Back to the Source--King Lear

  So here is an excerpt from the second part of my paper. In paragraph 1 I am evaluating the  primary text from Act I Scene i in King Lear. In Paragraph 2 I am looking at Scene ii. Please note that I have yet to go back and add citations.

In King Lear, legitimacy is not merely a matter of political opinion and legal proceedure but of defining individual worth and character. The play opens with a dialogue between the Earls of Gloucester and Kent as Gloucester introduces his illegitimate son Edmund to Kent. Of Edmund, Gloucester says, “I have so often blushed to acknowledge him, that now I am brazed to it.” Kent replies, “I cannot conceive you,” and .Gloucester jests, “Sir, this young fellow's mother could.” Gloucester turns Kent's use of the term “conceive” into wordplay. While Kent means to say he cannot conceive or understand how Gloucester has grown bold about an illegitimate son he used to be ashamed of, Gloucester says that Edmund's mother, with whom he had illicit intercourse, was bold enough to conceive a child from their union. Gloucester adds, “this knave came something saucily into the world before he was sent for, yet was his mother fair; there was good sport at his making,”. The term “saucily” means “impudent or flippant” or sexually suggestive. Gloucester says he enjoyed his brief affair with Edmund's mother, but it was her fault for getting pregnant and that Edmund was an unwelcome surprise. Kent remarks, “I cannot wish the fault undone, the issue of it being so proper.” As Edmund hovers politely in the background, Kent thinks it is a pity that Edmund is illegitimate, as though if Edmund were legitimate he would be entitled to Kent's complete rather than partial regard. To Kent and Gloucester, Edmund's illegitimacy devalues his worth as a person.

Although he does not say much in the first scene, it becomes clear in scene ii of King Lear that Edmund knows exactly what his father and Kent think of him. He questions why society should devalue him. He says of himself, “my dimensions are as well compact,/ My mind as generous, and my shape as true,/ As honest madam's issue.” However, other people refuse to acknowledge that because of his birth. “Why brand they us /With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base?” In these last two lines quoted here, Edmund repeats the words “base” over and over, the context being that because he was produced from the “base” or improper union of his father with a woman he was not married to, Edmund himself is “base” or immoral. Edmund's repetition of the word “base” shows how much he is concerned about his self-worth, because other people do not agree that he is as good “As honest madam's issue.” His motive for his behavior towards his father and legitimate half-brother, then, is to make them and the other characters see that he is just as good and reaffirm how he defines himself. To Edgar, legitimacy is only a label.