When reading the final few acts of “King Lear” what really struck me was the soap-opera-like love triangle of Edmund, Goneril and Regan. This triangle was so interesting and intriguing for many reasons and drove a lot of the action in the final moments of this play. Initially, I began by questioning Edmund’s intentions or motives for involving himself with these two women. There is the obvious reason, that he is simply a “womanizer,” but I really began to see him more as an opportunist/ business man. In order to further his career (to become King) he had to be romantically involved with either Goneril or Regan. Instead of just picking one of the women, Edmund, the smart man that he is, chose to involve himself with both. I think that this was a smart move on Edmund’s part because it pretty much guaranteed him a decent shot at becoming King.
The way that Edmund was able to manipulate and effectively make these two sisters fall in love with him was astonishing to me. For example in 5:1 when Edmund and Regan are talking, I had a really difficult time coming to any strict conclusion about which sister he preferred more, if any was the case. Also interesting was that Edmund does not explicitly deny that he slept with Goneril, when Regan asks him, yet Regan is still completely infatuated with him. I think Edmund’s ability to talk in a way in which he shows no preference to either sister speaks to his greater ability to manipulate pretty much EVERYONE that surrounds him. Edmund may not be the King of England, but I sure would consider him the King of manipulation. He is able to succeed in turning two sisters against one another and ultimately leads these two sisters to a tragic end.
The literal death of this love triangle occurs in the final act of the play. I think that the fact that Goneril killed herself but only after poisoning Regan truly shows the immense power that Edmund wielded over these two. I think Goneril killed Regan out of an act of extreme love for Edmund because she wanted to insure that Regan could never be with Edmund if she herself couldn’t be with him. Edmund even addresses this in 5.3:238-240 when he says “Yet Edmund was beloved. / The one the other poisoned for my sake, / And after slew herself.” This line is very interesting because Edmund puts the emphasis on “for my sake,” it shows that he himself really understood the power the he had over these two women.
The final display of Edmund’s power over these two women really left me thinking about what if everything Edmund wanted played out according to plan? What if Edmund became King? What would have happened to these two sisters? Although it’s quite an intriguing scenario I really don’t have a definitive answer. Part of me thinks it would have ended the same way that “King Lear” ended to begin with; with everyone dying. I think that because it was such a tangled web that Edmund weaved the only way that any of these characters would be able to escape was through death.
2 comments:
I had the impression that Edmund was largely passive as far as this triangle goes. He mentions in Act V that the only reason he doesn't have relations with either sister is because he's afraid of Goneril's wrath and her husband's jealousy. Is he really the one doing the manipulating, or are Goneril and Regan just stepping into their own traps?
One of the things we didn't talk about in class that I find interesting in this post is Edmund's apparent sexual manipulation of the two sisters. This shows us how sex and power are combined for Regan and Goneril, something Edmund recognizes and uses to his advantage. A sidenote: romantic love in Shakespeare is often vexed, and it's rare to see a functional heterosexual relationship that actually appears as part of the plot!
Post a Comment