King Lear I.ii.151-82
Some villain
[EDGAR How long have you been a sectary astronomical?] EDMUND Come, come, when saw you my father last? EDGAR The night gone by. EDMUND Spake you with him? EDGAR Ay, two hours together. EDMUND Parted you in good terms? Found you no displeasure in him, by word nor countenance? EDGAR None at all. EDMUND Bethink yourself wherein you may have offended him, and at my entreaty forbear his presence until some little time hath qualified the heat of his displeasure, which at this instant so rageth in him that with the mischief of your person it would scarcely allay. EDGAR Some villain hath done me wrong. EDMUND That’s my fear. I pray you have a continent forbearance till the speed of his rage goes slower; and, as I say, retire with me to my lodging, from whence I will fitly bring you to hear my lord speak. Pray you go. There’s my key. If you do stir abroad, go armed. EDGAR Armed, brother? EDMUND Brother, I advise you to the best, go armed. I am no honest man if there be any good meaning toward you. I have told you what I have seen and heard, but faintly, nothing like the image and horror of it. Pray you, away. EDGAR Shall I hear from you anon? EDMUND I do serve you in this business. Exit Edgar A credulous father and a brother noble, Whose nature is so far from doing harms That he suspects none; on whose foolish honesty My practices ride easy. I see the business. Let me, if not by birth, have lands by wit. All with me’s meet that I can fashion fit. Exit
Having misled Gloucester Edmund must now trick Edgar. Like Iago (and other villains) he takes delight in referring to his own schemes for the audience’s delectation, as when he all but confirms Edgar’s fear that some villain hath done him wrong. “That’s my fear” isn’t quite as brazen as actually confirming it, but it comes to the same thing, as does his saying that he’s no honest man if anyone means well toward Edgar.
Still, the logical jokes here, at first blush, don’t work as well as the similar jokes Shakespeare is so good at in Othello, for example, or The Merchant of Venice. You can make them work: because there’s some residual good meaning towards Edgar (in Gloucester), and because there will be more in the course of the play, the implication that Edmund draws is valid. But it’s not hilarious. And does Edmund really fear that some villain has done Edgar wrong?
Well, if he does, then perhaps we should see some ambivalence in him, some genuine fear or regret about what he’s doing. “That’s my fear” might contain an element of honesty. Like Shylock he would be friends with Edgar, but also thinks and fears it cannot happen, at least not in the way that the forged letter fantasizes. If Shakespeare is paying attention to the fact that the self-delighting logical jokes don’t quite make sense, that would anticipate something deeper about the relationship between Edmund and Edgar, something that we won’t see culminate until Act V.
“I do serve you in this business” is probably somewhat more straightforward as a sinister antithetical joke: like Mosca in Jonson’s Volpone (from the same year), I make all the arrangements here. I help guide you — toward your destruction. Edmund is a version of the trickster, an evil “tricky slave” Just what is he serving his brother? How much is he echoing Atreus or Titus, serving up children to their parents for a meal? Those references may seem overdone (like the children) and more melodramatic than this scene warrants. But the possibility of sardonic ambiguity in the word serve will be picked up near the end of the play when Edgar calls Oswald “a serviceable villain” (IV.vi.247).1
Edmund ends the scene as he begins it, with the trickster’s self- and audience-delighting soliloquy (straightforward not, because he’s alone with us), again (like Iago) characterizing his dupes in a way that emphasizes their decency and honesty. But (as I’ve been arguing the logical jokes already suggest) he is underestimating Edgar — underestimating what the word foolish is going to mean in the play (when he describes ”his foolish honesty”) and underestimating Edgar’s own darker potential.
Two or three more quick notes: again it’s established that we’re near Edmund’s lodging, centering Gloucester’s world again. This will have the effect of making us feel the distance of all other locations from this world.
Second: Edmund refers to Gloucester not as our father (as we saw Goneril did) but as my father. If that seems natural or unsurprising by now, it’s because Edmund has really been established, for the purposes of the (Oedipal) drama, as Gloucester’s son. But more important, at the end of the play Edgar is going to echo and confirm this when he identifies himself to Edmund as “thy father’s son” (V.iii.68). From his opening soliloquy in this scene it matters to Edmund that he should be Gloucester’s son, that Gloucester should be able to be identified as being Edmund’s father.
And third, Edmund’s evocation of “the image and horror” of Edgar’s situation looks forward to a climactic moment at the end of the play:
KENT Is this the promised end? EDGAR Or image of that horror? (V.iii.261-62)
In King Lear we are somehow more in the strange world of images than of the horror that they image. The horror is oddly abstract; it’s an apocalyptic threat, but Lear is a world of pre-apocalyptic extension and deferral, of the space before apocalypse.
The word serve often suggests something that’s adequate and no more (as in Mercutio’s joke about his mortal wound, that ‘twill serve). It therefore also contains a potential edge of resentment (even perhaps when Kent uses it two scenes later): I subordinate myself to you, for now.