'Say a Fool Told It to You'

LEAR: “Dost thou call me fool, boy?”

FOOL: “All thy other titles thou hast given away; that thou wast born with.”

We all need fools in our lives to remind us of our foolishness. If no one else is up to the task, we must be brave and do it ourselves. Though sometimes unpalatable, the task is never difficult. Just pay attention and keep notes. “Stultus sum. Translate me that, and take the meaning of it to yourself for your pains.” We all get the message, even with threadbare Latin: “I am foolish [or stupid].” The line is from Charles Lamb’s “All Fool’s Day,” which always brings to mind Sherwood Anderson’s story “I’m a Fool.” Lamb’s essay is the essential text for this most humbling of days:

“I have never made an acquaintance since, that lasted; or a friendship, that answered; with any that had not some tincture of the absurd in their characters. I venerate an honest obliquity of understanding. The more laughable blunders a man shall commit in your company, the more tests he giveth you, that he will not betray or overreach you. I love the safety, which a palpable hallucination warrants; the security, which a word out of season ratifies. And take my word for this, reader, and say a fool told it you, if you please, that he who hath not a dram of folly in his mixture, hath pounds of much worse matter in his composition.”