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The Role of Edmund in King LearAuthor(s): Waldo F. McNeirReviewed work(s):Source: Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. 8, No. 2, Elizabethan and JacobeanDrama (Spring, 1968), pp. 187-216Published by: Rice UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/449655 .Accessed: 02/03/2012 02:26

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The Role of Edmund in King Lear

W A L DO F. M c N E I R

Edmund's delay in revoking his order for the death of Cordelia and Lear brings on the catastrophe. Caused by his slow and unsuccessful ef- fort to repent before his own death, it illustrates orthodox Elizabethan doctrine on the forgiveness of sins. Edmund's relations with Edgar, Glou- cester, and especially Goneril and Regan are important in preparing for his personal climax, his aborted peripety, which necessitates considera- tion of the complex bearing of the parallel plots on each other. A mere opportunist, Edmund easily succeeds against his brother and his father, but he is confused by the double demands of the evil sisters. His effort to repent, following his overthrow by Edgar, involves contrition, con- fession, and an attempt to make amends. These were required for true repentance in the formulations of Aquinas, Calvin, the homily "Of Re- pentance," and Hooker. Shakespeare explored the process of repentance in both earlier and later plays. Edmund fails because at the last moment he reverts to the demonic sisters before heeding the dictates of his new born conscience. This causes the tragic conclusion of King Lear.

WHEN A. C. BRADLEY itemized the "dra- matic defects" in King Lear, he was troubled by Edmund's unexplained delay in trying to save Lear and Cordelia, since the result of his belated attempt is that the tragic catastrophe which follows "does not seem at all inevitable."1 Efforts to account for Edmund's prolonged and difficult change of heart (V.iii.162-251),2 a glaring instance of too little and too late, have veered from the realistic-"He is silent for Goneril's sake,"3 to the ecstatic-he "recognizes love at last, its mys- tery, its power, its divinity," and repents before he dies "aureoled in its unresisted splendour."4 A challenge to the simplistic view of Edmund's motivation in the last scene takes his "collapse" to be a sign of his general ineffectuality and "sentimental vanity and egoism;"5 and a challenge to

'Shakespearean Tragedy, 2nd ed. (London, 1937), pp. 248-260. D. G. James, The Dream of Learning (Oxford, 1951), pp. 108-111, shares Bradley's puzzlement at the "inexplicable" silence of Edmund. 'References are to Hardin Craig, ed., Complete Works of Shakespeare (Chicago, 1961).

3John Masefield, William Shakespeare (London, 1911), pp. 192-194. 4G. Wilson Knight, The Wheel of Fire, 5th rev. ed. (New York, 1957), p. 206. Thomas McFarland, Tragic Meanings in Shakespeare (New York, 1966), p. 165, speaks of Edmund's participation in "this renewal of the spirit," in which we see "the birth of the moral life of the world." 6Robert B. Heilman, This Great Stage (Seattle, 1963), pp. 236-248.

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the "optimistically Christian" view of King Lear categorizes Edmund as an exponent of pagan atheism, whose "unneces- sary delay" in confessing makes the tragic ending heavily ironical.6 The best explanation of Edmund's delay, I be- lieve, is Kenneth Muir's unelaborated remark that it shows "the gradual workings of repentance."7 To develop the im- plications of this suggestion will require examination of Edmund's role in the tragedy in an effort to understand his actions in the final scene in terms of Elizabethan doctrine on the subject of repentance.

The complex way in which the subplot complements and reinforces the main plot is the structural principle that dif- ferentiates King Lear from Shakespeare's other tragedies.8 In the first half of the play events in the main plot precede events in the subplot, which underscores them as restatements of the theme of progressive disorder in the family and the state. Goneril and Regan reveal at once their fulsome hy- pocrisy in the love-test decreed by Lear as the basis for his unwise division of his kingdom (I.i.56-78), and their malice toward their father becomes clear at the end of the first scene (286-312). Immediately following, Edmund reveals in solilo- quy his thoroughgoing malevolence (I.ii.1-22). He declares his devotion to Nature as his goddess,9 subverts the hierarchi-

'William R. Elton, "King Lear" and the Gods (San Marino, 1966), pp. 3-8, 125-146, 333-334. Elton puts the play at the skeptical end of the spectrum of Renaissance religious belief, a reading symptomatic of a re- action against the overzealous christianizers; see also Nicholas Brooke, "The Ending of King Lear," in "Shakespeare: 1564-1964, ed. Edward A. Bloom (Providence, 1964), pp. 71-87; John D. Rosenberg, "King Lear and His Comforters," EIC, XVI (1966), 135-146.

7King Lear, Arden ed. (Cambridge, Mass., 1959), p. 1. The statement occurs in the course of Muir's brief replies, pp. xlviii-li, most of them convincing, to Bradley's alleged "improbabilities" in the play. 'Bradley, pp. 254-256, found the double plot confusing because "the reader's attention . . . is overstrained." In the view of Levin L. Schuck- ing, Character Problems in Shakespeare's Plays (London, 1922), pp. 190-194, the subplot violates probability.

'The fact of Edmund's heterodoxy would be more important to a Jacobean audience than its philosophical basis; see R. C. Bald, "'Thou, Nature, Art My Goddess': Edmund and Renaissance Free-Thought," Joseph Quincy Adams Memorial Studies (Washington, D.C., 1948), pp. 337-349. John F. Danby points out, Shakespeare's Doctrine of Nature: A Study of "King Lear" (London, 1949), pp. 31-32, that Hooker and Bacon would have censured Edmund's worship of Nature; so would all orthodox thinkers. The view of Atheos that Nature is the only God is refuted by Euphues; Works of John Lyly, ed. R. Warwick Bond, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1902), I, 291-305. The similar argument of Cecropia is de- nounced by Pamela; Works of Philip Sidney, ed. Albert Feuillerat, 4

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cal laws of primogeniture and legitimacy, 10 and resolves to undermine his brother Edgar with their father. As an oppor- tunist like Iago,1l at the outset Edmund has only a limited objective, aspiring to his brother Edgar's land. Later, when events seem to play into his hands, he widens his ambitions to include his father's title and then the crown. Acting prompt- ly on his initial intention, he destroys the faith in Edgar of their "credulous father," of whose belief in astrological de- terminism he is mockingly contemptuous,l2 and alarms his mild-mannered brother (23-200). The remaining scenes of Act I advance the stripping of Lear's authority and dignity under the direction of Goneril, forcing him to turn from her to Regan in the expectation of kinder treatment (I.iv.275-276, 326-330). The Fool's perceptive warning informs us, if not Lear, that the journey to Regan is delusive (I.v.8-19).

The second act begins with a corresponding development in the subplot. Edmund again becomes a prime mover when he quickly adapts to the news that Cornwall and Regan are expected at Gloucester's castle and prepares to exploit their presence (II.i.1-20). He frightens Edgar into fleeing, wounds himself in the arm to make it look as if they had fought,13 a foreshadowing of the mortal wound Edgar gives him in the final scene, convinces Gloucester that it was Edgar's "un- natural purpose" to murder him, and is amply rewarded when

vols. (Cambridge, 1922-1926), I, 406-410. On Cecropia's atheism in rela- tion to Renaissance disbelief, see Elton, pp. 42-57. Edmund's exclusive reliance on Nature is as "atheistic" as Sejanus's denial of all deities except Fortune (V.i.69-85).

"Theodore Spencer, Shakespeare and the Nature of Man, 2nd ed. (New York, 1961), pp. 135-152, sets forth the violations in King Lear of the three inter-related heirarchies of the individual, the state, and the world.

"Comparison of Edmund with his predecessor, usually showing him to be a less accomplished villain, occurs fairly often. Bradley in comparing the two, pp. 245, 300-303, seems reluctantly to admire Edmund, or at least to pity him. Not so Harley Granville-Barker, Prefaces to Shakes- peare, 2 vols. (Princeton, 1946-1947), I, 316, who calls Edmund "half- brother to lago" but feels that Shakespeare "lessens and vulgarizes his man." Bernard Spivack observes, Shakespeare and the Allegory of Evil (New York, 1958), p. 424, "Nature is lago's goddess as well as Ed- mund's." Because Edmund "seeks to make amends," C. J. Sisson, Shakespeare's Tragic Justice (London, 1963), pp. 86-87, would have it that he "dies true brother to Edgar after all, and no brother to Jago."

"Elton, pp. 155-161. "Heilman remarks, p. 318, "How ironic is the contrast between this false injury and the real ones which are to follow." Cf. Tamburlaine's self- wounding game with his sons in Part Two, III.ii.110-144.

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Gloucester disowns his elder son-"J never got him" echoes Lear's calling Goneril "degenerate bastard"-and says he will make Edmund his heir: "of my land, / Loyal and natural boy, I'II work the means / To make thee capable" (28- 87). Gloucester's disinheritance of Edgar parallels Lear's of Cordelia; his maledictions against Edgar parallel Lear's curse against Goneril; and his turning from the elder to the younger parallels Lear's turning to Regan. Having supplanted his brother, Edmund has attained his original aim. At once, however, larger vistas open before him. We learn from Re- gan's questions that Edgar is Lear's godson: "What! did my father's godson seek your life? / He whom my father named, your Edgar?" (93-94). Edgar is therefore a natural adherent of the king, as Edmund readily confirms (96-99), and when Cornwall assures him of advancement because of his com- mendable "virtue and obedience" (114-119), he becomes an adherent of the king's enemies. Thus Edgar had joined the declining party of Lear before Edmund joins the increasingly powerful faction opposed to the king. The two brothers are proceeding in opposite directions.

Parallel progression in the two plots continues in the same manner as the disguised Kent, Lear's messenger, curses and assaults Oswald, Goneril's messenger, and is peremptorily clapped into the stocks by Cornwall and Regan (II.ii.), and as Edgar, now a fugitive, disguises himself as Tom o' Bedlam to throw off the pursuit (II.ii.). In the last scene of the act Lear is rebuffed by Regan when he tells her of Goneril's in- juries (JI.iv.130-192), and then subjected to further indignities and deprived of all his retainers-the last tokens of his sta- tion-by his malicious daughters in confederacy against him (193-267). From the viewpoint of the protagonists in main plot and subplot, Lear's disillusionment with his two daugh- ters precedes Gloucester's disillusionment with his second son. From the viewpoint of the audience, the situation is dif- ferent. We knew before Lear did that any reliance on Regan was misguided, just as we know before Gloucester discovers it that any trust in Edmund is aberrational.14 Lear storms out amid sounds of the gathering tempest that signal a cosmic

"Operative in these different points of view is the principle of discrepant awareness between audience and characters which Bertrand Evans has studied in Shakespeare's Comedies (Oxford, 1960).

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upheaval,15 prophesying with painful self-awareness which is concurrent with his reduction to nothingness in the world, "O fool, I shall go mad !" (274-289).

At the beginning of Act III the setting is the storm-lashed heath, where Lear defies the violent elements. Scene iii shifts to the deceptive shelter of Gloucester's castle, where "history repeats itself" once more as "the subplot intensifies and en- larges the theme of filial ingratitude and the depravity of man."'ls Determined to aid the outcast king, Gloucester con- fides in Edmund that he has received word of "a power al- ready footed" coming to support Lear, whereupon Edmund instantly resolves to betray his father. "The younger rises when the old doth fall" (III.iii.27), Edmund's ethic of the survival of the fittest, expresses the attitude already shown by Goneril and Regan toward their aged father. Still house- less on the stormy heath, Lear becomes delirious in the phys- ical climax of the main plot when Edgar appears as a wretched beggar. He imagines that nothing could have brought poor Tom "to such a lowness but his unkind daugh- ters" (III.iv.45-73)-an illusory duplication of the unfolding relation between the two plots, but accurate in the sense that the present straits of both Lear and Edgar have been caused by the enmity of their nearest kin. Gloucester futilely offers shelter to the tormented Lear (120-186), thereby putting him- self in danger of being cruelly broken like his master.

Edmund's betrayal of his father is accomplished by means of the incriminating letter concerning the French invasion, whose contents Gloucester revealed to him and then locked in his closet (III.iii.9-11), whence Edmund stole it. Two letters, one forged and the other genuine, are vital in Edmund's de- struction of his brother and his father. Ironically, a third let- ter, addressed to him but never delivered, is instrumental in his own downfall. The two treacheries by which Edmund rises as

1The breakdown of order which began on the familial and political levels with the division of the kingdom has wrenched the social fabric and now extends to the universe; see George R. Kernodle, "The Symphonic Form of King Lear," Elizabethan Studies and Other Essays in Honor of George F. Reynolds (Boulder, 1945), pp. 185-191.

"William Rosen, Shakespeare and the Craft of Tragedy (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), pp. 28-29. Rosen's brief consideration of "the interplay of plots in Act III" is perceptive. L. C. Knights has also observed, Some Shakespearean Themes (Stanford, 1960), p. 111, that "the alternation of scenes throughout Act III has great dramatic force and significance."

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his victims fall form a pattern in other ways. His giving state's evidence against his father is accompanied by the same sanctimonious pretense of remorse exhibited in his betrayal of his brother, and as before his self-inflicted injury car- ried conviction so now his repeated protestations of torn feel- ings are impressive (III.v). These internal balances in the subplot define its structure and reveal its management at crucial points. Pleased by Edmund's scrupulously unscrupu- lous conduct, Cornwall informs him that his father's defection "hath made thee Earl of Gloucester" (18-19). From this new eminence, gained by nimble opportunism, the original design against Edgar must seem paltry. But Edmund has no time to thank Nature, nor does he ever do so; nor does he have time to think far ahead. Gloucester must be apprehended and di- vested for him to consolidate his position, and beyond that he can not look. One more benefit accrues to him. As he loses one father he acquires another, for Cornwall, attracted to this young man so like himself, tells him, "thou shalt find a dearer father in my love" (25-26). The contrast with Edgar is no less striking than the compatibility between each of Gloucester's sons and his spiritual father. Lear's godson Edgar survives the catastrophe; but the lives of both Corn- wall and his "son" Edmund prove nasty, brutish, and short in the state of predatory nature they have helped to create.

As he is being betrayed, Gloucester leads Lear and his com- panions to a rude shelter near the castle he no longer com- mands, and there the distracted king conducts the mock-trial of Goneril and Regan in his frantic search for justice (III.vi. 22-82). The trial of Gloucester and the gouging out of his eyes is the shattering physical climax of the subplot (III.vii), as wild as Lear's arraignment of his daughters.17 Yet there is an important difference. The trial in absentia of the evil sisters by a temporarily insane king, a pretended madman, and a half-mad Fool brings the defendants before the uni- versal bar of justice as an inquiry into the question, "Is there any cause in nature that makes these hard hearts?" (III.vi. 81-82). The question is unresolved. In contrast, the trial of

'The reasons why the blinding must be staged, despite early objections to its savagery, have been effectively stated by J. I. M. Stewart, "The Blinding of Gloster," RES, XXI (1945), 264-270. Lear's suffering is mainly mental, Gloucesters mainly physical; therefore, Lear's gradual fall into madness and Gloucester's sudden fall into blindness provide another way in which the two plots complement each other.

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Gloucester presided over by the supposedly rational Cornwall and Regan is held in a lower court where the defendant is cross-examined on mundane questions of fact to which the answers are already known (42-58). Gloucester does not deny that he received news of the French invasion, or that he sent Lear to Dover.18 His defense against the charge of help- ing Lear to escape is an indictment of his judges: "Because I would not see thy cruel nails / Pluck out his poor old eyes" (56-57)-an excruciating pronouncement of his own punish- ment. But Edmund is not present to see it, or the fatal wound- ing of his "father" Cornwall in the fight with the intervening servant, or to hear himself identified as Gloucester's betrayer (72-98).

Before the trial begins, Cornwall orders Edmund to escort Goneril as quickly as possible to inform Albany that "the army of France is landed." When he adds that it is not fitting for Edmund to witness the punishment of his father, he overestimates the tenderness of Edmund's feelings, as well as speaking with unconscious irony, for in what follows both of Edmund's "fathers" are punished. The departure of Goneril and Edmund with Oswald (III.vii.1-22) is the prologue of the ensuing intrigues involving Edmund with the sisters, which is an undercover development in the latter part of the drama balancing the undercurrent of Cordelia's secret invasion of Britain in the first part. These arouse opposing expectations. Edmund's involvement with Goneril and Regan is "not pre- sented in detail, and we are left to piece it together from hints and guesses." 19 Nevertheless, it is a brilliant device for unit- ing the two plots more closely, it exalts Edmund higher than he ever hoped to rise, and it must be traced. It also signals a change in Shakespeare's conduct of the two plots, since from this point on events in the subplot no longer follow events in the main plot but precede them.

While Goneril and Edmund are still riding toward Al-

'For the last time we hear of the return of Cordelia with her French forces to succor the deprived Lear before the action converges on Dover in the last two acts. This countermovement, involving figures from both main and subplots, functions as an undercurrent in the second and third acts of the drama.

'9Muir, p. xlix. Sidney's story in his Arcadia of the blind Paphlagonian king and his two sons, Leonatus and Plexirtus, the originals of Edgar and Edmund, offers no basis for the relations of Edmund with Goneril and Regan; Works, I, 206-214.

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bany's palace, Edgar as poor Tom encounters the blinded Gloucester and accepts the task of guiding him to Dover (IV.i). The reunion of the pitying son and the remorseful father, who now knows he wronged him, anticipates the re- union of Lear and Cordelia. The progress of Edmund, mean- while, is rapid. Sending Oswald ahead to announce her ap- proach to her husband (IV.ii.1-11), Goneril gains time to declare herself to Edmund, and the two reach an understand- ing that contemplates the removal of Albany and the consum- mation of their love. Oswald's news of the change in Albany, who begins to come forward here as an active opponent of unchecked and mounting evil,20 causes Goneril to send Ed- mund back to Cornwall with a reminder that "Our wishes on the way / May prove effects" (14-15). Their parting reveals their new relationship:

This trusty servant Shall pass between us: ere long you are like to hear, If you dare venture in your own behalf, A mistress's command. Wear this; spare speech;

[Giving a favour, Decline your head: this kiss, if it durst speak, Would stretch thy spirits up into the air: Conceive, and fare thee well.

Edmund. Yours in the ranks of death. (18-25)

These are the only words Edmund speaks in the scene.21 They show supreme self-confidence and are spoken with tongue in cheek. Goneril keeps her dangerous promise, sending Oswald to deliver a letter to Edmund in which she urges him to ven- ture in his own behalf by doing away with Albany as the obstacle to their desires. Faithless Edmund breaks his vow to remain faithful to Goneril, for he is soon listening to the soli- citations of Regan. Goneril foresees such a possibility, for, following her shameless retorts to Albany's denunciation of

"Albany's growth from conservative reticence to moral command has been analyzed in different ways by Leo Kirschbaum, "Albany," ShS, XIII (1960), 20-29; and by Peter Mortenson, "The Role of Albany," SQ, XVI (1965), 217-225.

"Heilman, p. 314, believes that the conclusion of the farewell "contains several kinds of sexual innuendo." Elton stresses this interpretation and calls Edmund, p. 133, "the respectable Albany's cuckolder." Whether or not Edmund and Goneril committed adultery on the journey seems impossible to determine from the text. In mind if not in deed Edmund repeats his father's sin. Heilman has rightly observed, p. 243, "Edmund seems to reciprocate none of the passion which the sisters feel for him."

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her practices, she reacts to the news that Cornwall is dead by immediately suspecting that her sister, now a widow, will make overtures to Edmund (28-87). Her own will to make herself a widow accords with the differentiation of the de- praved pair, since she initiates action as the more forceful female Machiavel, and Regan, though no less vicious, is sec- ondary to her in virtu.

Two scenes in the French camp (IV.iii.iv) forward the main plot and prepare for the convergence of the action on Dover. The subplot is resumed in the colloquy of Regan and Oswald at Gloucester's castle in the last scene laid there. Ed- mund has already left, but he is uppermost in their minds as Regan exerts her wiles to get a look at Goneril's letter. "What might import my sister's letter to him?" (IV.v.6). She tries to appear casual and confidential:

It was great ignorance, Gloucester's eyes being out, To let him live; where he arrives he moves All hearts against us: Edmund, I think, is gone, In pity of his misery, to dispatch His nighted life; moreover, to descry The strength o' the enemy. (9-14)

Her gossipy manner is grossly incongruous with Edmund's malignly related missions. The real purpose of this search for Gloucester is to correct the error of allowing him to live, in recognition of Machiavelli's precept that one who comes to power by crime "should see to it that he commit all his acts of cruelty at once so as not to be obliged to return to them."22 When Oswald declines an invitation to "stay with us," Regan comes to the point: "I'll love thee much, / Let me unseal the letter" (21-22). Her suspicion is transparent. Seeing him un- moved by her blandishments, for Oswald's unwavering loyalty to Goneril contrasts with the humane disloyalty of Cornwall's servant, Regan drops all pretense and gives us an insight into the beginning of the Goneril-Edmund relationship.

I know your lady does not love her husband; I am sure of that: and at her late being here She gave strange oeillades and most speaking looks To noble Edmund. (23-26)

How much did Regan observe, and when? Goneril arrived

'2The Prince, trans. Thomas G. Bergin (New Lork, 1947), p. 26.

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at Gloucester's castle in time to support her sister in the con- frontation with their father (II.iv.192 ff.). Although the stage directions in quartos and Folio do not indicate Ed- mund's presence at any time in this scene, he is on stage throughout in most modern productions. Perhaps Goneril's question, "Where is my lord of Gloucester?" is addressed to Edmund, although Cornwall answers (297-298). She may have begun to give Edmund "most speaking looks" here,22 especially at the end of the scene when she is uncharacteristi- cally silent while Cornwall and Regan persuade Gloucester to come in out of the storm and to shut his doors against Lear (299-312). Goneril and Edmund are at Gloucester's castle, but never appear together, throughout Act III until they de- part at the beginning of its final scene. The time spent there may have been one night, or a day and a night.24 Their jour- ney together allows them further intimacy, an intimacy which can be inferred from its consequences. In the same way, Regan's account of the inception of her sister's attrac- tion to Edmund, in the absence of Shakespeare's direct pre- sentation of it, must be related to the attendant circum- stances.

Having bluntly told Oswald what she suspects about Goneril and Edmund, Regan bluntly tells him about herself and Edmund.

My lord is dead; Edmund and I have talk'd; And more convenient is he for my hand Than for your lady's: you may gather more. If you do find him, pray you, give him this; And when your mistress hears thus much from you, I pray, desire her call her wisdom to her.

(IV.v.30-35)

23These lascivious glances would no more be lost on Edmund (and Regan) than Portia's "fair speechless messages . . . from her eyes" (I.i.163- 164) were lost on Bassanio. The situation in King Lear is a debasement of that in The Merchant of Venice. Implicit in both is the topos that both love and lust enter through the eyes, a particular aspect of the physiological doctrine derived mainly from Aristotle, Galen, and Aqui- nas (Lawrence Babb, The Elizabethan Malady [East Lansing, 1951], pp. 1-20), which was absorbed into the theory of love held by the stilnovisti (Maurice Valency, In Praise of Love [New York, 1958], pp. 218-226), whence through Petrarch's mediation it became ubiquitous in the love poetry of the Renaissance.

24See the deductions of Eccles and Daniel in the Variorum King Lear, ed. Horace H. Furness (Philadelphia, 1880), pp. 408-412, concerning the duration of the action.

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What Goneril feared has happened. In exchanging pledges with Regan, Edmund's willingness to clutch at any advantage put in his way has carried him too far. He did not dare tell her of his prior arrangement with Goneril, which perhaps shows a failure of nerve. No doubt he means to play off the two against each other. At the same time, he cannot risk antagonizing either of them, which hampers his freedom of maneuver. As the manipulator of an unsuspecting brother and a credulous father he was effective enough, proceeding to a double success; now, pitted against a brace of cutthroat women, he has become the manipulated, a patient rather than an agent, as the result of another double success. To the op- portunist have come more opportunities than he can handle. Shakespeare's irony runs deep in the change of status Ed- mund undergoes as the victim of too much prosperity, in con- trast to the change of status Edgar achieves in developing from a passive into an active man as the victim of adversity.

It is therefore thematically appropriate that Edmund drops out of sight after he leaves Goneril, and we do not hear from him again until the beginning of Act V. Conversely, Edgar, of whom we have seen nothing since the first scene of Act IV, when he almost sank under the weight of misery, now behaves with conspicuous vigor in the occurrences at Dover Cliff. His imaginative psychotherapy saves his blind father from des- pair and suicide, giving him a renewed faith in "the illus- trious gods," the patience to endure all afflictions, and a moral insight that he never had when he could see (IV.vi.1- 80) .25 Edgar's salvation of the father who once condemned him defeats Edmund's stratagem in trying to drive a wedge be- tween them, as it foreshadows his defeat of Edmund in the trial by combat.26 Here is the spiritual climax of the subplot; the spiritual climax of the main plot lies ahead. After the pitiful meeting of Lear and Gloucester, one playing a game and pretending not to recognize his faithful subject and the other sightless yet able to recognize his beloved lord (83-

25Heilman, pp. 4-53, develops fully this paradox of what he calls the "sight pattern."

26J have pointed out this dual significance in "The Staging of the Dover Cliff Scene in King Lear," in Studies in English Renaissance Literature (Baton Rouge, 1962), pp. 102-103. It may be said that Edgar finally ap- proaches, if he does not embody, the fortitudo et sapientia of the ideal hero, a topos that has been traced from Homer and Virgil into the Middle Ages by Ernst Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Mid- dle Ages, trans. Willard R. Trask (New York, 1953), pp. 170-176.

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191), Edgar saves his father's life again, this time from death at the hands of Oswald (229-256), as before he saved him from death by self-destruction. When Edgar, armed only with his peasant's cudgel, kills the swordsman Oswald, he becomes a force to be reckoned with. He waxes as Edmund wanes. Goneril's letter puts Edgar in possession of evidence damning to both sender and intended receiver.

Let our reciprocal vows be remembered. You have many opportunities to cut him off; if your will want not, time and place will be fruitfully offered. There is nothing done, if he return the conqueror: then am I the prisoner, and his bed my gaol; from the loathed warmth whereof deliver me, and supply the place for your labour.

Your-wife, so I would say--- Affectionate servant,

GONERIL (67-277)

In this lethal and lustful document, the sexual suggestiveness of the first part combines with the murderous proposal and carries over into the war-sex imagery, justifying Edgar's hor- rified reaction. His exposure of Goneril's "plot upon her virtuous husband's life, / And the exchange my brother!" (279-280) becomes a potent weapon in Albany's hands.

The miscarriage of Goneril's letter does not prevent the mis- carriage of justice at the end, for which Edmund is responsi- ble. By now we see that the evil trio, who appeared to be drawing together, are in reality becoming more distant from each other as they pursue while separated a public purpose that can never be coordinated with their jarring private de- sires. It is part of Shakespeare's design that after Edmund leaves Goneril at the beginning of IV.ii, he is never shown again with either of the women who want him until the three come together in outward unity but inner disarray in the first scene of Act V. The mesalliance of Edmund with Goneril and Regan is the last of the complications to be introduced in the plot, and it begins to break up almost immediately, well before its final collapse. On the other hand, the characters who are driven asunder early in the play-Lear and Cordelia, Gloucester and Edgar-move soon after the breach toward re- conciliation with mutual forgiveness and love, and they are morally reunited before their actual reunions. Apparent har- mony among the evil-minded is short-lived, as Spenser shows

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in Book IV of The Faerie Queene; disharmony among the vir- tuous may be overcome, though not without pain.

The restoration of Lear to himself and to Cordelia brings the spiritual climax of the main plot. She raises her father from the grave where he thinks he has waked (IV.vii.45-49), as Edgar raises his father from the grave into which he would have cast himself. Both fathers are returned to life, through the agency of their children, after undergoing a figurative death. Lear's purgation of pride and wrath is complete when he is borne off humbly begging Cordelia, "Pray you now, for- get and forgive: I am old and foolish" (85-86).27 At the end of the scene an abrupt return to matters of fact reminds us of Edmund, who is reported in command of Cornwall's forces for the approaching battle (87-99).

The opening lines of Act V suggest a rift between Edmund and Albany, who, he complains, is "full of alteration / And self-reproving" (V.i.1-4). Regan's mind is filled with the same doubts that tormented her when she questioned Oswald about Goneril's letter to Edmund. The letter has not been delivered, to Regan's relief. She crassly reminds him of the rewards he can expect from her as she tests his faith, asking if he loves Goneril, or has had sexual intercourse with her, and admits her fear that he has (6-13). She is less sure of her hold on Edmund than Goneril is because she distrusts both of them, whereas Goneril principally distrusts her sister. Edmund's three denials of Regan's suspicions can scarcely allay them, being tersely expressed in three half-lines (9, 11, 14). His inarticulateness with both women is noteworthy, since in other situations he is glib. The true lovers in Shakespearean tragedy are eloquent men-Romeo, Othello, Antony. Edmund's diffi- culty in speaking to the sisters is in part the product of a double illicit relationship. In fact, however, he has never loved anyone but himself. By concealing his commitment to Goneril, he lies to Regan for the second time. The blatant sexuality of the two, his passive course of pretending to accept both, which makes it impossible for him to take an honest stance with either, now Regan's insistent inquisition and the necessity of lying to her again-these things become increasingly embar-

27For Elizabethan attitudes toward anger, particularly with reference to King Lear, see Curtis Brown Watson, Shakespeare and the Renais- sance Concept of Honor (Princeton, 1960), pp. 124-127, 348-354.

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rassing. Regan weakens further. Her desperate threat and equally desperate plea when she is unable to extract satisfac- tory answers or see into Edmund's troubled mind, "I never shall endure her: dear my lord, / Be not familiar with her" (15-16), draw a fourth laconic assurance, "Fear me not" (16). The threat points ironically to Goneril's forestalling move.

Edmund quickly breaks away from Regan, but seeing them together is enough to arouse Goneril's jealousy: "I had rather lose the battle than that sister / Should loosen him and me" (V.i.18-19). The battle between the sisters for possession of Edmund is joined before the battle against the invader, in which they are allies. Albany wants it clearly understood that the French, but not Lear and Cordelia, are the enemy (21-27), a distinction that Regan and Goneril brush aside. Edmund's faintly sarcastic response, "Sir, you speak nobly" (28), shows the three in agreement concerning the external threat despite their internal dissension. Their unity as well as their division makes hazardous the eventual disposition of Lear and Cor- delia. Sparring between Goneril and Regan, neither wishing to leave the other alone with Edmund for a moment (31-37), precedes the council of war. Albany remains behind long enough to receive from Edgar the all-important letter (38- 50), whose destructive contents we know. Edgar asks for a chance, after the battle, to prove in trial by combat the crimes of his brother. A twofold irony develops, after Edgar's de- parture and just as Albany has begun to scan the letter, when Edmund returns to give him an estimate of the enemy's "true strength and forces / By diligent discovery" (52-53). Albany already has that in his hand. Edmund has carried out one of the missions on which he left Regan, but he failed to intercept Gloucester on the way to Dover.

The scene ends with Edmund's soliloquy, his second. In con- trast to his defiant self-confidence in launching his first cam- paign, he shows uncertainty in launching his last. It is not fear of reprisal by Gloucester or Edgar that disturbs him. Nor does his duplicity with Goneril and Regan distress him, but the awkward consequences of it produce doubts.

To both these sisters have I sworn my love; Each jealous of the other, as the stung Are of the adder. Which of them shall I take? Both? one? or neither? (V.i.55-58)

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He is indifferent to the outcome, ready to adopt any expedi- ent. This is the same Edmund who began with a limited pro- ject against his brother and then improvised his way to where he is now. But the time for improvisation has passed. He can state his problem-"Neither can be enjoy'd / If both remain alive" (58-59)-but he can not solve it. Not one for the long view, he turns away from his predicament to the pres- ent matter.

Now then, we'll use His [Albany's] countenance for the battle; which

being done, Let her who would be rid of him devise His speedy taking off. (62-65)

In shifting to Goneril the burden of getting rid of Albany, which she assigned to him in her undelivered letter, Edmund shows no inclination to venture in his own behalf, because when all possibilities are equally acceptable the result is im- mobilization. Implicit is his agreement with Oswald's judg- ment of his mistress and her husband, that Goneril "is the bet- ter soldier." Both evaluations are mistaken. The evil char- acters do not grow in knowledge or the ability to assess either each other or their opponents correctly. Goneril proves as brittle as Albany is sturdy; their reversal of expectation par- allels that of Edmund and Edgar.

Edmund's last thought, a heinous one, shows a recovery of resolution. After fighting alongside Albany, he concludes,

As for the mercy Which he intends to Lear and to Cordelia, The battle done, and they within our power, Shall never see his pardon; for my state Stands on me to defend, not to debate. (65-69)

As he has done before, he plans shortly to use and abuse for his secret purposes, and now he hopes to find in Realpolitik a way out of his quandary. The steps in his reasoning lead back through a series of precarious conditional propositions. If Lear and Cordelia are put out of the way, assuming they are captured, if Goneril can devise a means to dispose of Al- bany, if Albany is removed, and if only one of the sisters is left alive-then he may escape from the dilemma he started with, and he and the surviving sister, whichever one it is, may rule the undivided kingdom. This necessitates the deaths of four persons: the first three fixed, with an option of either

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Goneril or Regan. The event shows Edmund's folly in building on such a chain of contingencies. Yet how can he foresee that before any of his hopes are realized the despised Edgar, "on which foolish honesty / My practices ride easy!" (I.ii.197- 198), will rise to confront him? Fortune has mainly smiled until now, and he ignores her perceptible frowns.

Not the battle (V.ii) but its consequences are important. In the catastrophic final scene Edmund plays a decisive part, though not in the way he expected. When Lear and Cordelia are taken prisoners, one of Edmund's conditions is fulfilled, and he moves promptly to put them beyond Albany's merciful reach. Lear happily accepts the prospect of imprisonment with Cordelia, cured of his rancorous thoughts, freed from concern with worldly striving, content to observe the human scene without involvement. But Cordelia's comforting companion- ship is essential to him, for his vision of their singing "like birds i' the cage" (V.iii.8-19) requires their being inseparably together. This reduction of his wants to minimal human needs, including love, defines Lear's advance in the compre- hension of values. It relates to his compassion, before his delir- ium, for "Poor naked wretches" and their "loop'd and win- dow'd raggedness" (III.iv.28-37); but it differs markedly from his regressive desire, in his delirium, to imitate "unac- commodated man" (107-115), who is little above the beasts.28 Edmund's wants have grown as Lear's have shrunk. He now wants what Lear has at last gladly relinquished, the kingdom. He stands unmoved as Lear tries to comfort Cordelia (V.iii. 20-25) before they are led away under guard. Their future together is in effect blighted when Edmund orders their im- mediate execution (26-39). In his analysis of his situation just before the battle, this double murder was the only thing he took upon himself. Now he delegates it to another. His admoni- tion to the captain of the guard, "to be tender-minded / Does not become a sword," could be his own sinister impresa.

Between this quietly ominous beginning of the final scene and the dirge-like close of the tragedy, less than three hundred lines later, death overtakes most of the principal figures, both those whose reversals and recoveries in struggle with them- selves and others we have followed with sympathy-Lear,

28Willard Farnham remarks, Shakespeare's Tragic Frontier (Berkeley, 1950), p. 45, "Under the impact of human beastliness Lear does not himself become a beast, but Timon does."

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Gloucester, and Cordelia; and those whose cruelty and treach- ery in struggle with others and among themselves we have witnessed with loathing-Goneril, Regan, and Edmund. Ap- prehension and hope have been aroused-apprehension for the safety of Lear and Cordelia, hope that Goneril and Regan will turn against each other. Edmund has become a key figure linked with the members of both groups. He proceeds to act in accordance with his own principles, and he is acted upon by the competing pressures he has already felt.

When Albany, Goneril, and Regan enter with a flourish, Edmund's plans begin to go wrong. Albany now knows the purport of Goneril's letter and that his life may be in danger; yet his first thought is of Lear and Cordelia. He demands them from Edmund (V.iii.41-45), who says he has had "the old and miserable king" and his daughter confined to await trial because immediate sight of them might have stirred pity (45-54). It was the same thought of the damage Gloucester might do that sent Edmund in search of his blind father. He then offers a second and contrary reason for getting the cap- tives out of sight:

At this time We sweat and bleed: the friend hath lost his friend; And the best quarrels, in the heat, are cursed By those that feel their sharpness: The question of Cordelia and her father Requires a fitter place. (54-59)

He "implies that Lear and Cordelia would not get a fair trial under the circumstances."29 Neither reason excuses his pre- sumption of equal authority with Albany, who, now ready to assert his real strength, informs Edmund that he regards him as a mere subordinate, "Not as a brother" (59-61). His wish to wrest the prisoners from Edmund by discrediting his au- thority implies no suspicion that Lear and Cordelia are in dan- ger. What is significant is the word "brother," and Albany's repudiation of a fraternal relation in any sense. He may have expected his rebuke to provoke a reply from his wife, but Regan darts to Edmund's defense as her personal representa- tive. By virtue of the powers she has bestowed upon him, he may well be called Albany's "brother" (61-66). As she vehe-

2'"Muir, p. 203; quoted with approval by George Ian Duthie and John Dover Wilson, eds., King Lear, Cambridge ed. (Cambridge, 1960), p. 265. The lines appear only in the quartos.

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mently repeats the word, its implications expand to affirm what Albany denied, affiliation or kinship with Edmund. Goneril quickly tries to minimize Edmund's indebtedness to Regan and the bond thus created (66-68). Until now Albany could hardly have suspected anything between Edmund and his sister-in-law, or the rivalry between his wife and her sister; now he perceives it in the midst of these recriminations and shrewdly exploits it. On Regan's reiteration that Edmund invested with her titles "compeers the best," he answers mock- ingly from his new knowledge: "That were the most, if he should husband you" (68-70). If he should, he and Albany would indeed be brothers. The jibe has the intended effect. While Goneril jeers, Regan surrenders herself and possessions to Edmund: "I create thee here / My lord and master" (71- 78). Her attempt to buy Edmund's love is a depraved parallel to the misguided transaction of the love-test in the opening scene, and her failure is more terrible and sudden than her father's. Even as she speaks, Regan becomes sick (73) from Goneril's poison. Her sister has put Regan's words, "I never shall endure her," into effect and watches her victim's pain with relish.

The deadly enmity of the sisters now brought into the open has thrust aside Albany's demand for the prisoners. His posi- tion is difficult as he faces three hard antagonists, two of them even more bitterly opposed to each other than to him. How can he renew his attack on Edmund, whose conflict of feelings keep him silently alert during the bickering over him? Goneril triumphantly taunts the weakened Regan, "Mean you to enjoy him?" Albany sharply retorts, "The let-alone lies not in your good will"-it did lie in her ill will, however-and this draws Edmund's first open defiance: "Nor in thine, lord" (V.iii.78-80). Wisdom would have maintained silence. Unable to grasp what is behind Albany's proceeding and sensing a threat to the high status Regan has conferred upon him, he as- serts his right to Regan and her dignities. Goneril must be dis- mayed to hear this, but Albany forestalls any reply, once Ed- mund has exposed himself, by instantly arresting the pair for treason. With the evidence in hand, Albany plays the prosecu- tor. He bars Regan's claim to Edmund because of Goneril's prior claim and offers, if no one else appears, to prove in trial by combat Edmund's "heinous, manifest, and many trea- sons." Taken by surprise, Edmund his no recourse but to deny

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the charge and accept the challenge, defiantly willing to main- tain his honor against any "that dares approach, / On him, on you, who not?" (80-101). He has reason to regret this blanket bravado a moment later, but he has uttered it. Meanwhile Goneril, true to her paramount malice, observes Regan's in- creasing distress (95, 105) with absorbed satisfaction.

The trial by combat follows. Disguised for the last time by his armor, Edgar answers the summons of the herald's trum- pet30 He enumerates Edmund's crimes in the order in which they have been committed:

False to thy gods, thy brother, and thy father; Conspirant 'gainst this high-illustrious prince; And, from the extremest upward of thy head To the descent and dust below thy foot, A most toad-spotted traitor. (V.iii.134-138)

The epithet "toad-spotted," meaning venomous and hateful,31 is the only one of the numerous animal references in the play applied to Edmund.32 He hesitates-"In wisdom I should ask thy name" (141)-since he is not obliged "by rule of knight- hood" to fight with one of lower rank, but he waives this right and hurls the charges back at his accuser. In agreeing to fight his unknown antagonist he is not motivated, as one critic has suggested, by "sentimental" attachment to a "code of honor [that] must seem to him as flimsy as astrology."33 He is compelled to do so by his arrogant commitment to fight Albany or anybody else, high or low, who calls him a traitor, which is another manifestation of the contempt asserted in his first soliloquy, for a code of honor subsumed in a hierarchi- cal structure of society, the concept of order and degree, and distinctions of rank.34 Further, flushed with his display of physical courage in battle, the call to show it again provokes

30J have shown that some knowledge of procedures in the medieval judi- cial duel survives in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and not least in King Lear; see "Trial by Combat in Elizabethan Liter- ature," NS, XV (1966), 101-112.

'1Morris P. Tilley, A Dictionary of the Proverbs in England in the Six- teenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Ann Arbor, 1950), T360, T361.

82Audrey Yoder, Animal Analogy in Shakespeare's Character Portrayal (New York, 1947), p. 72, says there are three comparisons of Edmund with animals, but I am unable to find the others. On the animal imagery in general, see Caroline Spurgeon, Shakespeare's Imagery (Cambridge, 1935), pp. 339-342.

S3Heilman, pp. 245-246. 3'Watson, especially pp. 180-190.

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a response consistent with the self-sufficient egoism that has enabled him to meet every test with apparent success. And, as he told himself before the battle, "my state / Stands on me to defend, not to debate." An inveterate dissembler now playing for the highest stakes, he is confident that he can refute any slur on his good faith. As yet he knows nothing of Goneril's letter. But he has overreached. His reliance on Fortune to work for him and once more lead him well (II.i.20; V.iii.41) miscarries violently when he falls, fatally wounded. Facile in the deceit and craft of the Fox, he fails in the boldness and fierceness of the Lion.35 Edmund's physical crisis rattles his belief in his unholy gods just as suddenly as Gloucester's blind- ing destroys his faith in divine providence. Tougher than his father, however, Edmund's spiritual crisis in his repentance is difficult and equivocal.

The process of his repentance is clearly marked. Goneril protests too late that in fighting "an unknown opposite" Ed- mund is "not vanquish'd, /But cozen'd and beguiled" (V.iii. 153-154). Still in command of the situation, Albany produces the damning letter, which Goneril recognizes and tries to snatch, but Albany gives it to the fallen Edmund, who needs only to glance at it to perceive its fatal implication for him. Tacitly admitting her responsibility for the letter, Goneril tries to brazen it out: "the laws are mine, not thine: / Who can arraign me for't?" (158-159). In a sense, her arraign- ment began with Regan's suspicion of her sister's designs, but Regan is past testifying. The inescapable fact that the docu- ment itself remains to accuse her drives Goneril to self-incrim- ination, defiance, and desperation before her exit in hysterical fury. Regan has to be helped off the stage in contrast to Goneril's tempestuous departure, another sign of the apparent difference between the two which now seems unimportant in view of their final vulnerability. The collapse of Goneril fur- ther unnerves Edmund. Realizing that the game is over and that in playing for all he has lost all, he takes the first step on the way to repentance: confession of his sins.

What you have charged me with, that have I done; And more, much more; the time will bring it out; 'Tis past, and so am I. (162-164)

The "more, much more" that Edmund contritely confesses in-

25The Prince, pp. 50-51.

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eludes his condemnation of Lear and Cordelia. He withholds that. Unlike Goneril, who goes to pieces when her iniquity is exposed he hangs onto his self-possession, his mind wracked but still functioning.

The second step in his repentance results from his curiosity to know the identity of the antagonist who brought him low.

But what art thou That hast this fortune on me? If thou'rt noble, I do forgive thee. (V.iii.164-166)

Despite his implicit scorn of class distinctions, he betrays con- cern lest he has fallen before a commoner, one of those Spen- ser referred to as "the raskall many" and "Vile caytive wretches," because it is "So seldome seene, that one in base- nesse set / Doth noble courage shew, with curteous manners met."3a Edmund carelessly waived his right to ask earlier the question he asks now. As he gropes his way toward member- ship in the human community, it is significant that reputation and status, honor and dignity should begin to seem important to him. Edgar unmasks for the last time and matches his brother's conditional forgiveness with more generosity, "Let's exchange charity" (166), even as Laertes and Hamlet forgive each other, and he assures Edmund, "I am no less in blood than thou art" (167). But his willingness to forgive crimes against him does not extend to crimes against their father: "The dark and vicious place where thee he got / Cost him his eyes" (172-173). Edmund's acknowledgment of the justice of his punishment-"Thou hast spoken right, 'tis true; / The wheel is come full circle; I am here" (173-174) -shows re- morseful awareness that his brief ride on Fortune's revolving wheel carried him to the top but has now brought him back to the bottom.37

The third step follows. Edgar relates how he cared for his blind father, "saved him from despair," and revealed himself to him just before the trial by combat in order to ask his blessing, when the joyful reunion with the son he had pro- scribed proved too much for his "flaw'd heart," which burst for "joy and grief" (V.iii.181-199). Edmund is touched.

36The Faerie Queene, I.xii.9; II.ix.13; VI.iii.1. 37Tilley, F617, S768. This is the conventional idea of Fortune's wheel.

Unlike Tamburlaine (Part One, I.ii.174) and Mortimer in Edward II (V.i.53), Edmund never boasted that he could make it turn as he pleased.

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This speech of yours hath moved me, And shall perchance do good: but speak you on; You look as you had something more to say.

(199-201)

Resisting compassion, he fails to disclose his own treatment of another old man, Lear. He is struggling with his new-born conscience, and clearly his old self is still master of its un- familiar prompting. As he postpones action and lapses once more into the role of a listener, his silence recalls his passivity in his dealings with Goneril and Regan. With them, he held a choice in abeyance until events caught up with him and can- celed the need to make a decision. Now, presented with a hard- er choice between engrained evil and the urge to renounce it, Edmund's mind labors and stirs against the inertia of its own immorality. It has stirred three times, moved by feelings as- sociated with true repentance-confession, contrition, and compassion; but each time the effort has been followed by a pause. As Edgar describes his and Kent's grief over the dead Gloucester, and Kent's "most piteous tale of Lear and him" (204-218), the question asked by Lear seems to reverberate in the air: "Is there any cause in nature that makes these hard hearts?" The hardest heart of all, harder than those Lear at- tempted to understand, is on trial now. It hears Edgar's ac- count without further response.

What is it, then, that moves Edmund to the final step in a belated repentance? Goneril is reported dead by her own hand, Cordelia dies-her death intended to appear a suicide-, and Regan is dead by her sister's poison. This is another jolt for Edmund, the last survivor of all the evil-doers, who reveals a sordid relationship: "I was contracted to them both: all three / Now marry in an instant" (V.iii.228-229). The death of Goneril and Regan is the judgment of the gods upon them, a fearful one, but in the view of Albany, who has become the spokesman for official opinions and right attitudes in the manner of a Greek chorus, it "Touches us not with pity" (232). Edmund, however, experiences their deaths differently, for the movement of his mind outward and beyond the self to an expanded sympathy for others halts and turns inward with his vision of a dreadful conjunction, expressed by the arche- typal motif of the death wedding, which in this context be- comes a mockery of holy matrimony. Kent's inquiry as to Lear's whereabouts reminds Albany that in the turmoil of de-

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velopments crowded into the few minutes since he demanded the prisoners from Edmund, the king and Cordelia have been forgotten.38 "Speak, Edmund, where's the king? and where's Cordelia?" (237). At this moment the bodies of Regan and Goneril are brought in, a reversal of the usual Elizabethan stage practice of removing dead bodies as soon as practicable, "So that Lear can be confronted with his three daughters, as in the first scene of the play." 39 The immediate effect is to demonstrate the powerful influence of circumstance on Ed- mund's motives. It is a startling paradox, but consistent with the trend of thought which has begun in Edmund, that the sight of the two dead women moves him more than anything else had done. His reaction is not a reply to Albany's question, but an answer to Kent's "Alack, why thus?" (239) that pro- ceeds from his abstracted reflections on his relations with the sisters.

Yet Edmund was belov'd: The one the other poison'd for my sake, And after slew herself. (239-241)

This reflection checks his slow progress toward morality and represents a turning point in his effort to repent.

Edmund's comment has been variously interpreted,40 some- times strangely. A question that seems crucial to understand- ing has been raised by Judah Stampfer: how was Edmund "belov'd" by Goneril and Regan? The answer he gives is the only one possible:

Edmund deceived himself. He was the object of lust, but was not encompassed by love. Goneril slew Regan for his sake, but it was out of lust and ambition; she was incapable of that love which brings to self-transcend- ance, such as Cordelia's love for Lear. . . . And far from killing herself for Edmund's sake, she committed

38Muir, p. 213, quotes Kittredge's remark in his edition of King Lear (Boston 1940), p. 234, that "this amnesia on everybody's part is neces- sary for the climax that follows," and adds, "But, after all, there is no reason why Albany should suspect that Lear and Cordelia were in dan- ger; he had had plenty to occupy his mind during the wasted ten min- utes." With the exception that not one minute of the interval his been "wasted" in terms of the play's own dramatic logic, that is what I have been trying to show.

"Muir, p. 213. "Bradley fell into sentimentality, p. 303, and called "curiously pathetic

. . . the pleasure of the dying man in the thought that he was loved by both the women" whose corpses he is looking at. The view of G. B. Har-

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suicide, utterly alone, at the implicit threat of arrest for treason. Edmund . . . took false evidence of the bond of love at face value, and died as isolated as he lived.4'

The lust of Goneril and Regan for Edmund serves as a strong indication of the total disorder in the play.42 Edmund's hom- age to that lust and his mistaking it for love continues the disorder. This mistake reverses the course he has apparently been following, reverts to the Nature-his own nature-to which he had vowed allegiance instead of disavowing it, as he seemed about to do, and transforms his repentance into a travesty of itself. With good reason Albany curtly dismisses the news of Edmund's death, which is "but a trifle here," be- cause by that time Cordelia is dead, and Lear passes a moment later as a result of her death. The prolonged and finally abort- ed repentance of Edmund nullifies his attempt to make resti- tution by rescinding his order for the death of Lear and Cor- delia (V.iii.242-255); he fails to save his victims because of his stubbornness of heart in yielding to the stirrings of con- science; his incomplete repentance likewise fails to save him because it is unacceptable in the orthodox Elizabethan view.43

The Elizabethan doctrine of the forgiveness of sins, like much Elizabethan theology, was syncretic. As set forth by

rison, ed., Shakespeare: The Complete Works (New York, 1948), p. 1182, that it is "The bastard's last grim triumph-two women died for his love," does not explain the states of mind which precede it or the effort to make amends which follows it. Granville-Barker's remark, I, 317, that it represents a queer kind of "vanity (at such a moment!)" has been elaborated by Heilman, pp. 244-245, who holds that Edmund's "sole thought is of himself"-but surely he is thinking of them as well- and thus "The affair ends in his self-congratulation." This is echoed by Elton, p. 135, who speaks of Edmund's "ironically self-preoccupied out- cry, at sight of the sisters' bodies."

""The Catharsis of King Lear," ShS, XIII (1960), 7. Edmund's self- deception, clearly pointed out, is difficult to square with the same critic's opinion that Edmund "goes through a complete, and to this read- er, sincere repentance before his death." Sincerity does not assure com- pleteness. For an answer in terms of Jungian psychology to Stampfer's existentialist reading of the play, with remarks on some other critics, see James Kirsch, Shakespeare's Royal Self (New York, 1966), pp. 306-319.

'2Spencer, pp. 143-144. "Among those who regard Edmund's repentance as proof of his reclama- tion are H. B. Charlton, Shakespearian Tragedy (Cambridge, 1948), p. 216; Geoffrey Bush, Shakespeare and the Natural Condition (Cam- bridge, Mass., 1956), p. 91; Honor Matthews, Character and Symbol in Shakespeare's Plays (Cambridge, 1962), p. 157.

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Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologica, contrition, con- fession, and satisfaction are the necessary parts of full pen- ance.44 By satisfaction is meant an act of reparation for the injury committed. John Calvin insisted that repentance was an "inseparable attendant of faith," and that Christ's atone- ment is sufficient for man's sins, thus rejecting satisfaction because it suggested justification by works.45 The two books of homilies published in 1547 and 1573 "were regarded as the essence of Christian doctrine" in Shakespeare's time, and they were read in rotation in church Sunday after Sunday throughout the year.46 In The Seconde Tome of Homelyes, which was printed twelve times before the end of the sixteenth century, Number 19 is an official sermon "Of Repentaunce." It follows Aquinas in making the first two points of repent- ance "contrition of the hart" and "unfayned confession," then makes a concession to Calvinism by inserting a third point, "faith in God's promises," and for Aquinas's satisfaction sub- stitutes "amendment of life," accompanied by the explana- tion: "The satisfaction that God doth require of us . . . is, that we ceasse from evyll, and do good, and yf we have done any man wrong, to endevour our selves to make hym true amendes, to the uttermoste of our power."47 The "tokens of repentaunce" are summed up, in the manner of the homilies, by dinning their doctrine into the hearers:

hartie contrition, a sorowfulnesse of our hartes, un- fayned confession in worde of mouth, for our unworthy lyvying before God, a stedfast fayth to the merites of our Saviour Christe for pardon, and a purpose of our selves by Gods grace to renounce our former wicked lyfe.48

"The "Summa Theologica" of St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (London, 1917), Supplement to Part III, Questions i-xvi. "Of the Parts of Penance," pp. 99-239.

"Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge, 2 vols. (London, 1949), I, Bk. III, chap. 3, "Regeneration by Faith. Of Re-

pentance," 508-531 chap. 4, "Of Confession and Satisfaction," 532-570. "Louis B. Wright, Middle-Class Culture in Elizabethan England (Chapel Hill, 1935), p. 273. Alfred Harbage says of the homelies, Shakespeare and the Rival Traditions (New York, 1952), p. 139, "They are of unique interest, in bringing us the very words that fell upon the ears of Shakespeare and his contemporaries from childhood to old age."

4'Sigs. B5ivv-D5ii. "Sig. D5iii. Henry Hitch Adams shows in English Domestic or, Homiletic

Tragedy 1575 to 1642 (New York, 1943) that the four things necessary for repentance set forth in the homily are carefully followed in the con- ventional last-minute conversions in such plays as Arden of Feversham,

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In expounding the distinction between the virtue and the dis- cipline of repentance, Richard Hooker elevates and corrobo- rates the doctrine of the homily. The foundation of repentance is faith and the hope of pardon, and its three essential parts are contrition, confession, and "the purpose of a new life, tes- tified with present works of amendment."49 With a flexibility calculated to appease both Calvinists and Catholics, he agrees that Christ's satisfaction is ours, yet stresses the importance of restitution when possible. 50 Shakespeare knew the homilies from boyhood, their teaching on kingship being traceable in his earliest plays,51 and Hooker provided a framework of reli- gious doctrine and concepts of the laws of nature, drawn from the central tradition of Christian humanism, that gave psy- chological depth to his tragedies and final comedies.52 In ad- dition, the many sermons on the subject of repentance by such leading preachers as John Bradford, Arthur Dent, Henry Smith, and William Perkins helped to define Elizabethan atti- tudes toward it.53

Shakespeare's interest in the moral psychology of repent- ance and his care in depicting its operation increased with his maturity. In The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Proteus under- goes complete repentance, but his contrition, confession, and amendment of life are so hurried as to seem perfunctory (V. iv.73-119), even when due allowance is made for the conven- tions of love and friendship which govern this comedy. Both Capulet and Montague in Romeo and Juliet repent their res- ponsibility for the feud that led to the death of their chil- dren, and their memorials to them indicate amendment of life and attempts to give satisfaction (V.iii.291-304). The

A Warning for Fair Women, A Woman Killed with Kindness, and A Yorkshire Tragedy.

4Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1850), I, Bk. VI, chap. iii, "Of Penitence," 239-245.

50I, Bk. VI, chap. v, "Of Satisfaction," 280-290. "Alfred Hart, Shakespeare and the Homilies (Melbourne, 1934), pp. 17-76.

"Virgil K. Whitaker, Shakespeare's Use of Learning (San Marino, 1953), pp. 198-209.

"Bradford's A Sermon of Repentaunce (1553) had four editions before 1600. Dent's A Sermon of Repentaunce (1583) had been printed ten times by 1606. Smith's The Sinners Confession was printed in 1593 and 1594. Perkin's Two Treatises, the first "Of Repentance" (1593), had four separate editions by 1597 before it was included in his Works in 1600.

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usurping Duke Frederick in As You Like It sins at leisure and repents in haste on meeting "an old religious man" at the edge of the Forest of Arden; his renunciation of the world and restoration of his brother are announced in the same moment (V.iv.160-171). The prayer of Claudius of Denmark for for- giveness (III.iii.36-72, 97-98) is an agonized effort to repent, which fully illustrates the Christian doctrine of the homily "Of Repentaunce" and of Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity. He is deeply contrite, confesses his sin, and shows his belief in God coupled, however, with imperfect faith in God's mercy- resembling Faustus in each point. As Claudius recognizes, his repentance is ineffectual, finally, because he is unwilling to amend his life or give satisfaction by parting with his sinful gains, his crown and his queen.54 Shakespeare's exploration of the meaning of unsuccessful repentance in Hamlet, together with its dire consequences, was most useful in preparation for the portrayal of Edmund's futile repentance. In the interval between Hamlet and King Lear, Shakespeare presented in Measure for Measure the whole-hearted repentance that makes possible the forgiveness and rehabilitation of Angelo, who feels shame, openly confesses his sins, accepts God's ordi- nances, and twice asks for death as the only possible repara- tion for taking Claudio's life (V.i.371-379, 479-482). Tradi- tional doctrines of repentance and regeneration are central in Cymbeline and The Winter's Tale. The repentance of Posthu- mus (V.iv.8-29) is a demonstration of the teaching of the homily and a prelude to the contrite confession and forgiveness of Jachimo (V.v.146-209, 412-420).55 The penance done by Leontes for his sin in preparation for his deserved forgive- ness is prolonged under Paulina's severe regimen for sixteen years of remorse that would have worn out a less patient soul.

A brief survey of Shakespeare's handling of the theme of repentance reveals that, as has been said in a different but

54Roland M. Frye, Shakespeare and Christian Doctrine (Princeton, 1963), pp. 239-242.

55J. M. Nosworthy, ed., Cymbeline, Arden ed. (London, 1955), p. 162, quotes the valuable comment of Ingleby concerning the theology of the repentance of Posthumus. Robert Grams Hunter, Shakespeare and the Comedy of Forgiveness (New York, 1965), pp. 166-169, 176, analyzes the religious background of the repentance of Posthumus and con- cludes that Cymbeline is the most overtly Christian of the romantic comedies founded on penance and regeneration.

'6Madeleine Doran, Endeavors of Art (Madison, 1954), p. 316.

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relevant connection, "romantic comedy or tragi-comedy miti- gate the harshness of a wrong choice by allowing an escape if a change of heart and a reversal of choice come in time, as in Mankind or in Measure for Measure or in The Winter's Tale. But tragedy keeps its inexorability and its irony by making its reversals of choice, as in Coriolanus, always too late."56 Or, to apply the last statement more closely to Claudius and Ed- mund, by leaving a reversal of choice incomplete or truncated.

In the light of Elizabethan belief concerning repentance and in a Shakespearean context, as well as in terms of Ed- mund's earlier behavior, his actions in the last scene may be more clearly understood. The primary and secondary themes of the tragedy are the suffering, moral awakening, repent- ance, and redemption of Lear and Gloucester.57 In contrast, al- though Edmund is finally subjected to the suffering which he was instrumental in bringing to both of the protagonists, he does not experience their regeneration. The agent of Glou- cester's redemption is Edgar, just as the agent of Lear's re- demption is Cordelia, and both turn their principals toward heaven. The active forces in Edmund's redemption are not his brother and his father, as it seemed they might be in the first steps of his repentance, but the dead Goneril and Regan, hellish agents who reclaim their principal as their own. Thus the parallels between the two lines of action, ever more close- ly interrelated through ironic contrasts, continue to the end.

The result of Edmund's failure to achieve transcendance is that Cordelia and Lear die, calamities which were unendurable to earlier taste and have troubled some modern sensibilities.58 That the innocent Cordelia perishes has been called no more than a cruel trick of fate, because of Edmund's unnecessary hesitation, and the dissolution of Lear therefore avoidable. On the contrary, their deaths are not caused by fate or accident, but by the evil character of Edmund. Shakespeare is true to the psychology of such a character in his exhibition of the se- quential workings of repentance, slow and laborious, in a mind inadequate to the effort demanded of it. In this analysis of his

5Virgil K. Whitaker has traced, The Mirror up to Nature (San Marino, 1965), pp. 218-226, the stages in the repentances of both Lear and Gloucester, showing that they illustrate the Christian formula.

58Richard B. Sewall has identified the "notable salvage" made despite the destruction, The Vision of Tragedy (New Haven, 1959), pp. 68-79, finding the outcome neither optimistic nor pessimistic, but "an affirma- tion in the face of the most appalling contradictions."

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role, we have seen that he is a shallow opportunist. He lacks Aaron's bravura, Tybalt's fire, Claudius's efficiency, Iago's ingenuity, Octavius Caesar's cold calculation, and Aufidius's admiration of what he hates. Once he has achieved his initial objective against his brother Edgar and his second against his father Gloucester, which was not part of his original plan but on which he seized when it came in his way, he becomes ineffectual in his connivance with Goneril and Regan. He is overmatched by their simultaneous demands, baffled by the urgent necessity of choosing between them. Temporizing, he hopes the sisters' jealousy of each other, or Goneril's detesta- tion of her husband will somehow open the way for him out of his dilemma. And he temporizes between good and evil as his life ebbs when he considers repentance, but then stops short and chooses both Goneril and Regan in death, since he could have neither of them in life, driven by his habituation to evil. Yet weakened by physical and spiritual pain, his powers fad- ing, he is false to his chosen gods again and equivocates with Goneril and Regan once more in his last gesture. The self-suf- ficient rationalist Edmund finally becomes completely irra- tional in his vacillatory inconsistency, treacherous to the im- pulses that sway him toward both virtue and vice. As blind in the beginning as his father ever becomes in his inability to measure events, Edmund in the end makes fitful progress to- ward knowledge, lapses into ignorance, and fails in a last desperate reach for redemption. Curiously like and unlike his father, who was crushed by Lear's defeat and sank into "ill thoughts again" (V.ii.9) after Edgar had restored his faith, but who died in the full consciousness of love, Edmund swings from unfaith to the verge of faith suspended in indecision, sinks into the abyss of evil once more, and tries to crawl out- too late. Shakespeare's harrowing portrayal of how a man who has no real beliefs in anything may be moved toward or away from virtue has a special horror because we share Ed- mund's realization throughout his ordeal that the lives of Lear and Cordelia hang in the balance. The character of Edmund is a fulcrum that behaves like a seesaw in a tragic action, re- lated to that action by cause and effect. It is the most searing irony in King Lear that Cordelia's murder and Lear's death are inseparably related to Edmund's fluctuating repentance, and his failure to save either his victims or himself is attribu- table to his failure as a human being. The invariable in his

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character is his moral weakness, which he keeps to the bitter end, and no other outcome was possible.

UNIVERSITY OF OREGON