TY - JOUR T1 - Dog’s Day: Natural Folly and Subversion in Much Ado About Nothing* TT - Dog’s Day: Natural Folly and Subversion in Much Ado About Nothing* AU - Haworth, Ben PY - 2021 DA - June DO - 10.26650/jtcd.861023 JF - Tiyatro Eleştirmenliği ve Dramaturji Bölümü Dergisi JO - T.E.D. Dergi PB - Istanbul University WT - DergiPark SN - 1303-8605 SP - 115 EP - 124 IS - 32 LA - en AB - This essay argues that Shakespeare’s natural fools, clowns, rustics, and buffoons provide far more than light comic relief. Using the example of Dogberry, from Much Ado About Nothing, I demonstrate that in allowing his fools to usurp their position of clownish caricature, to move outside of their normal social spheres, Shakespeare exposes the folly within societal institutions. Though an examination of language, namely the use of malapropisms, and the manipulation of traditional licence extended to natural fools, I contend that such theatrical depictions of folly opened the way for social commentary, parody and inversions of hierarchies of power on the stage. KW - Shakespeare KW - Subversion KW - Folly KW - Malapropism KW - Dogberry N2 - This essay argues that Shakespeare’s natural fools, clowns, rustics, and buffoons provide far more than light comic relief. Using the example of Dogberry, from Much Ado About Nothing, I demonstrate that in allowing his fools to usurp their position of clownish caricature, to move outside of their normal social spheres, Shakespeare exposes the folly within societal institutions. Though an examination of language, namely the use of malapropisms, and the manipulation of traditional licence extended to natural fools, I contend that such theatrical depictions of folly opened the way for social commentary, parody and inversions of hierarchies of power on the stage. CR - Allen, John A., ‘Dogberry’, in Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Winter, 1973), pp. 35-53. google scholar CR - Armin, Robert, Nest of Ninnies (London: T.E. for John Deane, 1608). google scholar CR - Bullough, Geoffrey, Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958). google scholar CR - Duhaime, Lloyd, Duhaime’s Law Dictionary, Accessed 20 January 2021, h-t-tp://w-ww.duhaime.org/ LegalDictionary/N/NaturalFool.aspx. google scholar CR - Erasmus, Desiderius, The Praise of Folly, translated by Hoyt Hopewell Hudson (New York: Random House, 1941). google scholar CR - Foucault, Michel, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason (Abingdon: Routledge, 2001). google scholar CR - Hazlitt, William, Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays (London: Oxford University Press, 1970). google scholar CR - Hornback, Robert, The English Clown Tradition from the Middle Ages to Shakespeare (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2009). google scholar h-t-tp://w-ww.thealexandrian.net/creations/shakespeare/Richard2-Woodstock-ASR-Script.pdf. google scholar CR - Levin, Richard, The Multiple Plot in English Renaissance Drama (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971). google scholar CR - Lipscomb, Suzannah, ‘All the King’s Fools’, in History Today, Vol. 61, Issue 8 (August 2011). Accessed 20 January 2021, h-t-tp://w-ww.historytoday.com/suzannah-lipscomb/all-king’s-fools. google scholar CR - Reimer, Marga, ‘What Malapropisms Mean: A Reply to Donald Davidson’, Erkenntnis, Vol. 60 (2004), pp. 317-334. google scholar CR - Salkeld, Duncan, ‘Letting wonder seem familiar: Italy and London in Much Ado About Nothing’, in Much Ado About Nothing: A Critical Reader, eds. Deborah Cartmell and Peter J. Smith (London: Bloomsbury Arden, 2018), pp. 89-110. google scholar CR - Shakespeare, William, The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works, eds., Stanley Wells and Garry Taylor (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). google scholar CR - Smith, Peter J., Between Two Stools: Scatology and its Representations in English Literature, Chaucer to Swift (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012). google scholar CR - Somerset, Alan, ‘Damnable Deconstructions: Vice Language in the Interlude’, Comparative Drama, Vol. 31, No. 4 (Winter, 1997), pp. 571-588. google scholar CR - Thomas of Woodstock The Complete Readings of William Shakespeare, Editor Justin Alexander. Accessed 20 January 2021. google scholar http://w-ww.thealexandrian.net/creations/shakespeare/Richard2-Woodstock-ASR-Script.pdf. google scholar CR - Wiles, David, Shakespeare’s Clown: Actor and Text in the Elizabethan Playhouse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). google scholar UR - https://doi.org/10.26650/jtcd.861023 L1 - https://dergipark.org.tr/en/download/article-file/1509470 ER -