Monologue

Edmund Monologue from King Lear

From King Lear by William Shakespeare

male · philosophical · 1:28 min

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This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeits of our own behaviour, we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars; as if we were villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on. An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star. My father compounded with my mother under the dragon’s tail, and my nativity was under Ursa Major, so that it follows I am rough and lecherous. Fut! I should have been that I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing. Pat! he comes, like the catastrophe of the old comedy: my cue is villainous melancholy, with a sigh like Tom o’Bedlam.—O, these eclipses do portend these divisions! Fa, sol, la, mi.

About this piece

Edmund reflects on the absurdity of blaming celestial bodies for human flaws, revealing his cynical view of fate and identity as he prepares for a confrontation with Edgar.

20s · melancholy · identity · fate · betrayal · madness

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