The Fool in As You Like It by William ShakespeareThe Fool is one of the first character archetypes that any student of literature learns to analyze. Despite his seemingly light-hearted, even pointless chatter, the fool usually manages to say some pretty important things. Upon further study, the student can understand that it is because of his penchant for stupidity that the idiot is allowed to express truths, even offensive ones, about other characters. But what happens when one fool meets another? Fools are not accustomed to submitting to one another; This experience of being confronted with a sort of mirror is usually reserved for characters who must undergo changes to move the plot forward. Touchstone and Jaques manage to break this rule and appear to compete simply by coexisting. Both live up to what we expect from the madman, but neither manages to fully fulfill his role. Whoever comes closest deserves a debate. In her book The Fool: His Social and Literary History, Enid Welsford devotes a chapter to "The Court-Fool in Elizabethan Drama" and briefly discusses As You Like It in particular. At one point she describes the fools as being "...partly inside and partly outside the action of the drama." (244). This idea applies to Touchstone and Jaques, but in a slightly different way than she intended. She depicted characters placed by circumstance in this liminal state – characters with no desire to move to one side or the other of their happy medium. She also describes the differences between Touchstone and Jaques, both in appearance and attitude. More importantly, she mentions that Touchstone “…exposes affectation; but he is capable of... criticism, and his judgments are right in the middle of the paper... encroaching on his territory. Jaques is kind of a fool in a kind of court, but Touchstone's presence brings a glimmer of the rest of the world - a real fool from a real court - that breaks Jaques before he has the chance to throw a single stone. at Touchstone. Jaques' attempts to find a place for himself then read simply as a strange, lost man making faces in a glass. There's no way for Jaques to top Touchstone's inherent liminality - where Touchstone glides seamlessly from world to world, in and out of the action, Jaques hops back and forth like someone 'one walking on hot coals. It never reaches one place long enough to truly establish itself. It is for this reason that Touchstone fulfills all facets of the role of the fool more effectively than Jaques, until the bitter ending where Jaques takes the traditional ending of the fool and is left alone..