Shakespeare’s Great Stage of Fools

By Robert H. Bell, Frederick Latimer Wells Professor of English. Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. This lively, lucid book undertakes a detailed and provocative study of Shakespeare’s fascination with clowns, fools and fooling. Through close reading of plays over the whole course of Shakespeare’s theatrical career, Bell highlights the fun, wit, insights and mysteries of some of Shakespeare’s most vibrant and often vexing figures.