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 before the stage. The production was directed by the company's Artistic Director, W. Stuart McDowell, and featured Eric Hoffmann in the role of Lear, and supported by an Equity company of fifteen, including Frank Muller in the role of the Bastard Edmund. The play, with its "happy ending", became known as a ""King Lear" for optimists" by the press, and proved one of the most popular productions by the Riverside Shakespeare Company. The play formed part of the American Shakespeare Center's 2013-2014 "Slightly Skewed Shakespeare" Staged Reading series, produced on 19 April 2014 by graduate students from Mary Baldwin College's