Page 51 - King Lear: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

xlvi KING LEAR
characteristics in Edmund which make him, despite his
villany, somewhat engaging. 'Edmund,' says Professor
1
Danby, 'is the New Man. Shakespeare's understanding
of the type is so extensive as to amount to real sympathy.
The insight comes, I think, from Shakespeare's being in
part a New Man himself. This would account for the
colour and charm with which he always invests the
figure.' Professor Danby speaks of 'the attractiveness
of the portrait', though in almost the same breath he
speaks of Edmund as 'a Shakespearian villain'.
The modern mind may be inclined to feel that there
is something to be said in extenuation of Edmund's
wickedness. Society victimizes him for his bastardy, but
his bastardy is not his own fault. Is he not, it may be
asked, to some extent driven to his viUany by the in-
humanity of a traditional social view which looks askance
at a man because of his father's sin ? And is there not an
admirable courage about him as, by his own efforts—
however mistaken his methods—he strives to set the
balance right?
I cannot myself believe that Shakespeare was thinking
in these terms. What may be discerned in Edmund of
gallantry, or gaiety, or individualistic bravery, seems to
me to be presented all the time in a sinister light. The
wickedness of which he is guilty from the very start is
far in excess of anything that the most lenient modem
judgement could excuse him on account of his 'Why
bastard ? wherefore base ?' He is cynical, cold-blooded,
cruel, treacherous, inhuman. The flourish of bravado
merely adds to the sinister impression. And the dis-
advantages of bastardy are not his only motive. He is a
younger son who determines to seize by sheer treachery
the rights that belong to an elder son—cutting at the
roots of that normal law of succession which is an
essential part of'the Elizabethan World Picture', and
1
Shakespeare's Doctrine of Nature, pp. 48, 50.