Edmund: a Bewidlering, Beguiling Bastard

This has to be one of the best monologues ever written. He has very valid points. Just like Shylock he was beaten down for something that he couldn't control. Shylock was a Jew, Edmund was a bastard. You really have to ask yourself, if you were in Edmund shoes, what would you do? Would you fight your brother? Would you run away? Would you challenge your father in an open duel?


This is a picture of Edmund from the Utah Shakespearean Festival production of King Lear in 2007


EDMUND

Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy law
My services are bound. Wherefore should I
Stand in the plague of custom, and permit
The curiosity of nations to deprive me,
For that I am some twelve or fourteen moon-shines
Lag of a brother? Why bastard? wherefore base?
When my dimensions are as well compact,
My mind as generous, and my shape as true,
As honest madam's issue? Why brand they us
With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base?
Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take
More composition and fierce quality
Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed,
Go to the creating a whole tribe of fops,
Got 'tween asleep and wake? Well, then,
Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land:
Our father's love is to the bastard Edmund
As to the legitimate: fine word,--legitimate!
Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed,
And my invention thrive, Edmund the base
Shall top the legitimate. I grow; I prosper:
Now, gods, stand up for bastards!