Commentary on King Lear
...s a play with sound in it with the constant use of “base” and “bastard” in there is an obvious repetition of the sound ‘b’. Edmund continues to wonder why the society looks at him lowly considering that his conception contained more passion than that of Edgar’s, where Edmund claims his father was probably half asleep. “Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take more composition and fierce quality than doth within a dull, stale, tired bed go to th’creating a whole tribe of fops got ‘tween asleep and wake.” Then shockingly enough Edmund questions whether Edgar is himself a bastard. Not in the sense that Edgar is born out of wedlock, but due to his disloyalty towards Gloucester. “Our father’s love is to the bastard Edmund as to the legitimate. Fine word, “legitimate,.” Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed and my invention thrive, Edmund the base shall top th’legitimate. I grow, prosper. Now, gods, stand up for bastards!” This quote is from a letter that he has written, in it Edmund reveals the fact that he feels no shame for being a bastard, and wants to degrade the legitimate bond between Gloucester and Edgar. From all of this we simply can see that Edmund is full of hatred and jealousy, yet this seems to have been the result of his treatment by the society who look down on him. Therefore, one can argue that the evil within Edmund is due to the society rather than to his natural creation. I sense that the relationship of Edmund, Edgar and Gloucester is similar to that of Regan, Goneril, Cordelia and Lear. Edmund is the male version on Regan and Goneril. These three characters have tried to lie to their fathers showing fake love in order to gain land and power, they also dislike the sibling who is most true to the fathers who are both fooled by the fake compassion. Edmund fools his father into believing that Edgar wrote a letter attempting to usurp his father’s land. This is where Edmund has his second soliloquy. The prose starts with Edmund stating that he is looking down at the Elizabethan society because they blame misfortune on the stars and horoscopes, while that was not the case, but Edmund had created misfortune himself. “This is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick in fortune (often the surfeits of our own behavior) we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, the stars.” Edmund later talks about how all villians are actors of a higher power, while he is stating this he calls his father a “whoremaster...