Edgar

Edgar

1. Gullible

   • Duped by Edmund and forced to take on the garb of a madman to preserve his life
     • 'Edgar, I nothing am!'

2. Salvation Sacrifice Christ-like

   • Enables Gloucester to reach a point of salvation when makes G believe he jumped off a cliff and was reborn
     • 'Edgar is the saviour in this play'
   • Aligned with the Christian ways of looking at life 'man must endure' and not succumb to selfish follies like suicide
   • Mortifies himself like 'Bedlam beggars' who 'strike in their numbed and mortified bare arms/ Pins, wooden pricks, nails, prigs of rosemary.' Purging himself to atone for others sins.
     • 'nakedly outface the winds and persecutions of the sky' an appeal to gods for justice? Edgar 'uprooted and unprotected' completely exposed to the wild, he is at nature's mercy.

3. Symbol for social Justice Restoration of the natural old order 'benign revenger' due to being linked with the 'beneficent old order'

   • Determination (firmness of purpose: survive, avenge & restore order) Optimism
     • 'To be worst,/The lowliest and most dejected thing of fortune,/Stands still in esperance and lives not in fear'
   • Good & Upright figure driven to set things right by making it his 'study' to 'prevent the fiend and to kill vermin'
     • R.A. Foakes: '[Edgar] represents a force of good overcoming evil' but in his vengeful pursuit for justice seems to be 'playing god' which is most unchristian of Edgar.
       • Vengeful Violent Sadistic
         • Nature hardened due to betrayal, injustice, personal insight of suffering
         • Challenges Edmund to a duel
         • Prolongs G's torment by keeping true identity until right before his death or afraid his father's frail heart won't manage the news. In the end reveals true identity, reconciliation and forgiveness Gloucester parts with life and son in a state of euphoria and peace unlike lear whose last frantic breath is that of a wretched (mad) old man.
           • Stanley Cavell: 'Edgar's silence is cruel' in that he deprives his father to 'see him in his touch' and symbolically blinds him a second time.
             • Edgar tormented: 'never-O fault!-revealed myself.'
         • 'the gods are just'
           • '[Edmund]Cost him his eyes'
             • Religious Extremist?
               • Strict Puritans believed death was the appropriate punishment for adultery

4. Moral commentator

   • Disguised as 'Poor Tom O'Bedlam encourages insight and sympathy to come from Lear for the 'poor naked wretches' in his day of pomp. Lear: 'I have taken too little care of the 'unaccomodated man' of his kingdom.
     • R.A. Foakes: '[Edgar] becomes a living representative of the 'poor naked wretches' neglected by the rich and powerful'
       • It seems it is an attempt of Shakespeare to draw sympathy for the 'unaccomodated man'/vagabonds that Edgar represents during Elizabethan/Jacobean era when society was deeply suspicious of vagrancy
     • Thomas Tryon 'Mad People, and innocent Children, do speak, forth whatever ariseth in their Phantasies', and 'appear naked, having no Covering, Vail, or Figg-leaves before them, to hide themselves in, and therefore they no longer remain under a Mask or Disguise, but appear even as they are.'