Blog Post #34

A soliloquy occurs purely for the audience's benefit to know and learn what a certain character is thinking. Edmund, the bastard son of King Lear's close friend Gloucester, is not allowed to speak unless spoken to do so by somebody else. Edmund resents the fact that he is unable to inherit anything from his father because he is not his legitimate son. He also resents his brother Edgar because he recieves everything when his father dies and he respected unlike himself. Edmunds soliloquy is as follows:


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 moonshines 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 th' 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 th' legitimate. Fine word- 'legitimate'! Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed, And my invention thrive, Edmund the base Shall top th' legitimate. I grow; I prosper. Now, gods, stand up for bastards!

Edmund's soliloquy is a true reflection of all his built up internal anger. He is not allowed to speak and his soliloquy releases this anger at once. Compared to the scene his speech is very similar in the way where it shows his intentions, in the scene he writes a fake letter and is plotting an evil plan. Both his speech and his scheming show the hatred he has in his heart for his brother and father. The difference is in the scene he stands in the back quiet, everyone unaware, in his soliloquy he does not hold back.