Edmund Flashcards
Arnold Kettle - AO5
Edmund “is intelligent, active and ruthless. His immediate personal motive is simple” he wants power.
“His breeding, sir, (…)
(…) hath been at my charge. I have so often blushed to acknowledge him that now I am braz’d to ‘t” - Gloucester (1:1, 8-10)
AO2: ‘charge’ = Edmunds upbringing has been at Gloucester’s expense.
‘blushed’ shows shame
‘braz’d’ he has gotten used to the shame
AO2: Shows Gloucester’s hamartia and hubris. Takes no responsibility for his own mistakes and provide Edmund with motiavtion.
AO3: This is a legally correct answer - implies Gloucester has done the right thing by Edmund. Suggests he has provided for Edmund at the very least financially and perhaps provided education. During 17th century, illegitimate sons were expected to be provided for financially by the father otherwise they would be provided for and a burden for the parish to carry.
“Though this knave(…)
came something saucily to the world… there was good sport at his making, and the whoreson must be acknowledged”
AO2: - “knave + “whoreson” could be used playfully respectively however they also contemptuously evoke Edmund’s condition as inferior and a bastard. “good sport” degrades Edmund’s mum. Gloucester appears insensitive and morally questionable, he openly jokes about Edmund’s precarious situation, which is a result of his own moral failings. Edmund is present in this scene - motivation for malcontent villain?
AO3: ‘good sport’ women were seen as objects rather than people in Elizabethan and Jacobean England. Unfaithful women were looked down upon by society and especially if she gave birth to an illegitimate child. The men, however, never seemed to get the blame of impregnating a woman.
AO4: Elements of myopia, hubris and hamartia. Gloucester’s hubris (arrogance) blinds him to own moral failings, instead he feels he has done society a favour by providing for Edmund. He shames Edmund, who is a result of his own mistakes - Does this motivates Edmund to do what he does later on in the play? (hamartia)
“Thou, Nature, art…
my goddess, to thy law / my services are bound” - Edmund’s soliloquy (1:2, 1)
AO2: Nature is personified in this metaphor, giving it a sense of power + authority. E also compares nature to a “goddess” and through this Shakespeare presents E as believing that nature is more important than man-made and superficial customs. The noun “law” implies that E feels that what he does and believes in justified.
He involves “nature” because only in the unregulated, anarchic scheme of the natural world can one of such low birth achieve his goals. “My services” suggest E feels more closely aligned with nature than to societal standards.
AO3: The figure of the broadening malcontent is familiar in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. The audience will assume anyway that he knows something of the discussion of natural law and natural bond between parent and child. His own ‘nature’ is of a different sort altogether: It is fallen human nature - our appetite for such things as power and sex - that he honours, and his ‘law’ is that by which the fittest and strongest survive.
Aristotle (384–322 BCE) held that what was “just by nature” was not always the same as what was “just by law,” that there was a natural justice valid everywhere with the same force and “not existing by people’s thinking this or that,
“The plague…
of customs” - Edmund, soliloquy (1.2, 2.3)
AO3: The philosophy of the day held that custom and convention were the result of a man’s fall from a more ideal natural existence. Edmund twists this belief to his own purposes:
AO2 - One should not stand by ‘customs’ such as truthfulness and loyalty, but follow one’s own ‘natural’ desires and appetites. “plague” clearly conveys Edmund’s resentment of societal standards.
“Why brand they…
us / With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base?” - Edmund soliloquy 1:2
AO2: His repetition of the word “base” conveys both his hatred and obsession towards being deemed lower than his brother for purely superficial reasons, in addition to the repeated plosive ‘B’ sound creating a sense of intense anger. The word “brand” connotates harshness + pain. This creates an image of the “bastard” label being branded into him from birth. Shakespeare’s use of caesura fracture the line, creating the sense that Edmund is angrily ‘spiting out’ his words. An analogy to Cordelia’s treatment by Lear?
AO4: Gloucester’s suffering’s are the result of his treatment of Edmund and his mother?
AO3: In Shakespeare’s time if you were born out of wedlock, you were considered lesser, and had limited right when it cam to inheritance and more.
“Edmund the base…
/ Shall top th’legitimate -: I grow; prosper” - Edmund soliloquy (1:2,20)
AO2: pun on ‘base’. He is ‘base’ because he is a bastard, but he also feels at the base of the noble hierarchy: his aim realised in the course of the play is to get to the top.
‘I grow, prosper’ - metaphorical + foreshadows the downfall of Gloucester.
AO3: Two ideas seem to be at work here: The apocalyptic tradition in Christianity, whereby the low shall be raised high and the high brought low (‘many who are first shall be last’ Mt 19:29-30), and the Pagan tradition of the Wheel Of Fortune, whereby Edmund is at the bottom and aims to travel up in his fortune as Edgar (presently at the top) is to travel down.
“Nothing, my..
lord” - Edmund to Gloucester (1:2, 31)
Gloucester: “If it be nothing, I shall not need spectacles”
AO2: ‘Nothing’ - Recurring motif. Further play on this word. Ed copies Cordelia, which is ironic as he completely contrasts her character. Master manipulator + duplicate.
AO4: Gloucester’s hamartia, like Lear he fails to see the ‘something’ (Edmund’s true intentions) in nothing.
Gloucester reply is ironic as he sees it once he becomes blind.
“This weaves itself…
perforce into my business.” - Edmund (2:1, 15)
AO2: metaphor- lack of guilt/responsibility. “weaves” and “business”
AO3: Machiavelli Villain
“The younger rises…
when the old doth fall.” - Edmund (3:3, 23)
AO2: ANTITHESIS - directly comparing generations. Links to Kent’s line, ‘He’ll shape his old course in a country new’ (1:1), directly comparing generations and attitudes.
Intergenerational rivalry - A key motivator to the horrific violence and Machiavellian betrayal.
AO3: Sir Brian Annesley lawsuit
William Allen case
AO5: Arnold Kettle in general - he sums up King Lear a conflict between “those who accept the old order (Lear, Gloucester, Kent, Albany)” and “the new people, the individualists (Goneril, Regan, Edmund, Cornwall).
Paul Delany - MARXIST CRITICISM
“Each jealous of the other, as…
the stung are of the adder. Which of them shall I take? Both? One? or neither?” - Edmund (5:1, 56 - 57)
AO2: Simile + zoomorphism, verb ‘take’ shows Edmund’s control over this situation. His serious of questions shows the enjoyment/amusement he is getting from his evil plans. sinister.
AO3: Reflects power imbalance between men and women in Jacobean era. Women were viewed as property.
“A most toad-
spotted traitor” - Edgar (5:3, 137)
AO2: toad-spotted = stained with infamy (as the toad is spotted and venomous)
Animal Imagery - It’s inhumane to be this cruel.
“The wheel is come…
full circle; I am here.” - Edmund (5:3, 173)
AO2: Metaphor: Edmund refers to the wheel of fortune, which raised him from the lowly point at which he started in 1:1, to his successful position as commander and lover; he is now brought low again.
Marxist reading
would percieve Edmund as the play’s hero – a character wronged by old systems of power who has decided he will be oppressed no longer.
Barker
view Edmund as “another lago”
