Act I, Scene 1, King Lear

First sentence: “ ‘Don’t despair, lad,’ I said to Taster.”

In the first page of Act IV, Taster is testing the huge number of stuffed dates Goneril and Regan, Lear’s two older daughters, have brought with them as gifts for the king. He complains of being sick and then seems to fall asleep, but Pocket has just learned that Edmund the bastard has gained a private audience with King Lear, so he rushes off to intercept, afraid of what Edmund might be up to.

In this chapter, we begin to see not just the characters agreeing with the original story, but the events themselves. At this point the plot starts to weave in with Shakespeare’s Lear more thoroughly, and we see that the author has given us his version of the backstory leading to Lear’s decision to ask his three daughters to declare their love for him in order to gain parts of his kingdom before he dies.

Goneril and Regan, who are greedy and dishonest, spew a bunch of flowery words and get big chunks of the kingdom. Cordelia thinks the whole thing is crap and refuses to participate, just as in the original story. In this version, Edmund has convinced the king to ask this question in order to prevent Edgar from marrying Cordelia so pocket could have Cordelia at the castle.

We also get the next bit of ghostly prophecy from Drool, who randomly starts talking in a perfect imitation of the female ghost’s voice.

Act IV ends with the banishment of Kent, King Lear’s most trusted friend and advisor, when Kent stands up for Cordelia and tells the king she is only being truthful. It becomes clear toward the end of Act IV that Lear is, indeed, losing his mind.

Analysis:

In beginning my analysis, I should admit a genuine bias. Christopher Moore is one of my very favorite authors, and the only author I have ever come across who consistently makes me laugh out loud while I read. I think he’s an absolute genius, and the opening of Fool doesn’t change my opinion one bit.

Moore has tackled the bible and the life of Jesus, Death, vampires, tribal “cargo cults”, the origins of life on earth, and native American legends—why not Shakespeare? To me, it seems like a perfectly logical next step. His extensive education shows in his detailed dismantling and reconstructing these complex mythical characters and stories—he is always at once highbrow and lowbrow, which makes his sensibility a perfect match for Shakespeare’s.

That said, I think the first 50 pages of Fool are quite successful as an audience-grabbing opening. It takes a minute to find the rhythm of the language, much as it does when reading Shakespeare—you (or at least I) fumble around with the words for the first few pages, but then the pseudo-Shakespearean flow becomes comfortable and the book takes off. The opening of Fool is a great example of en media res, with the book beginning in the middle of a confrontation between the protagonist, Pocket, and an unimportant secondary character. The protagonist is immediately and clearly established as the narrator, and we begin seeing a familiar story through an entirely new set of eyes. The humor starts on page one and continues throughout, though in keeping with the nature of the original King Lear and the nature of Shakespeare’s works in general (though Moore has of course exaggerated these tendencies to great extremes, as is his way), the humor is very dark and very bawdy throughout.

The way I see it, if the purpose of the opening pages is to grab you and make you want to read more, and if on the first page you’re laughing out loud, by the third page you’re thoroughly in sympathy with the protagonist (though you know he’s a little shifty) and as in love with his princess as he is—and if, by page fifty, you’ve already gotten to know all the main characters and their schemings, seen the good guy (or in this case, girl) done wrong, and seen her champion (or in this case her fool) get screwed trying to help her, you’re definitely hooked enough to want to know what happens next, which is a hell of an accomplishment if you consider that anyone who took a Freshman English class in the US knows what happens next. But after 50 pages, you want to know what Pocket knows about the way it all went down.

So, successful opening sequence that meets all the criteria we as editors put forward for an opening that hooks? Check. My only hesitance, as I said in the beginning, is the couple of pages it takes to adjust to the unusual language structure—but if you’ve read Shakespeare, you know that the adjustment is worth the reward, and the same is true here.