"Armine... thou art a foole and knaue" - the fools of Shakespeare's romances

My thesis analyses in detail the comic characters of Shakespeare's romances (Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest), in particular those created for Robert Armin, the leading comedian of the King's Men in the period. The first chapter focuses on the relationship between actor and role: after an introductory section where I give an overview of the life and works of Robert Armin along with the particular features of his clowning style as opposed to those of Will Kemp, his predecessor in Shakespeare’s company, I move on to consider the parts in the romances he was likely to have played in the early performances: Boult, Cloten, Autolycus and Caliban. In particular, I close-read the texts to highlight the clues pointing at Armin’s own person, physical characteristics, clowning style and outlook. The following chapters are devoted to a thorough discussion of each of the four characters, which are grouped according to their professions or social roles. So the second chapter examines the criminal fools in Pericles and The Winter’s Tale, where Boult and Autolycus are respectively a brothel male-bawd and an eclectic rogue. In the third chapter, then, we find Cloten and Caliban from Cymbeline and The Tempest, characters who display or are scorned for their real or alleged natural folly. In each case I consider the relationship between the role and Shakespeare’s sources as well as the influences from previous comic traditions, and the ways in which the character elicits laughter. An important part of the chapters, however, is dedicated to a contextualization of the characters in the social, historical and cultural environment of the period. So I analyse Boult as a representative of the flourishing economy of prostitution in early modern England and Autolycus as a multifarious mirror of the consequences deriving from masterlessness and vagrancy. With Cloten and Caliban, instead, I explore the theme of n