Top 5 Things that Shakesperean Clowns Do and What Real Clowns Would Do Instead

So, I've been pretty busy lately, what with moving to a different city and all, but before I did that, I was finishing up finals and making some plans to write a list on the last final I took. It was a Shakespeare final, and I was concerned particularly with the Shakespearean definition of "clown" and how they are totally not like what any normal person today thinks of when they think of a clown. For instance.

5. In The Merchant of Venice, upon seeing his blind father...

...the Shakesperean clown Launcelot Gobbo tricks his own father into thinking that he, his son, is dead.

...a normal clown would squirt his father with a trick flower.

4. In The Comedy of Errors, upon being accosted by a fat woman who mistakenly thinks he is her lover...

...the Shakespearean clown Dromio of Syracuse rejects her advances and compares her body to a globe of the earth.

...a normal clown would shove her back into the car they both improbably came out of.

3. In As You Like It, in response to Rosalind's question, "Where learned you that oath, fool?"...

...the Shakesperean clown Touchstone says, "Of a certain knight that swore by his honour they were good pancakes and swore by his honour the mustard was naught: now I'll stand to it, the pancakes were naught and the mustard was good, and yet was not the knight forsworn."

...a normal clown would cover himself with mustard and fall into a pool filled with pancakes.

2. In Hamlet, when his recently-deceased skull is held up by the title character...

...the Shakespearean clown's skull Yorick does absolutely nothing.

...a normal clown's skull would start singing, "Dry Bones" and do a sweet little subdued dance like this:

1. In King Lear, when he must accompany the aged, mentally unstable title character to take shelter in a cave...

...the Shakespearean clown Lear's Fool will not shut the hell up about cod-pieces.

...a normal clown would not shut the hell up about cod-pieces.

Okay, he got that one right.

P.S. This didn't really have any place in this article but people who won't shut up about how they're afraid of clowns are annoying and lame.