| “Sir I shall study deserving” | Act one scene one- reveals already Edmund’s manipulative personality, plotting and calculating |
| “permit the curiosity of nations to deprive me?” | deprived of a position in society- society breeding evil through social standing and status |
| “Why bastard? Wherefore base?””Why brand they us with base?With baseness, bastardy? Base, base?” | Anaphora used to heighten Edmund’s disgust at how society treats him as a result of his bastardy. |
| “the lusty stealth of nature” | allusion to Gloucester’s earlier speech- “great sport in his making”-we have sympathy for Edmund because clearly this insensitive boasting has had an impact on him. |
| “within a dull stale tired bed” ” creating a whole tribe of fops” | marriage creating ineffectual people |
| “Edmund the base shall top the legitimate” | establishing power |
| “I grow, I prosper:Now gods, stand up for bastards!” | emphatic, powerful soliloquy directed towards the audience |
| “We make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon and the stars” | Reference to Julius Caesar- Cassius:”The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”- written in 1599, just before Lear |
| “adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence” | Again, humanity blaming forces beyond our grasp for our failings |
| “under the dragon’s tail and my nativity was under Ursa Major” | Dystopian play- Godless society, everyone blames events on nature but do not look at their own actions, they fail to grasp what is happening underneath them- human fault |
| Edmund predicts:” he writes of succeed unhappily, as of unnaturalness between the child and the parent, death, dearth, dissolutions of the ancient amities, divisions in state, menaces and maledictions against King and nobles, needless diffidences, banishment of friends, dissipation of cohorts, nuptial breaches” | Edmund ironically predicts all of these things |
| “I will persevere in my course of loyalty, though the conflict be sore between that and my blood” | hard for Edmund to be loyal, he must betray his family- ironic, he is faking this sense of loyalty to advance in Cornwall’s favour. |
| “Which of whom shall I take?Both? One? Or neither?” | Commodifying women- using them for his own social advancement- reflects ammoral, nihilistic society- Edmund is bringing to the forefront the flaws in Jacobean society. |
| “The wheel is come full circle, I am here” | accepting views of the time, wheel of fortune, karma |
| ” I was contracted to them both:all threeNow marry in an instant” | ironically accepting that now all three will die together |
| “I pant for life. Some good I mean to do,Despite of mine own nature” | redemption |
King Lear quotes- Edmund
July 19, 2019