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The fool, Folly enters. He complains to Diligence that he has been attacked by a sow in ‘the shogate’ (Shoe Street in Cupar) and is looking for compensation. Diligence asks him if he has a wife. Folly complains at length about his wife’s flatulent illness and drinking habits. After feeding his daughter, Glaiks, and his son, Stult, he notices an attractive woman in the audience and tries to seduce her. When Diligence rebukes him, he offers instead to deliver a sermon on the theme ‘the number of fools is infinite’. He distributes his ‘folly hats’ (fools hoods) to ‘fools’ both onstage and in the audience: greedy merchants, old men who marry young women, Christian kings who fight each other against Christian teaching, and the friars of St Andrews who argue foolishly among themselves over whether The Lord’s Prayer should be said to the saints or to God alone. Diligence ends the play with a prayer for the welfare of the audience, and an instruction to everyone to drink or dance as they please.

Try your hand at re-editing the film of this scene from the directors original camera feeds at the interactive part of the website:

Live Performance, Film and Viewer

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