He can caper about like a madman and yet hold out a mirror to everyone as he confronts them with their true nature, without showing any respect for wealth or status. Death in the Danse Macabre has much in common with the fool. The fool may be foolish or possess natural wisdom and truth. Shakespeare's fools have a long history: while some (like Hamlet) use madness as a cloak to hide their designs, other 'true fools' could speak often brutal truths with impunity. I discuss and develop the concept of decarnivalization in order to reinterpret Shakespeare’s dramatic art. While the gravedigger and his friend, in Hamlet, are mockingly clowning, the grounds spits back a skull that already whispers: “God is dead.” This is how in Shakespeare’s plays the “decarnivalization of the world” is present on the Early Modern stage. When the Fool disappears, others have to take on in the stormy night of King Lear. The resentful exit of Malvolio leaves us confused in Twelfth Night. This is clearly visible in the Early Modern theatre of Shakespeare. But, parallel to the strange fate of the clown “on stage” the carnival can become problematic as well. This is how the phenomenology of the clown par excellence and the carnival are ontologically related to each other. Moreover, her repeated jumps to recover bear ritual laughter mocking the figure of Death. The “Clown or Fool par excellence” embodies the carnival’s topsy-turvy attitude and transgresses all borders of reason and social order. My book is an attempt to define carnival in relation to another entity that is always and necessarily associated with the carnival, still, easier to identify. It is not an easy task to understand the nature of carnival as it is shown by the many failures of the last century after Mikhail Bakhtin’s work became generally known.
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