Cunning, resolute, and indignant, Edmund of Shakespeare’s King Lear soliloquizes upon his bastard identity. Although embracing the unpopular nature of his conception, he rejects the unfair treatment that he receives for being a bastard. Accepting the label, Edmund recognizes that his bastard nature can be a source of pride. Indeed, throughout his argument he refers to “bastards” myriad times, indicating a level of comfort with the term, thereby accepting his bastardy truth. At some points, he even attempts to reclaim the term as a source of pride, for bastards are conceived “in the lust stealth of nature” in contrast to legitimate children made in “a dull, stale, tired bed […], a whole tribe of fops” (Shakespeare I.ii.13). Descending from
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Burdened by “the plague of custom” (Shakespeare I.ii.3), he is restricted from privileges afforded to legitimate heirs and thus indignantly criticizes the customs that deprive him. Diction suggesting livestock—Edmund is “brand[ed …] with base” (I.ii.9-10)—creates a power dynamic in which civilized man brands an animalistic beast, paralleling Apollonian Gloucester lording over Dionysian Edmund. This relationship portrays Gloucester as oppressive and thus Edmund’s rejection of his treatment as revolutionary and worthy of sympathy. The “dull, stale, tired” (I.ii.3) diction characterizing legitimate children’s beds contributes an indignant tone echoed throughout the piece. As the bed’s “stale, tired” diction suggests, childbirth within marriage is an act of duty, not passion. This drudgery extends to parents’ insipid children, and by extension to Edmund’s legitimate brother Edgar, whose parents’ loveless lovemaking yields him everything as Edmund is relegated to trips as foreign as he is illegitimate. Edmund broadens this critique of unfair customs to include primogeniture, depriving him due to birth order, that he was born “twelve of fourteen moon-shines lag of a brother” (I.ii.5-6). In this specificity of date, Edmund shows how random and purposeless this custom of denial is. After all, Edmund and Edgar are equals in every other sense. Edmund’s “dimensions are as well
Burdened by “the plague of custom” (Shakespeare I.ii.3), he is restricted from privileges afforded to legitimate heirs and thus indignantly criticizes the customs that deprive him. Diction suggesting livestock—Edmund is “brand[ed …] with base” (I.ii.9-10)—creates a power dynamic in which civilized man brands an animalistic beast, paralleling Apollonian Gloucester lording over Dionysian Edmund. This relationship portrays Gloucester as oppressive and thus Edmund’s rejection of his treatment as revolutionary and worthy of sympathy. The “dull, stale, tired” (I.ii.3) diction characterizing legitimate children’s beds contributes an indignant tone echoed throughout the piece. As the bed’s “stale, tired” diction suggests, childbirth within marriage is an act of duty, not passion. This drudgery extends to parents’ insipid children, and by extension to Edmund’s legitimate brother Edgar, whose parents’ loveless lovemaking yields him everything as Edmund is relegated to trips as foreign as he is illegitimate. Edmund broadens this critique of unfair customs to include primogeniture, depriving him due to birth order, that he was born “twelve of fourteen moon-shines lag of a brother” (I.ii.5-6). In this specificity of date, Edmund shows how random and purposeless this custom of denial is. After all, Edmund and Edgar are equals in every other sense. Edmund’s “dimensions are as well