Edmund is the most philosophical villain in Shakespeare. Mocked by his father in the first scene for being conceived in “good sport”, excluded from inheritance by the accident of illegitimacy, he declares war on the whole social order:
Thou, Nature, art my goddess; to thy law My services are bound… Why bastard? wherefore base?… Now, gods, stand up for bastards!
His “Nature” is not the moral order of the Christian universe but raw force and appetite — a view close to Niccolò Machiavelli, Hobbes and, later, Friedrich Nietzsche. He mocks his father’s astrology (“the excellent foppery of the world… as if we were villains on necessity”) with an Enlightenment scepticism. He is witty, energetic, attractive — Goneril and Regan both fall for him and destroy each other over him.
And yet, dying, he says the most touching line given to any villain: “Yet Edmund was beloved.” He has never been loved before, and the discovery moves him to try, too late, to save Cordelia: “Some good I mean to do, / Despite of mine own nature.”
Compare Iago in Othello — evil with no clear motive — and Raskolnikov — who, like Edmund, thinks the strong may step over the law.
Questions to Argue About
debate club →- Is Edmund right that legitimacy and custom are arbitrary?
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