Edmund (King Lear) Edmund (King Lear) Edmund or Edmond is a fictional character and the main antagonist in William Shakespeare's "King Lear". He is the illegitimate son of the Earl of Gloucester, and the younger brother of Edgar, the Earl's legitimate son. Early on in the play, Edmund resolves to get rid of his brother, then his father, and become Earl in his own right. He later flirts with both Goneril and Regan and attempts to play them off against each other. Shakespeare's source for the subplot of Edmund, Edgar and Gloucester was a tale from Philip Sidney's "Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia" of
The History of King Lear Reader and Audience to have Vertue and Piety meet so unjust a Reward. . . . We rejoice at the deaths of the "Bastard" and the two Sisters, as of Monsters in Nature under whom the very Earth must groan. And we see with horror and Indignation the Death of the King, "Cordelia" and "Kent". The translator and author Thomas Cooke also gave Tate's version his blessing: in the introduction to his own play "The Triumphs of Love and Honour" (1731), he commented that Lear and Gloucester "are made sensible or their Errors, and are placed in a State of