The Serpent of Venice by Christopher Moore

Edmund somehow gets Lear to ask each of his three daughters – Goneril, Regan and Cordelia – how much they love him. Pocket advises the bastard (i.e., illegitimate) Edmund how to take the land of his legitimate brother Edgar, while Edmund is to prevent the marriage of Cordelia. To prevent Lear from marrying off his daughter Cordelia, a girl Pocket is especially fond of, he schemes with Edmund of Gloucester.

Pocket is the royal fool at the court of King Lear of Britain. A second sequel, Shakespeare for Squirrels, places Pocket into a milieu based on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

This novel was followed by a sequel, The Serpent of Venice, released in 2014, which combines characters and plot elements from Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice and Othello, and Poe's The Cask of Amontillado, while keeping the perspective of Pocket. In addition, Moore invents humorous British-style place-names for fictitious locations in the story. While the style of Fool is directed at an American audience, the author incorporates at times Shakespearean vocabulary, archaic syntax, and modern British slang, and obscure cultural terms relating to medieval life, which are explained in footnotes. In the course of the novel are references to other Shakespeare plays, ranging from short quotations to whole characters-most notably the three witches from Macbeth. The novel takes its premise from the plot of Shakespeare's play King Lear, narrated from the perspective of the character of the Fool, whose name is Pocket. Fool is a novel by American writer Christopher Moore, released on February 10, 2009.

The Serpent of Venice by Christopher Moore