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| Character | Edmund?Gloucester??? | |
|---|---|---|
| Scene type / Who are | Father/Son, Scheming, Persuading somebody | |
| Type | Dramatic | |
| Period | Renaissance | |
| Genre | Tragedy, Drama | |
| Description | Edmund tries to make his father believe that his legitimate son is trying to kill him | |
| Location | ACT I, Scene 2 | |
Summary
Edmund is the bastard son of Gloucester, a nobleman who is loyal to the king of Britain, King Lear. In the first scene he is introduced when his father introduces him to Kent, a nobleman, and explains that even if he is his bastard son, he loves him anyways.
Right at the beginning of the play Edmund sets out to seize his father's estate and "top" his brother Edgar, the "legitimate" son. In this scene Edmund, after delivering a soliloquy where he resents society's attitude toward bastards and his brother Edgar, meets his father Gloucester and very subtly makes him believe his son Edgar is after his wealth.
Right at the beginning of the play Edmund sets out to seize his father's estate and "top" his brother Edgar, the "legitimate" son. In this scene Edmund, after delivering a soliloquy where he resents society's attitude toward bastards and his brother Edgar, meets his father Gloucester and very subtly makes him believe his son Edgar is after his wealth.
Written by Administrator
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| [SCENE II. The Earl of Gloucester's castle.] [Enter EDMUND, with a letter] EDMUND Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy law My services are bound. Wherefore should I Stand in the plague of custom, and permit The curiosity of nations to deprive me, For that I am some twelve or fourteen moon-shines Lag of a brother? Why bastard? wherefore base? When my dimensions are as well compact, My mind as generous, and my shape as true, As honest madam's issue? Why brand they us With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base? Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take More composition and fierce quality Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed, Go to the creating a whole tribe of fops, Got 'tween asleep and wake? Well, then, Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land: 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 the legitimate. I grow; I prosper: Now, gods, stand up for bastards! [Enter GLOUCESTER] GLOUCESTER Kent banish'd thus! and France in choler parted! And the king gone to-night! subscribed his power! Confined to exhibition! All this done Upon the gad! Edmund, how now! what news? EDMUND So please your lordship, none. [Putting up the letter] GLOUCESTER Why so earnestly seek you to put up that letter? EDMUND I know no news, my lord. GLOUCESTER What paper were you reading? EDMUND Nothing, my lord. GLOUCESTER No? What needed, then, that terrible dispatch of it into your pocket? the quality of nothing hath not such need to hide itself. Let's see: come, if it be nothing, I shall not need spectacles. EDMUND I beseech you, sir, pardon me: it is a letter from my brother, that I have not all o'er-read; and for so much as I have perused, I find it not fit for your o'er-looking. GLOUCESTER Give me the letter, sir. EDMUND I shall offend, either to detain or give it. The contents, as in part I understand them, are to blame. GLOUCESTER Let's see, let's see. EDMUND I hope, for my brother's justification, he wrote this but as an essay or taste of my virtue. GLOUCESTER [Reads] 'This policy and reverence of age makes the world bitter to the best of our times; keeps our fortunes from us till our oldness cannot relish them. I begin to find an idle and fond bondage in the oppression of aged tyranny; who sways, not as it hath power, but as it is suffered. Come to me, that of this I may speak more. If our father would sleep till I waked him, you should half his revenue for ever, and live the beloved of your brother, EDGAR.' Hum--conspiracy!--'Sleep till I waked him,--you should enjoy half his revenue,'--My son Edgar! Had he a hand to write this? a heart and brain to breed it in?--When came this to you? who brought it? EDMUND It was not brought me, my lord; there's the cunning of it; I found it thrown in at the casement of my closet. GLOUCESTER You know the character to be your brother's? EDMUND If the matter were good, my lord, I durst swear it were his; but, in respect of that, I would fain think it were not. GLOUCESTER It is his. EDMUND It is his hand, my lord; but I hope his heart is not in the contents. GLOUCESTER Hath he never heretofore sounded you in this business? EDMUND Never, my lord: but I have heard him oft maintain it to be fit, that, sons at perfect age, and fathers declining, the father should be as ward to the son, and the son manage his revenue. GLOUCESTER O villain, villain! His very opinion in the letter! Abhorred villain! Unnatural, detested, brutish villain! worse than brutish! Go, sirrah, seek him; I'll apprehend him: abominable villain! Where is he? EDMUND I do not well know, my lord. If it shall please you to suspend your indignation against my brother till you can derive from him better testimony of his intent, you shall run a certain course; where, if you violently proceed against him, mistaking his purpose, it would make a great gap in your own honour, and shake in pieces the heart of his obedience. I dare pawn down my life for him, that he hath wrote this to feel my affection to your honour, and to no further pretence of danger. GLOUCESTER Think you so? EDMUND If your honour judge it meet, I will place you where you shall hear us confer of this, and by an auricular assurance have your satisfaction; and that without any further delay than this very evening. GLOUCESTER He cannot be such a monster-- EDMUND Nor is not, sure. GLOUCESTER To his father, that so tenderly and entirely loves him. Heaven and earth! Edmund, seek him out: wind me into him, I pray you: frame the business after your own wisdom. I would unstate myself, to be in a due resolution. EDMUND I will seek him, sir, presently: convey the business as I shall find means and acquaint you withal. GLOUCESTER These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us: though the wisdom of nature can reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself scourged by the sequent effects: love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide: in cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in palaces, treason; and the bond cracked 'twixt son and father. This villain of mine comes under the prediction; there's son against father: the king falls from bias of nature; there's father against child. We have seen the best of our time: machinations, hollowness, treachery, and all ruinous disorders, follow us disquietly to our graves. Find out this villain, Edmund; it shall lose thee nothing; do it carefully. And the noble and true-hearted Kent banished! his offence, honesty! 'Tis strange. [Exit] |
