Seung Hwa Kim
English 378, Shakespeare on stage
Dr. Ron Strickland
Final paper, Summer, 2003
1
King Lear
Modernist, Edmund: His Agony and Redemption
Ⅰ
Grady says one of the most frequently cited words for the writings of Shakespeare
for the last 400 years is ‘modernity’ (Grady 2000, 1). Aers contends that the matter of
‘human subject’ or ‘liberal human subject’, which belongs to interiority and the
subjectivity as a reification of modernity, emerged in Western culture with the time of
Shakespeare (Aers, 177). Shakespeare lived most of his life during the reign of Queen
Elizabeth and James 1, when England went through rapid economical, historical,
political, social, cultural, and spiritual changes on the cusp of modern era. In the 16th
century, England, most of all, went through the transition from the medieval feudalism
to modernity. It was a period from the pre-modern era to the modern era. People
observed and faced fast and drastic changes in economy, religion, education, and
politics. Their family life and everyday life too changed rapidly and their spiritual life
was continuously challenged and forced to choose between staying in the old order and
moving out to the new ideology.
The binary frame of the world around individuals continuously forced them to
adopt and adapt the drastic changes in their spiritual and material world, which
consequently created conflicts between individuals and within an individual. Tragedy
caused by the conflicts was watched and experienced by any individuals and tragic
dramas as ‘a conflict of the spirit’ reflected it. “Tragedy may here be defined as an
attempt to reclaim the distance that exists between man and things, and give it a new
kind of value, so that in effect it becomes an ordeal where victory consists in being
vanquished (Robbe-Grillet; Drakakis, 14).” Drakakis says that the idea of a union
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Final paper, Summer, 2003
between man and the world, and thus by implication the idea of immanence has always
figured prominently in Shakespeare and the unity of man and world has been identified
as an ideology. The ideology reflects the primary political means through which human
beings live their social relations (Drakakis, 13). The immanence has come under
scrutiny in the tragedies of Shakespeare. Radical discontinuities between ideology and
social praxi involved a radical conflict of the society within which Shakespeare’
tragedies were produced. Edmund in Shakespeare’s tragedy, “King Lear” is a reification
of this conflict and disparity and immanence.
Ⅱ
Characters in Shakespeare’s plays reflect human beings’ new images of the
Renaissance. The new ideology of the Elizabethan era influenced by the Renaissance
and the scientific revolution of the times stressed the flexibility of the human society
which expanded the spiritual and material position of human beings in the relations with
nature. It was completely in contrast to the medieval view of nature which was based on
the fixed perceptions of social order and hierarchy. The creation of these expanded
images of human beings was a reflex of the age. The images are a dialectic combining
of the social characteristics of the Middle Ages and the new ideologies of the
Renaissance. Tragedy comes from the unbalanced, distorted, and flawed combination of
these two traits inside an individual and among individuals.
Shakespeare adopts the new trend of human thoughts while keeping the medieval
ideology and the tradition of the tragedy. He combines these opposite ideological trends
and applies them to his drama and makes it a principle for creating a tragedy. “King
Lear” effectively shows this process through various characters in the double-plot story
of King Lear and Gloucester. The characters fight and struggle for their own values
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Final paper, Summer, 2003
against the world with different value systems. They also go through immanent conflict
in the middle of getting to their own subjectivity. Conflict can be one between good and
good, between good and evil, and between evil and evil among individuals and within
an individual. And what they pursuit, whether good or evil, is spiritual value rather than
moral goodness. So Edmund appears as a most attractive subject of modernity in the
play. He raises an issue of human subjectivity in the struggles with the social restriction,
injustice, and unfairness of the 16th century such as primogeniture, legitimacy, and
conventional hierarchical order. He reveals himself as a prescient modernist in the
agony of doubt and in the separation of thoughts and feelings. Although his modern
spirit is still as immature as his times and thus he is destined to end up with a failure in
the battle with the social and institutional unfairness and injustice, he “evacuates unfair
social divine order of meaning and value and makes it an object to be subordinated to
human rationality, will, and desire (Cohen, 21).” In this paper I will focus on Edmund of
“King Lear” because he is a center figure of modernity in that his disparity between his
liberal world of consciousness and the world outside is “the moment when we find a
version of the human being with interiority, a being who is now defined through
consciousness (Aers, 190).” I will illuminate the procedure of his intense life as a
protagonist who is actively transforming himself from a pre-modernist to a modernist
under the invincibly systemized restrictions of social hierarchy.
Ⅲ
Bradley sees tragedy as ‘a conflict of the spirit’ (Bradley, 7; Drakakis, 9). What is
genuine and striking about his definition of tragedy is that “the tragic conflict is one not
merely of good with evil, but also, and more essentially, of good with good”. And he
adds that we have to be very careful, in saying so, to recognize “that ‘good’ here means
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anything that has spiritual value, not moral goodness alone, and that ‘evil’ has a similar
wide sense (Bradley, 87; Drakakis, 9).” Based on this definition of the tragedy we can
rewrite a villain, Edmund as a modernist warrior who is willing to fight against evil
inside as well as outside of him for the spiritual value.
In the 16th century, while the established party’s conservative attempt to protect the
existing social order was serious, social mobility and vacillation in the social
hierarchical order was already an irresistible wave of the age. In the process of the
social changes man became a spiritual individual, and recognized himself as such
(Burkhardt, 1965; Cohen, 20). An emerging ideology of modern subjectivity started to
take root in individuals naturally. “Traditional social and economic roles were sloughed
off by the interiorization of individuality (Cohen, 22).”
However, the social structure and value system was still very medieval. Social
status of the people dominates their daily life and even intervene with their world of
consciousness, whether in higher or in lower class. People were still divided into four
sorts of social status: gentlemen, citizens, yeomen artificers, and labors. More exactly,
there were only two groups of people. “At the forefront of the class of gentlemen was
the monarch, followed by a very small group of nobles--dukes, marquesses, earls,
viscounts, and barons--who either inherited their exalted titles, as the eldest male heirs
of their families, or were granted by the monarch. …the younger sons of the nobility
were only entitled to called “esquires,” … the English tended to divide the population
not into four distinct classes but two: a very small empowered group-the “richer” or
“wiser” or “better” sort and all the rest who were without much social standing or power,
the “poorer” or “ruder” or “meaner” sort.… (Greeblatt, 6)” The great mass of these
ordinary people had neither voice nor authority in the commonwealth. They were only
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Dr. Ron Strickland
Final paper, Summer, 2003
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to be ruled. In fact, the structure of society was simple: haves and have-nots. “There
were, to be simple about it, but no more simple than the views of the time warrant, two
kinds of people in Renaissance England: those that mattered and those that did not. The
latter were “the multitude, wherein be contained the base and vulgar inhabitants not
advanced to any honor or dignity,” …The group that mattered is fairly easy to define.
They were those who lived in the unearned income from inherited land. (Cunningham,
xviii).” The society was maintained by the conventional divine order or the inherited
hierarchical order. “…the means of order were, in the Queen’s view, the reverence
attached to “the anointed sovereignty of crowns” and the hierarchical stepping down by
degrees of power and respect, inviting and compelling awe from inferior to superior. It
was a congenial way of thinking, for the universe itself was so ordered, from the lowest
element to the highest sphere, as was that celestial society that rose by degrees through
all the orders of angels to God (Cunningham, xx).”
To notice that in literature, class distinctions are literary distinctions is helpful to
understand the modernist, Edmund in “King Lear”. Tragedy is only a matter of the
governing class, and usually with heads of states such as “Lear, Claudius, Hamlet, and
Julius Caesar” (Cunningham, xxiii). What was more conspicuous is class distinction in
matters of sex and of love. “Whoring and lust may be expected in the lower class. It is
whoring and lust in the upper class, or between nobility and the citizen’s wife, that is
particularly the object of satiric vehemence… The worst is the corruption of the best. So
it is “my lord” Stallion and his “court-bred filly,” “stretched upon the rack of lust,” who
are the special objects of invective. And, conversely, the whole area of what we call
romantic love is the prerogative only of the upper class. (Cunningham, xxiv)” This
statement is important to understand how Edmund becomes a protagonist and a
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antagonist of the play, too.
Edmund is an illegitimate whoreson of the Earl of Gloucester and his “court-bred
filly”. The story of his birth is the object of satiric vehemence and the special object of
invective and humiliation. While he belongs to the upper, unearned-income-from-theinherited-land class, he is one of the ruled, have-nots, and the base. Even though he is
called a “lord” from the birth, he is an illegitimate son due to his legitimate father’s
illegitimate affair. By the convention of primogeniture the other children except the first
legitimate son, both daughters and younger sons, were not entitled to have any share of
their father’s property and social status. Under such a system, the younger children
inherited neither title nor estate, unless one of them happened to be heir to his mother’s
property or unless the elder son died childless and he replaced the dead brother as a
‘walking sperm-bank’ (Stone, 71). Edmund, a bastard, belongs to the base.
Ⅳ
Edmund becomes marginalized in either class. He always feels the fragmentation
and emptiness while looking at what is happening around him. Gloucester confesses his
illegitimate and unconscientious affair to the Earl of Kent:
Kent. Is not this your son, my lord?
Glou. His breeding, sir, hath been at my charge.
I have so often blush’d to acknowledge him, that now
I am braz’d to’t.
Kent.
I cannot conceive you.
Glou. Sir, this young fellow’s mother could;
Whereupon she grew round-womb’d, and had indeed,
sir, a son for her cradle ere she had a husband for her
bed. Do you smell a fault?
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English 378, Shakespeare on stage
Dr. Ron Strickland
Final paper, Summer, 2003
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Edmund has heard this open secret of his birth in a humiliating way so many times that
he too is brazed about that. However, this humiliation is reified as a full awareness of
unfair and unjust social and institutional order and restriction. He rejects the unfair
reality of divine order and divine nature, which only deprives the ruled and have-nots of
all the human dignity and human rights. He decides to reinvent his own fate by himself
in order to be in the center of life. His own nature that he believes in and wants to
follow is not the unfair divine nature. He starts to write his own history “as a process
leading toward rationality and freedom (Grady 2000, 11)”, which would achieve human
subjectivity for him.
Edmund: Thou, Nature, art my goodness, to thy law
Amy services are bound. Wherefore should I
Stand in the plague of custom, and permit
The curiosity of nations to deprives me,
For that I am some twelve or fourteen moonshines
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? bastard? 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 th’ 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 th’ legitimate, if this letter speed
And my intention thrive, Edmund the base
Shall <top> th’ legitimate. I grow, I prosper:
Now, gods, stand up for bastards! (2.1.1-22)
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Edmund “is the product of Nature—of a natural appetite asserting itself against the
social order; and he has no recognized place within this order. So he devotes himself to
Nature, whose law is that of the stronger, and who does not recognize those moral
obligations which exist only by convention,--by ‘custom’ or ‘the curiosity of nations
(Bradley, 302).” However, it may be a satiric confession of both his indignation about
his unfair fate and his determination about the ambitious future plan to achieve freedom,
rationality, and modernity.
A conflict of the spirit is not necessarily moral goodness. What we are interested in
is spiritual value. In fact, in the soliloquy above, we cannot say who is good and who is
evil. Who is a protagonist? Who is an antagonist? We cannot say that Edgar is a
protagonist and Edmund is an antagonist. We cannot judge the opposite is true, either.
What we only can see is that Edmund continuously divides himself and separates his
thoughts and feelings. The separation of his thoughts and feelings is continuously
happening. His subjectivity becomes more mature in the mental conflict, in the division
of self-consciousness, and in the separation of thoughts and feelings. His confession
continues in the disguise of irony.
Corn.
Edm.
I will have my revenge ere I depart his house.
How, my lord, I may be censur’d, that nature
Thus gives way to loyalty, something fears me to think
Of.
Corn. I now perceive, it was not altogether your
brother’s evil disposition made him seek his death; but
a provoking merit, set a-work by a reprovable badness in himself.
Edm. How malicious is my fortune, that I must
repent to be just! This is the letter which he spoke
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English 378, Shakespeare on stage
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Final paper, Summer, 2003
of, which approves him an intelligent party to the
advantages of France. O heavens! That this treason
were not; or not I the detector!
….
Edm. (Aside) If I find him comforting the King,
it will stuff his suspicion more fully,--I will persever
in my course of loyalty, though the conflict be sore
between that and my blood. (3.5.2-23)
This provides substantial clues we need in order to understand the tragedy of the
play and more essentially the tragedy of the spiritual modernist villain, Edmund.
Because tragedy, as Bradley suggests, “portrays a self-division and self waste of spirit,
or a division of spirit involving conflict and waste” and “on both sides in the conflict
there is a spiritual value ”, Edmund, who has gone through quite a few separations of
thoughts and feelings perchance since his unfair birth, can be in the center of the tragedy.
Whereas most characters who are entitled for the already established status and property
live and act for the artificially or divinely manipulated order of nature, which
categorizes Shakespeare into a pre-modernity figure, “a figure of unity and plentitude in
stark contrast to a modernity of fragmentation and emptiness (Grady, 5), it is evident
that Shakespeare was on the cusp of modernity by discussing living political issues such
as “power, gender, identity, subjectivity, and the possibility of utopia (Grady 2000, 5)”
through Edmund who is the base, the have-not, and the revolutionary.
Ⅴ
From the first scene of the play we can see the ominous sign of the tragedy from
the sinner Gloucester and the victim and activist Edmund and the mediator Edgar. So
the story of the father and sons is a plot parallel to the main plot of Lear and his three
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daughters. “King Lear” is not a main plot with a sub-plot story but a double-plot tragedy.
“Shakespeare’s addition to the Lear story of the parallel story of Gloucester and his two
sons (…) is in part a response to the need, …for the dramatist to provide more than one
set of characters. … This is the only tragedy to have a fully developed plot parallel to
that of the main action: he juxtaposes the story of a man who is driven mad with that of
one who has eyes torn out. It seems misleading to refer to the Gloucester story as a
subplot, or underplot, because it adds to the Lear story, with which it soon becomes
inextricably intertwined, rather than simply supports it. Parallels of situation are clear,
but there are also differences which extend the play’s range of reference. (Wells, 43)”
Edmund as an innovative thinker and progressive activist of the reformation for
modernity carries as much weight as King Lear in the play.
In “King Lear” the concept of modernity plays a pivotal role in setting the story
frame and achieving the theme of the story. Shakespeare creates a story which reflects
his spirit and the sprit of his times, the 16th century of England, by contrasting modern
Edmund with conventional Lear and by showing how these two concepts diverge and
converge in the action of the characters. “The term modernity thus denotes a
qualitatively new kind of anti-traditional society which arose in the west. Its beginning
is difficult to locate, but it has been variously assigned to the late medieval period, the
Renaissance, or the Enlightenment. … But most observers would agree that it most
clearly emerges in that epoch in which societies began to develop capitalist economies
and centralized national governments, while generating a new sense of individualism
and new notions of subjectivity. (Grady 2000, 2).”
Whereas Edmund’s spirit of individualism and subjectivity gets him to reinvent the
political system of the family, society, and nature, it too makes him suffering from the
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never-ending agony of doubt and the feeling of guilt in the action toward his reinvention.
The voice of his conflict reveals itself so delicately and indirectly that his image as a
modernist was almost hidden in the image as a villain. However, we can feel the trace of
his conflict and agony as a modernist who has to live in the pre-modern society.
Edg. Arm’d, brother?
Edm. Brother, I advise you to the best; I am no
honest man of there be any good meaning toward you.
I have told you what I have seen and heard; but faintly,
nothing like the image and horror of it. Pray you
away.
Edg. Shall I hear from you?
Edm. I do serve you in this business.
Exit <Edgar>.
A credulous father and a brother noble,
Whose nature is so far from doing harms
That he suspects none; on whose foolish honest
My practices ride easy. I see the business.
Let me, if not by birth, have lands by wit:
All with me’s meet that I can fashion fit.
Exit.
(1.2.175-184)
In the dialogue with Edgar, Edmund speaks to himself sarcastically that it’s he that has
no good meaning toward Edgar and is not honest. What he rejects and tries to reinvent
is the unfair tradition and unjust social practice. His father and his brother are not his
enemies that he has to gouge out. He already knows his father is only credulous and
conventional and his brother is noble and naïve. This complicated situation makes him
more conscious of the human subjectivity. It also prevents him from becoming a
complete villain as an antagonist of the drama.
Coe says that Edmund cannot be a serious villain such as Aaron and Iago, Richard
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Ⅲ, Macbeth, and Lady Macbeth, and Angelo and Shylock that dominate the play (Coe,
54). “In contrast to the behavior of Regan and Goneril, the villainy of Edmund is
somewhat more convincingly motivated. To begin with, his rivalry with his father and
brother, though villainous, is more readily understandable than Regan and Goneril’s
treatment of Lear (Coe, 55).” However, he dominates the play in a different way, that is,
dominating it as an active thinker and activist with a modern human subjectivity and
interiority. Although Edmund has significant clues as to the reasons for his behavior and
he has a convincing motivation for his action as Coe points out, he cannot be an
unmitigated villain because of his deep consciousness and introspection.
Ⅵ
Edmund’s villainous behavior is coming from his full awareness of his unfair life
circumstances rather than the typical characteristics of an illegitimate son. “But he is
more than a type. He is given a past which, besides producing the effect of continuity in
his character, also provides a partially satisfactory motive for the brutal action in which
he engages. Consequently, his actions become understandable in terms of human
motivation rather than in merely fulfilling the demands of the plot (Coe, 57).” His life is
an object of continuous consciousness and doubt.
Kent: I cannot wish the fault undone, the issue of it
being so proper.
Gloucester: But I have a son, sir, by order of law, some
year elder than this, who yet is no dearer in my
account: though this knave came somewhat saucily
into the world before he was sent for, yet was his
mother fair; there was good sport at his making, and
the whoreson must be acknowledged. (1.1.8-24)
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This passage also exposes motivation of Edmund’s behavior. “Gloucester takes little
pains to conceal the fact of Edmund’s bastardy. He also states that Edmund’s bastardy
has been a source of embarrassment to the father. We may infer that the illegitimate son
has suffered some mental anguish from the realization and reminder of his status in
society (Coe, 57-58).” Coleridge seems to prove again that the conflict in the tragedy is
one between good and good, not always good and evil, in the statement about this
passage. He states, “Edmund hears his mother and the circumstances of his birth spoken
of with a most degrading and licentious levity… This, and the consciousness of its
notoriety… is the ever-trickling flow of wormwood and gall into the wounds of pride,
the corrosive virus which inoculates pride with a venom not its own, with… pangs of
shame personally undeserved and therefore felt as wrongs, and a blind ferment of
vindictive workings towards the occasions and causes, especially towards a brother
whose stainless birth and lawful honors were the constant remembrancers of his
debasement (Coleridge’s Shakespearean Criticism, ed. Raysor; Coe, 58).” Edmund is as
proper in his spirit and body as any other legitimate son and this unfairness and injustice
of social practice only makes him more aware of human subjectivity, and drives him
straightly towards his goal of achieving freedom and rationality of human beings. A
separation of the thoughts and feelings are deepening.
A separation of thoughts and feelings in his spirit, which is one of the important
traits of modernity, rather shows the audience his vivacity and humor as a modern
individual in the irony. “Edmund also shows some traces of the liveliness that
characterizes villains like Richard Ⅲ and Iago. In his wit and vivaciousness we see
how the effect of realistic characterization can be achieved by having a character talk in
a way that will amuse his audience and impress them with his liveliness. After Edmund
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has forged the letter by which he plans to set his father against Edgar, he talks with his
brother and apprises him of danger confronting him. On this occasion he toys with
Edgar and makes use of dramatic irony (Coe, 59).”
Edgar: Some villain hath done me wrong.
Edmund: That’s my fear. I pray you have a continent
forbearance till the speed of his rage goes slower, and
as I say, retire with me to my lodging, from whence
I will fitly bring you to hear my lord speak. Pray ye
go, there’s my key. If you do stir abroad, go armed. (1.2. 165-170)
Edmund continuously shows his inner conflicts by revealing himself in his talk
about others. He tries to make himself be sure about the righteousness of his action
toward the reinvention, which shows he is suffering from the residue of the doubt and
guilty conscience about his action for the goal.
Glou. …
By his authority I will proclaim it,
That he which finds him shall deserve our thanks,
Bringing the murderous coward to the stake;
He that conceals him, death.
Edm. When I discussed him from his intent,
And found him pight to do it, with curst speech
I threaten’d to discover him; he replied,
“Thou unpossessing bastard, dost thou think,
If I would stand against thee, would the reposal
Of any trust, virtue, or worth in thee
Make they words faith’d? No. What [I should] deny
(As this I would, [ay] though didst produce
My very character), I’ld turn it all
To thy suggestion, plot, and a damned practice;
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And thou make a dullard of the world
If they not thought the profits of my death
Were very pregnant and potential spirits
To make thee seek it.” (2.1.59-77)
Edmund’s talk in this passage is a confession of his scheme, which continuously bothers
his conscience and rationality. He wants his father to ratify the righteousness of his
action. He reveals his truth in the talk that was fabricated as what Edgar said. This
shows his conflict and his guilty conscience about the righteousness of what he is doing
against his father and his brother. The thoughts and feelings continue to be separated in
his soul. His father, Gloucester is too stupid to catch his intention. “Gloucester, too, is
naïve and ridiculous…. Nothing about him hints at the tragic old man whose eyes will
be gouged out (Kott, 90).”
Wells suggests that Edmund is an important modernist pursuing the self-seeking
subjectivity and rationality. “Both Lear and Gloucester are men of power, but Lear’s
royalty means that his fate has dynastic implications, whereas Gloucester’s remains on a
more domestic level. Lear has two hypocritical, self-seeking, rationalist daughters and a
virtuous one; the superstitious Gloucester has one hypocritical, self-seeking, rationalist
son and a virtuous one. …(Wells, 43)” Lear and Gloucester are suffering from the result
of their characteristic flaws. “Gloucester, as we learn at the very beginning of the play,
has transgresses sexually… Lear too displays faults of character—irascibility, selfcentredness, blatantly false judgment (‘Come, noble Burgundy’)—on his first
appearance. …Both Gloucester and Lear will undergo great suffering, but Lear’s is
primarily of the mind, Gloucester’s of the body (Wells, 45).” However, Edmund has
suffered mentally from what is not his own characteristic flaw. His suffering is from his
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sexually transgressing father and the divine order and humane restrictions of the society
which limit not only his material life but also his free spirit and rational judgment. He
decided to solve the degenerating contradiction of the society gnawing at the integrity of
an individual by himself. His suffering is so perpetrating that he came to go further to
the edge of his rationality in pursuit of freedom and human subjectivity. His conflict is
thus deepening. His cynical attitude and speech is an evidence of this continuous
conflict. Edgar doesn’t have the chances to think of human subjectivity of freedom and
rationality because he belongs to the rule and the haves. He is the oldest legitimate son
and only heir to his father’s status and estate. He is conventional and immature until he
loses his status and his name. He cannot understand Edmund’s double intention of the
talk to him. “Edg: Some villain hath done me wrong. Edm: That’s my fear.”
Ⅶ
The climax of the drama with a double-plot is brought about by Edmund.
Gloucester experiences the climax of his suffering when he “is made horribly aware of
‘filial ingratitude’ when, as he calls upon Edmund to take revenge, Regan enlightens
him that it is Edmund who betrayed him (Wells, 46).” Lear too gets to the climax of his
suffering when he saw his Cordelia hanged to death by the man who was instigated by
Edmund. “Suffering teaches both men how they have misvalued their offspring, and
leads them to acknowledge their own faults and to express humility (Wells, 46).”
However, Edmund’s suffering is mental and interior and he has no way to release it.
He has gone through the continuous agony of doubt and guilty conscience about his
unfair situation, his action to reinvent his fate, and his inevitable betrayal to his father
and brother. He goes up to even killing Cordelia. He comes to a deadlock in the course
of his action. Now he only has to defend himself rather than debate the righteous of his
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action. He confesses that he has no other ways to redeem himself. “The battle done, and
they within our power,/ Shall never see his pardon; for my state/ Stands on me to defend,
not to debate (5.1.67-69).” He dreamed of and fought for a new society where
“knowledge itself is the chief commodity and chief instrument of power for nation–
states and corporations rather than legitimacy is blindly admired. However, his
incredulity is getting more serious (Grady 2000, 11).” He should very much like to
verify the righteousness of his behavior and accepts the challenge of Edgar.
Edm. In wisdom I should ask thy name,
But since thy outside looks so fair and warlike,
And that thy tongue some say of breeding breathes,
What safe and nicely I might well delay
By rule of knighthood, I disdain and spurn.
Back do I toss these treasons to thy head,
With the hell-hated lie o’erwhelm thy heart,
Which for they yet glance by, and scarcely bruise,
This sword of mine shall give them instance way
Where they shall rest for ever. Trumpets, speak! (5.2.142-151)
Ⅷ
Edmund accepts disguised Edgar’s challenge, which is intended to reveal his crime
and punish him, not knowing the name and quality of the challenger because he wants
to validate the righteousness of his behavior through the challenge of an unknown man.
In fact, he has no other reasons to accept the challenge. Goneril dissuades him from
accepting the challenge, emphasizing its illegalness and uselessness.
Gon. This is practice, Gloucester.
By th’ law of war thou wast not bound to answer
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English 378, Shakespeare on stage
Dr. Ron Strickland
Final paper, Summer, 2003
An unknown opposite. Thou are not vanquish’d,
But cozen’d and beguil’d.
(5.3.152-154)
Finally, Edmund fights with the man whose name is lost, Edgar. He is hurt by
Edgar in the challenge. Now he knows what he has done and he cannot forgive himself.
“What you have charg’d me with, that have I done,/ And more, much more, the time
will bring it out (5.3.163-165).” His spirit of revolution rather find a rest. He is touched
by Edgar’s narrative of their father’s death and Kent’s grief. He realizes again the virtue
of being filial to the father and the king. “Edmund shows signs of relenting—‘This
speech of yours hath moved me,/ And shall perchance do good … (Wells, 47).” He
finally restores his conscience. He returns to himself as an immature but innovative
modernist.
Edmund: I pant for life. Some good I mean to do,
Despite of mine own nature. Quickly send
(Be brief in it) to th’ castle, for my writ
Is on the life Lear and on Cordelia.
Nay, send in time. (5.3.244-248)
“News of Edmund’s death completes the annihilation of the anti-Lear party (Wells,
47).” It completes Edmund’s journey to modernity which would generate a new sense of
individualism and new notions of subjectivity and so would liberate him from the
restrictions and humility of the unfair and unjust society. He becomes a hero of
modernity despite his immaturity by showing through his serious thoughts and actions
against institutional tradition and convention “a sixteenth-century ‘great “unmooring”
that men were experiencing, their sense that fixed positions had somehow become
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English 378, Shakespeare on stage
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Final paper, Summer, 2003
unstuck, their anxious awareness that the moral landscape was shifting.’ (Grady 2000,
9)”
Ⅸ
The greatness of human spirit stands out in the innovational progress resulting
from the conflict and doubt about two contrast and contradictive values and virtues
inside and outside of an individual with the subjectivity. More concrete and active
actions of the individual in pursuit of this agenda make Edmund’s conflict and doubt
more sublime and valuable as far as they reflect spiritual value. Because he is a human
being he was far from moral goodness in the course of his action aimed at achieving
spiritual value. This makes Edmund a more attractive hero of the play even though he
may be a villain. He “displays the great transition from the old feudalist subject” to
liberal human subject of modernity like Hamlet that Aers suggests as a model figure of a
modern subject. “He [Hamlet] is ‘strung out between a transitional social order… and a
future epoch made of achieved bourgeois individualism’. Indeed, ‘Hamlet signifies the
beginnings of the dissolution of the old feudalist subject who is as yet, however, unable
to name himself affirmatively in any other way’ (Aers, 193).” Edmund may be a more
serious modernist in the agony of doubt and guilty conscience because of his
illegitimacy and his ambitious action for the goal of realizing his faith.
We don’t try to find any right answers to the questions about human subjectivity
and the world outside never-endingly raised in our life. We just ascertain that we are and
must be one of the individuals who, as a human subjectivity, try to find our own way in
the journey to optimal freedom and rationality through the intense and furious thoughts
and actions as Edmund does.
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Final paper, Summer, 2003
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Work Cited:
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writing the ‘history of the subject.” Ed. David Aers. Culture and History 13501600. Detroit, Michigan: Wayne State University Press, 1992.
Bradley, A. C. Shakespearean Tragedy. New York: St Martin Press, 1978.
Coe, C. N. Shakespeare’s Villains. New York: Bookman Associates, 1956.
Cohen, S. “(Post) modern Elizabeth: Gender, politics, and the emergence of modern
subjectivity.” Ed. Hugh Grady. Shakespeare and Modernity. New York: Routledge,
2000.
Cunningham, J. V. “Introduction.” Ed. J. V. Cunningham. The Renaissance in England.
New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc, 1996.
Grady, Hugh. “Renewing Modernity: Changing Contexts and Constants of a nearly I
Invisible Concept.” Shakespeare Quarterly 50 (3) (1999): 268-284.
____________,
“Introduction Shakespeare and modernity.” Ed. Hugh Grady.
Shakespeare and Modernity. New York: Routledge, 2000.
Greenblatt, S. English 378 Reserve Text: Introduction to the Norton Shakespeare, 2003.
Kott, Jan. Shakespeare Our Contemporary. Garden City, New York: Doubleday
&Company, Inc, 1964.
Shakespeare, W. “King Lear”. Ed. Dean Johnson. The Riverside Shakespeare. Boston,
New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1997.
Stone, Lawrence. The Family, Sex and Marriage. New York: Happer Torchbooks, 1979.
Wells, S. King Lear. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
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