ABSTRACT
The major character in The Play of the Wether is “Merry reporte the vyce.” This chapter describes the general characteristics of the fool, which Merry Report displays. It suggests Merry Report’s function in The Play of the Wether. The chapter discusses various qualities of the fool in general and Merry Report specifically as they are suggested in other fool literature and criticism. Merry Report, although labeled the vice, is one of the important early English stage fools, resembling some of those found in Shakespeare’s plays seventy years later. However when Merry Report hears Jupiter’s happy solution for each petitioner - the correct Boethian point of view for unchanging reality - he cries, “Syrs, now shall ye haue the wether euen as yt was.” The friendship between Erasmus and Sir Thomas More and that between More and John Heywood suggest the possibility that Folly was an inspiration for Merry Report, both being like-minded literary offspring of like-minded men.
