LEAR’S FOOL
So I’m reading King Lear and I can’t help but sit here wondering just what the porn is up with his Fool. He’s angst-ridden, angry, and determined to drown his audience in nonsense. But why?

#1: Cordelia = Fool? (unfinished)
First of all, though, I want to explain why I’ve decided to assume that the theory that Cordelia is the Fool is not true.
It is obvious from his first appearance that the Fool has been with Lear for a long time. Lear affectionately refers to him as ‘my knave’ and ‘my boy’ and is clearly taken aback when the Fool up and starts spewing vitriol like the girl in the Exorcist spews pea soup, suggesting that normally he doesn’t. Goneril calls him ‘your all-licensed Fool’, which I imagine means that the Fool always does this kind of thing (foolery, naturally) and ‘always’ covers a significant amount of time (I.4.206).
Secondly, and I think this is very important, is the following piece of dialogue:

LEAR: But where’s my Fool? I have not seen him this two days.
KNIGHT: Since my young lady’s going into France, sir, the Fool hath much pined away.
LEAR: No more of that. I have noted it well. (I.4.71-75)

But what does this mean? Ever since Cordelia was banished, the Fool has been all out of sorts. Now, that doesn’t disprove that he isn’t Cordelia. You can see that working in that case, right? But line 75, I think, tells us something different. Lear knows the Fool has been pining away, and he dismisses it rapidly in front of the Knight. He doesn’t want to hear more about it.
Why is that? Is it simply because he doesn’t want to hear anymore crap from his servitors about his decision to banish Cordelia?
While I think that’s definitely part of it, I also choose to interpret it as Lear trying to give the matter of the Fool’s feelings for Cordelia the Royal Handwave. If you read it that way, it would appear that the issue of the Fool <3ing Cordelia has come up before, it bothers Lear, and he doesn’t want to hear about it anymore. Obviously, if the Fool loves Cordy, he can’t be the same person as her. Well, I guess he could be, but it’d be really weird.
There is also the matter of his zealous pursuit of telling Lear he’s being an ass in regards to his dividing up his kingdom. You can see his affection for Cordelia here, too. He fights against what he sees as an injustice against her fiercely. He even gets mean about it.
Cordelia, as we see, is kind of a simple-minded person, not in that she’s stupid but in that she’s honest to her heart. She acknowledges her feelings and doesn’t hide them at all. She doesn’t mess around with all of this flattery business. She’s true-hearted, if you will. It seems entirely out of character for her to show up in a coxcomb and vehemently attack her father’s decision; in fact, it seems selfish. I don’t think that she would even be capable of the Fool’s diatribe as seen in Act I. Unless, of course, she’d always been the Fool, but since we don’t know that much background info, we can’t really tell.
Something like that, anyway.

ON TO THE ANALYSIS.

One of the first things I notice is the relationship between Lear and the Fool. It’s cute, really, until the Fool opens his mouth. Lear calls him ‘my knave’ repeatedly, which is more affection than he shows any of his daughters (‘Better thou hadst not been born than not t’ have pleased me better.’ Jerk.). To be perfectly honest, I get the idea that Lear has adopted his Fool, much more so than Olivia adopts Feste in Twelfth Night. The Fool is the son he never had. And seeing as most Fools were poor, pathetic fellows doomed to a hard life if they didn’t get a patron ASAP, the Fool more than likely sets Lear’s paternal instincts ablaze. The Fool is like the baby of the family, and you know how the youngest child always gets the most lovin’s.
It would seem, however, that this feeling is not mutual – or at least the Fool never lets it get in the way of the truth. He may love his king/patron/surrogate father and probably does, but hoo boy, when Lear starts actin’ a fool, the Fool gets right on him.
It could be because Lear has committed the crime of the century by wronging his favorite, most deserving daughter, whom the Fool has a certain amount of affection for. Wait, that’s probably it.
The Fool wastes no time in getting to his point: Lear, quit being a dumbass.
This is the source of all his nonsense. All of those really confusing turns of phrase ultimately lead back to a barbed insult about Lear’s abandoning his daughter, or how Lear is stupid, or how Lear has effectively gutted himself like a fish (now there’s an image).
One of the other things one notices immediately is that the Fool is constantly in motion, constantly talking, constantly spilling words out of his mouth like a small Niagara Falls. He’s like the Hyper Fool. Why? Because they won’t listen to him otherwise. Fools don’t exactly have a reputation for being easily understood. This is his method of hammering in his point from every angle possible. He never lets anyone else get a word in edgewise. He constantly changes his tack, because if he’s always moving, his audience really has to pay attention to what he’s saying or risk completely losing track of the thread, and, well, Lear always listens to his Fool.