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Abstract

This dissertation investigates the fool figure’s complexity and the transformation from Plautus’ clever slaves to Shakespeare’s clever servants, witty heroines and most of all, the wise fool. The thesis offers a detailed description of Plautus’ "servus callidus", his concept, embedment, and function for comedy as a prototype of the professional fool. To analyze the relations between those instantiations of one type distanced by centuries and their ideologies, an explanatory model for cultural dynamics will be introduced. It is an attempt to understand the transformation of popular configurations juxtaposing folly and wisdom, the comparability and continuity of the underlying pattern paradox, and its sequence of productivity. This thesis investigates the productivity of the pattern and its type in Shakespeare’s plays, focusing on Plautus’ clever slave as an available source.