Edmund is the most complex and sympathetic of all villains in King Lear. He's an expert conspirator and a deceitful character that's eager to seize any opportunity and willing to do whatever it takes to achieve his goals, which seems similar to Hobbes' idea that mankind is always at war with one another to secure their desires. However, his ambition is interesting because it reflects not only a desire for land and power but also a desire for the recognition denied to him by his status as a bastard. Edmund rejects the social order and laws that denied him the same status as Edgar, Gloucester's legitimate son. In a sense he's the ultimate self-made man, a

It's very difficult to know whether Shakespeare intends the more animalistic characters to still be seen as part of nature, or whether they are indeed unnatural as Lear describes his two daughters. Certainly they do not conform to Lear's initial demands of nature, but in some respects one can see Edmund especially, fulfilling an extremely natural role because he's destroying the opposition to ensure his survival. Due to Gloucester's initial reaction to him at the beginning of the play, Edmund plays up to the fact that he is the bastard son. It's clear that while someone may have despised Edmund for some of his actions, his repentance, and acceptance of his fate, in the end, prevents him from being truly despised. This makes you look back to the causes of his behavior, which essentially stems from Gloucester's maltreatment. Goneril and Regan are frequently connected by various characters with animalistic imagery that suits their viper like nature. The virtuous characters seem to endow nature with more of a moral quality, which creates much of the tension as they battle to understand their predicament in light of their belief in heavenly justice.

This is the excellent floppery of the world, that when we are sick in fortune - often the surfeit of our own behavior - we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars, as if we were villains by necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves, and 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 stars! 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.

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1209
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)