Lear is to spend his days, a month in turn, with Goneril and with Regan; and Goneril, as the one with whom he is to live at first, feels that a united policy of treatment must be determined upon at the present time in order that future trouble through misunderstanding may be avoided.

Topics for consideration.

1. The origin of Lear's insanity in lack of emotional control.

2. The force of heredity in the family of Lear.

3. Respect as the basis of all true love.

4. An argument in defence of the position taken by Goneril and

Regan.

Scene II. The Earl of Gloucester's Castle.

Enter Edmund with a letter.

Edmund. Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy law

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?

10

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,

15

Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land.

1. nature nature as opposed to custom or convention.

3. Stand in, etc.: be subject to the annoyances of the conventional

as opposed to the natural.

Scene II. This scene opens the second day, the morning following the first scene. Edmund and his father returned from the Palace after Lear's abdication and passionate outbreak. Edmund, though apparently not present during the shameful family storm, must have known of its conclusion; and the example of such injustice, even in the home of royalty, may well have deepened his own spirit of rebellion,

4. curiosity, etc.: fastidious particularity of civil law. nounced curios'ty.

Here pro

deprive disinherit.

5.

moonshines: months.

6. Lag: behind, younger than.

bastard: here pronounced base tard. From the Celtic for

14. fops stupid men, destined to be outwitted by the keener sons

of passion.

16. land: property inherited by him as eldest son and heir.

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
Shail to th' legitimate. I grow; I prosper:

Now, gods, stand up for bastards!

19. speed: succeed in its purpose.

20. thrive: prosper.

21. to th', etc.: usurp the position of.

22. stand up for: defend and assist.

20

At the opening of the first scene we saw Edmund subject to his father's insults as a natural rather than a lawful son. We now find him accepting the insult as a charter of freedom from human law and custom. In nature he finds no justification for such legal conventions, and, that he may be free from them, declares his allegiance to nature. This is a deliberate choice of the lower level and the lower law of life, a choice which completes, almost to extinction, the atrophy of his higher, moral nature. Shame, unjustly heaped upon him, has driver him to rebellion. Being oppressed, he has become vindictive. In his heredity and his training is abundant explanation of his character.

Edmund speaks in bitter irony and scorn. He has a plan whereby boasted legitimacy shall be overcome, and he himself usurp its place. The approach of Gloucester fits in with his plan; and he cries exultantly: I grow; I prosper. He recognizes in the coincidence of his father's approach the favour of fortune; and calls upon the gods of nature, whose follower he has declared himself to be, to support their own,-the bastard.