Edgar

Question 1

To take the basest and most poorest…

Answer 1

To take the basest and most poorest shape that ever penury in contempt of man brought near to beast
(Edgar has decided to disguise homeland as the filthiest, lowliest beggar that was ever hated by man)

Echoes Edmund’s soliloquy about being base
Edgar is doing exactly what Edmund wants?
Different deception to Edmund
Contemporary audience reaction to purposefully taking on identity of base - shock

AO3
Hatred of poor and beggars in Elizabethan England
Views of beggars as mad and inhumane
Great chain of being subverted; role reversal peripetaia Edgar now base
What does the fact that these roles have been reversed so easily sug

Question 2

Poor Tom!…

Answer 2

Poor Tom!…That’s something yet: Edgar I nothing am

(Poor crazy Tom the beggars call themselves, at least that is something;I am nothing)

Denotes power of Edmund’s deception
Theme of nothing
Identity

AO2
Nothing promoted to place more emphasis
‘Nothing’ - character’s identities are extremely fragile and subject to change
Third person - dissociating reinforces disguise and loss of identity

AO3
Illegitimacy of bastard son
Peripetaiea (illegitimacy role reversal)
Bedlam beggars were inmates of the Bedoam asylum in London. Such beggars often stuck sharp objects into their bodies to attract attention and get passers by to donate money to them.
Hyperbaton - Edgar I nothing am (inversion of normal order of words indicative of inversion of social order in that the legitimate son is now the illegitimate son)

Question 3

Did the act of…

Answer 3

Did the act of darkness with her