리어 왕의 바보광대와 예이츠: 『리어 왕』과 『마음이 열망하는 곳』을 중심으로

Abstract

This essay explores the correlation between Lear’s Fool and Yeats (both his Fool and himself as a dramatist). The Fool in King Lear is an artificial fool who wears a motley coats and a cockscomb for his job. But compared with other typical artificial fools, he might look like a natural fool who loses his wits because of his unusual attitude: he devotes himself to Cordelia sincerely and suffers from Lear’s tragedy together. In spite of this fact, however, he is eventually estimated as a supremely wise fool who follows some value different from a secular one. Yeats’s Fool, on the other hand, is an Irish village fool as shown in his The Hour-Glass. He is a natural fool who has lost his wits, but he is also a holy fool who retains supernatural wisdom. Hence, though he is apt to be treated as a fool in the visible world, he can be evaluated as a wise man if our life is expanded to the invisible world. This evaluation is true of Mary the heroine of the play The Land of Heart’s Desire, who may be useless in her reality as a result of her aspiring to Fairyland. In conclusion, this essay argues that Yeats as a dramatist can be differently estimated according to the point of view. He desired the symbolic theater instead of following the realistic theater, popular among his contemporaries because he believed it was more valuable to stir the audience' imagination than to be popular. Thus, he may be considered as an unpopular dramatist, whereas he can also be judged as a great artist who has “the untamed and untamable mind of the world.”