2021-03-04 6:06:01 ¶ ●

analysis of Gloucester that my AP Lit teacher told us in class, and I liked enough to decide to post it here-

So basically, Gloucester’s no idiot. And anyone with half a brain would have thought that Edmund’s whole “ohhh nooo my brother totally wrote to me saying he wants you dead!!” Would be suspicious. So at first glance, there seem to be a few problems here-

1- Why does Gloucester automatically believe that what he’s being told is true- that his son wants to kill him? His son, who never showed any sign of wanting him dead before?

2-Why doesn’t Gloucester suspect, even for a second, that Edmund’s lying, when Edmund has every reasonable motive to lie? Shouldn’t he suspect Edmund automatically?

The thing is though, he doesn’t see Edmund as having a motive to lie. It’s human nature to be more likely to believe what you hear than not to. And he doesn’t see Edmund as having a reason to be resentful.

See, the whole thing with illegitimate children not inheriting wasn’t a new thing, it was just how the world worked. To him, he was an earl because he was born into it, and random citizens weren’t nobility because they weren’t born into it. They all just accepted their place in society- you don’t see citizens, during a stable government’s reign, fighting the system or trying to become nobility.

Same worked for bastards. To Gloucester, the same way the average random citizen felt no resentment and had no motive to commit treason, to him Edmund had no reason to feel resentment or try to take on more power or status than he was born with. So he didn’t suspect that Edmund had any reason to lie to him or frame his brother for attempted patricide. Because he was so caught up in the system that he couldn’t imagine how the system might be harmful to those who don’t benefit from it.

(Tbh same applies to modern society and we can get all political here, but this is a Shakespeare blog not a politics blog)