The Fool will leave in the middle of the play (“at noon”). He is no longer needed. He has done his job of mirroring the folly that is in every man, and particularly in Lear. There is no more he can do. His place is taken for the rest of the play by Cordelia, who represents not contempt for mankind's limitations but hope for redemption; allegorically, if the Fool is a codpiece, Cordelia—as we have noted from her name—is the heart.
