Autor: prof. Bogdan Georgiana
Sursa imagine: https://medium.com/@cit1516c/king-lear-character-analysis-of-edgar-79c58df01dc9
In the play ” King Lear” W. Shakespeare dramatizes two ways in which children can position themselves in connection to their father, more precisely, it is about Edgar and Edmund, the Earl of Gloucester’s sons. They both seek his approval and affection, but one, Edmund, feels he is wrongly treated by his natural father, while the other, Edgar, feels he is not worthy of the affection his father has for him. Goneril and Regan fight their father for his authority, which they feel must belong to them; Edmund and Edgar fight their father for his affection, but each has a different take on this subject.
Following the other line of ingratitude ( Edmund’s ingratitude towards his father), we find that Gloucester does not choose to abdicate his role, as Lear has already done. Therefore, his ruthless son Edmund schemes and plots against him to replace Edgar (Gloucester’s legitimate son) as heir, and then seeks an opportunity to depose his father and brother saying that Gloucester is a ” credulous father” (1.2.156). Edmund’s troubles are described by Shakespeare in the first act. Edmund is a bastard. He is unable to inherit his father’s fortune because he has not been legitimized. Edmund’s status as a bastard is crucial because he was conceived outside of human society’s harmonious order, with its moral standards, and is thus free to deny them. When he places himself, in the soliloquy’s first two lines, under the jurisdiction of Nature, he sets himself outside the reach of customary law and of human morality. He is, by virtue of his birth and of his sworn allegiance, a force of nature.
Attitudes towards bastards in Shakespeare’s times were mixed and ranged from sympathy to scorn. It was believed that bastardy brought social disorder in a community; bastards were a burden on the community that was forced to raise them. Therefore, Edmund was already forced to face the scorn of others, being Gloucester’s illegitimate son; he was not beloved by the community, he felt he did not receive as much love as his brother Edgar from his father and was forbidden from inheriting anything. Edmund’s best chance to overcome these challenges was to concoct a plan that would assure him both a property and a title, and, maybe since he would be a worthy man then, someone’s love.
Still one should not judge Edmund as evil incarnate. Having had to fend for himself all his life, Edmund has probably learned how to use other’s weaknesses to his advantage. In order to frame his brother, Edgar, Edmund gives Gloucester the very means to escape the trap he has set for him. The first opportunity comes in the very moment the trap is sprung. Gloucester enters and observes Edmund putting away a letter; he asks for news and is told there is none. Ironically, if Gloucester were not suspicious for his bastard son, there would be no means for Edmund’s plan, which depends on Gloucester’s reading of the letter to take effect. But Gloucester is naturally suspicious and demands to see the letter, in terms which seem to invite Edmund’s scheme. Having been told the paper is ” nothing” ( 1.2.31), he insists that ” The quality of nothing hath not such need to hide itself” (1.2.33-34). When Edmund provides the letter, he provides with it a rational explanation of the letter’s contents that would not require Gloucester to be suspicious of Edgar. After all, it is not likelier that Edgar, who has presumably been at court these many years with his father, would be suspicious of the bastard half-brother, around whom he has spent virtually no time and so test him, than that Edgar, whose temperament ought to be well known to his father, would be plotting against his father’s life with this newly arrived near-stranger? Yet Gloucester is as suspicious of Edgar as he was mere moments ago of Edmund, when he inquired about the letter.
Mirroring the actions of Lear, who chose to believe the flattering words of his eldest daughters, Gloucester chooses to believe a concocted letter instead of seeking out the truth. Both fathers are to blame for the start of the tragedies that followed. And just like Lear, Gloucester is suspicious of the child that did not yet have his/her chance to speak the truth. The irony of the trap Edmund has set is that it relies on Gloucester springing it by his own unnatural suspicion. Edgar is not the target of Edmund’s scheme. Edmund must be read as a very shallow villain, indeed, for us to take his proclamation, ” Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land” (1.2.16), as a wholly literal and complete statement of his motivation. The land Edgar is destined to receive is the greatest and most obvious distinction between the brothers in their status and relationship to their father. It is the testimony of Gloucester’s hypocrisy, for he has previously stated ” But I have a son, sir, by order of law, some year older than this, who yet is not dearer in my account” ( 1.1.17-10). The use of financial terminology was surely not lost on Edmund, whose account from his father is quite literally, less dear, having less of his father’s wealth accounted to it. Edmund feels that, by natural law, Gloucester should have the same ” amount” of love for each of his natural sons. Since his father has proven to him that he has not, he feels he has the means to set an injustice right.
Gloucester’s injustice is not just against the man Edmund; it is perversion of the natural order, accomplished in two stages. The first comes in the discrepancy of inheritance. The second one is revealed in the whole architecture of Edmund’s plan, which rests on the exploitation of Gloucester’s mistrust of his children, which is as unnatural as his preference for the one over the other.
In opposition to Edmund is Edgar, Gloucester’s youngest son, who plays a poor fool overprotected by his father and sheltered from the world, and who falls into Edmund’s trap. Unfairly convicted, Edgar has everything good in his life taken away. He is stripped of his identity and forced into the lowest possible social position: that of a beggar and an outcast, a position which Lear fears he will be forced into once he renounces his party and the symbols that still guarantee his authority. Edgar is a compassionate moralist, completely different from his brother, who lacks any morals. He feels deeply for his father, acting as his guide and tutor when Gloucester is blind, and he repays evil with kindness and sympathy. Instead of fearing his condition as a beggar and an outcast, Edgar embraces it. Edgar’s speech in the fifth act is the story of his journey and a key to interpreting his actions and motivations.
Edgar’s disguise as poor Tom both conceals and reveals him. The beggar’s rags may conceal him from his father’s agents, but, at the same time, they reveal what Edgar really feels himself to be – a rejected, despised, and half-crazed wretch. Perhaps Edgar believes the worst about himself because it is the only way through which he can justify why the understanding and the trust between him and his father was so fragile and could be broken so easily by Edmund’s plot. This must be the reason why he has embraced his disguise so quickly. It is penitence to him, which he must carry until proven worthy of his father’s trust and love.
Shakespeare invites the audience to ponder upon parents and children when arranging this dramatic coincidence of Edgar’s disguise as Poor Tom and Gloucester’s blindness. Edgar’s actions show us what happens to someone who fails to reckon with the worthiness of a parent’s love. First, he becomes egotistical and cruel, for one thing. Although knowing that Gloucester is blind, he does not reveal himself to his father, because he is nowhere near the good success that he hopes for. He is not armed, and has not yet vanquished the chief rival for his father’s love, his brother Edmund. But this is what he proposes to do; then and only then will he be ready to reveal himself. Until that time, he must remain in disguise. ” I cannot daub it further” ( 4.1.52), says Edgar admitting the difficult situation he finds himself in, choosing to further deny his father the peace of mind he seeks, and adding ” And yet I must ” (4.1.53), thus choosing to wait until he fulfils his plan to prove himself that he is worthy of this love. Unfortunately, he reveals himself to Gloucester fully hoping for success against Edmund, but prior to the point when he has attained it, that is, prior to the point he has attained this worth he so desperately seeks.
Edgar’s is an interesting case, for he is the only one who doubts the validity of the natural law that governs relationships between parents and children. He is the only one who takes action in order to earn what others feel come natural: a parent’s love and trust. While Edmund demands what is inherent to him as a natural child of his father, confusing inheritance with affection, believing that his father’s love for him is measured in the inheritance he receives or not, Edgar tries to win his father’s love by refusing to accept his name, which is an indication of his social status and the bond he has with his father, until he feels he has proven himself worthy of it.
The parents-children relationships in Shakespeare’s King Lear are deeply complex and deeply troubled because they are continuously permeated by the artificial laws that dominate the Elizabethan world. Love always comes at a cost. It must be either won through hardship and pain, as in Edgar and Cordelia’s case; or it is tainted by lust, jealousy or earthly desires, as in Edmund, Regan and Goneril’s case. With all their inspirations to mimic the perfection of the Cosmos and that of the divine creation, humans will always be driven by earthly impulses.
