In King Lear, the Fool seems to be the funniest and smartest character throughout the drama. Even thought the Fool jokes around and makes people laugh, most of the time his jokes are not really jokes, but rather the truth disguised as something seemingly funny. The other characters do not seem to be smart enough to realise what the Fool is really saying, or even taking the time to consider that his words may be of serious truth and not just humour. The other characters appear to be too engrossed with their own situations, the Fool's humourous personality and funny gestures to think that his words are true and not false.
The significance of the Fool thus seems to be to bring humour to the play and making the play seem a bit more interesting as he prances around the characters saying something that appears to be funny. In addition, he also seems to try to hint certain things to the characters to open their eyes to certain situations. For example, in Act 1 scene 5 where the Fool asked Lear if he knows why a snail has a house, where Lear asked why and the Fool replies "Why, to put ’s head in—not to give it away to his daughters and leave his horns without a case." This means that the snail always carries a house on his back so that he always has a roof over his head and he can't give his shelter to his daughters, leaving him without shelter. Here the Fool seems to be hinting to King Lear that dividing his whole kingdom among his two daughters was not the smartest thing to do, but King Lear does not realise this and doesn't take his words to heart. This makes it evident that the Fool is sadly not being taken seriously by the characters so far, since they believe him to be uttering a lot of funny lines, instead os saying something of substance that could possibly help them. The Fool seem to know a lot more than they think.
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