All the King's Fools

                                                     -Enter the Fool-

FOOL
Pennies for the Fool, hark!  Pennies for the Fool!
What hath come of those who serve the Fool?
Those most generous of men, the Fool’s men,
The babbity remnants of his great court.
Generous to thineselves, in that palace
a brothel to gorge both mouths of man,
mouths with want of ale and those too unwise
to know when the Feast makes more fools of them.
Fools serving fools, and they still serve more fools,
I am no more a fool than he, but alas,
He dressed himself a King. Ne’er a king comes
of one with a court full up with pea soup.
Now his soup he buys in pennies, and the
pennies for the Fool, pennies for the Fool,
Seem far less cruel a fate then no coin at all.
That Kings bring Fools alike, the ne’er-do-wells
may hath called their poor sire by his beard.
The king of Albion but a King of
Vegetables, his court those many beasts who
feast on his misfortune.

                                                      -Enter Knight-

FOOL        Oh-ho!  And here walks a rabbit!
Tell me, sir cottontail, do thine ears which
stretch so long hear what happens in Dover?

KNIGHT
Plague to you beggar, lower than the hound!
I’d ask thee to reign thine hedge-born insults
But I will not, for a sane man should know
not to match a word with mine steel.

FOOL        
It seems thine tongue is longer than your ears

KNIGHT
Mine tongue and ears hath fairer fortune both.
Thou wert born with the maggots and there bred.
Insults, slavenry, these you exchange for
A meager coin of ha’.

FOOL
Better a ha’penny than feasting daughters.
I wish ne’er to be the great King of Fools,
for a kingdom ruled by harpies is not
worth the sting of madness.

KNIGHT       But what is this?  It seems
Your face is not common as I thought.
A name, sirrah, if you have one but Beggar.

FOOL
A face, a face!  What else can be more true?
Be that why thou hides evidence with a helm,
so the face does not betray your betrayal?
Oh-ho, what other masks may hide a face?
<sings>     Silver tongue, Silver tongue!
                A bellyfull of ale!
           Pouch of golden dum-da-dum,
                A cloak for forkéd tail!
           Fools should counsel Fools
                For Fools can know to sing
           Fools should turn an ear,
                But alas, did not the King!

KNIGHT       The King!

FOOL       Ah, the King, yes the King!
A wiser king there hath been, and so too
Kings who had far less mind.

KNIGHT
But thou art the King’s Fool!

FOOL
Fool, he calls him!  Are we not all the King’s Fools?
If the king had not sought company of fools,
perhaps he would not have worn my bells.

KNIGHT       Good sir,
what news do you bring?  Where is the King?

FOOL       Ah, The King!

KNIGHT
Yes the King, devil take you if you speak naught!

FOOL
But the foul fiend hath taken too many,
And his belt bursts from lack of a fast.
Tom’s a-cold, Poor Tom’s a-cold, that wiseman,
that greatest of scholars, that philosopher!
Poor Tom’s a-cold, his head spins like a cart wheel,
the driver of the wagon of madness
That hath taken both he and his homeland.
That a true madman ne’er was, nor am I,
though the devil’s wings lifted high over
the King that night.  Oh me!

KNIGHT
Talk sense, man!

FOOL
Who dares talk sense to a senseless man?
We danced in madness that night, the fires
Walking sane steps beside us as we condemned
The weeping boils of his heart, his daughters.

KNIGHT       His daughters?

FOOL       But of course the daughters,
The only daughters left, though now there are none.
Not a King, not his queen, nor his heirs hath
fallen so high as these!

KNIGHT
What comes of the King?

FOOL
Only daughters wise in their tongues, and one
Being not so wise as she should.  The King, the King!
Rum-rah, the King hath given up what he could,
And the rest lost to that darkest figure,
though blessed were they in their deaths, too far
tormented by their eyes and their fine tongues.
Gloucester blinded, Cornwall dead, the sisters
Hung and stabbed and poisoned by their own hands,
or perhaps the hands of one another.
Poor Tom’s a-cold, and Poor Fool’s a-cold too!
The night where the Gods hath warred with the earth;
Jupiter striking fast with thunder, hey!
Apollo riding not behind those clouds,
That tempest that strikes our King from his height,
That tempest which drove two men dressed as mad,
And two men mad but dressed as they do,
to take company of this poor, cold Fool.
Liars and fools who knew never of their falls.
One left that night--‘twas I, the fool by
profession and not by fate, the Fool to
Dover goeth, and all the other fools
Did follow him there.

KNIGHT
Say you, good man, that the King is in Dover?

FOOL
‘Twas a shame that he did not even take
the company of his rabbits, for though
They ate his subjects of lettuce and beets,
They would have added men to flank his side.
“I am a king, I am a king!” but alas,
He ruled over nothing.

KNIGHT
Would that I had stayed, my poor King, who hath
Been so betrayed by Fate.

FOOL
Would that you had stayed, would that I had stayed,
But ‘tis true that we both enjoy our heads.
For the King is dead

KNIGHT       Dead!

FOOL       Aye, dead.

KNIGHT       By Apollo, no!

FOOL  
I do believe Apollo did it not,
‘Twas the harpies and hellhounds that he kept
So close to his sides, the madness takes him.
His heart too broken by his blood, his mind
Shrunk down as his beard took most empty space.
His fools had fled him, and this fool too, though
He was lost when he saw his one true daughter
Swinging from a rope.

KNIGHT
Still you speak naught but nonsense!

FOOL
Nonsense be mine own profession, ho-he!
Just as Kingship be his.  I suspect
when a winter comes, it will be easy
To remain a Fool and not so much a King.

KNIGHT
France inbound, and the King is taken by death.
You, Fool, are more a fool still, for why not
stay by his side till the end of ends?

FOOL
I am but a Fool.  Had I been slain too,
Who is left who still knows of the King?
For he had no use for a Fool when he
Died speaking to himself the words I
Had spoken in bulk.

KNIGHT
You say that Lear hath lost his mind, but I
have long since known he hath lost his youth as well.
Would that we had stayed, you his wits, me his sword,
and left him not to this.

FOOL       Sirrah,
would that Lear had never shunned his daughter.
But “would” has never helped the dead.

KNIGHT
Lear fallen, Regan and Goneril dead,
What now happens to the King’s failéd Knights?

FOOL
I know only what happens to the Fool.
For fools can stay fools or become kings, it seems,
While knights can only fall so far as kings
Who have become fools.  Nay, I favor my chance
as a fool.

KNIGHT
Better to die a man retaining pride
than like men who riddles speak.

FOOL
Mayhaps I will find another Fool King
to serve.  And sir, were you a king, I think
you would be in great need of your own Fool.
Take up the scepter, sirrah, and prove yourself
A better king than the one you abandoned.
For is a rabbit not fit to rule the
remnants of his rotting cabbage kingdom?

KNIGHT      
That Lear is gone weighs heavy on my heart, but
good sir, I would make a poor king indeed.

FOOL       And that you would, cottontail
But you are wiser than the king himself
In turning ears to the words of this Fool.