What happened to the Fool in Lear? No one knows. Lear at the end says: "And my poor fool is hanged." But, at that point, was he a reliable narrator?
Back to Much Ado Abouut Nothing.
The Allowed or Licensed Fool can say anything:
OLIVIA: Oh, you are sick of self-love, Malvolio, and taste
with a distempered appetite. To be generous,
guiltless and of free disposition, is to take those
things for bird-bolts that you deem cannon-bullets:
there is no slander in an allowed fool, though he do
nothing but rail; nor no railing in a known discreet
man, though he do nothing but reprove.
Benedict is a Fool according to "Lady Disdain":
BEATRICE: Why, he is the Prince’s jester, a very dull fool, only his gift
is in devising impossible slanders. None but libertines
delight in him, and the commendation is not in his wit but
in his villainy, for he both pleases men and angers them,
and then they laugh at him and beat him. I am sure he is in
the fleet. I would he had boarded me.
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