and he is a coward, as may be
seen from the sudden rise in his courage when Goneril arrives at the
castle and supports him and Regan against Lear (II. iv. 202). But as his
cruelties are not aimed at a blood-relation, he is not, in this sense, a
'monster,' like the remaining three.

Which of these three is the least and which the most detestable there
can surely be no question. For Edmund, not to mention other
alleviations, is at any rate not a woman. And the differences between
the sisters, which are distinctly marked and need not be exhibited once
more in full, are all in favour of 'the elder and more terrible.' That
Regan did not commit adultery, did not murder her sister or plot to
murder her husband, did not join her name with Edmund's on the order for
the deaths of Cordelia and Lear, and in other respects failed to take
quite so active a part as Goneril in atrocious wickedness, is quite true
but not in the least to her credit. It only means that she had much less
force, courage and initiative than her sister, and for that reason is
less formidable and more loathsome. Edmund judged right when, caring for
neither sister but aiming at the crown, he preferred Goneril, for he
could trust her to remove the living impediments to her desires. The
scornful and fearless exclamation, 'An interlude!' with which she greets
the exposure of her design, was quite beyond Regan. Her unhesitating
suicide was perhaps no less so. She would not have condescended to the
lie which Regan so needlessly tells to Oswald:

It was great ignorance, Gloster's eyes being out,
To let him live: where he arrives he moves
All hearts against us: Edmund, I think, is gone,
_In pity of his misery_, to dispatch
His nighted life.

Her father's curse is nothing to her. She scorns even to mention the
gods.[169] Horrible as she is, she is almost awful. But, to set against
Regan's inferiority in power, there is nothing: she is superior only in
a venomous meanness which is almost as hateful as her cruelty. She is
the most hideous human being (if she is one) that Shakespeare ever drew.

I have already noticed the resemblance between Edmund and Iago in one
point; and Edmund recalls his greater forerunner also in courage,
strength of will, address, egoism, an abnormal want of feeling, and the
possession of a sense of humour. But here the likeness ends. Indeed a
decided difference is observable even in the humour. Edmund is
apparently a