Abstract
King Lear's Fool was no idiot. The buffoonery and artifice of the Fool in Lear's entourage allows Shakespeare to make the Fool the only honest person, excepting Cordelia, surrounding the ill-fated king. Is Donald Trump a fool? He certainly says foolish things. Indeed, often it seems those are the only things he is capable of saying, and unlike his possible Shakespearian counterpart he also says dangerous, short-sighted and misplaced things. His speech last week on US foreign policy (which featured the word disaster five times, just to give a sense of its general tone) was full of the foolish things many have come to associate with Trump, and yet have led to the seemingly inexorable rise in his popularity.
Original language | English |
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Pages | 1-2pp |
No. | MAY 4 2016 |
Specialist publication | Canberra Times |
Publication status | Published - 2016 |