good deal younger than Iago. He has a lighter and more
superficial nature, and there is a certain genuine gaiety in him which
makes one smile not unsympathetically as one listens to his first
soliloquy, with its cheery conclusion, so unlike Iago's references to
the powers of darkness,

Now, gods, stand up for bastards!

Even after we have witnessed his dreadful deeds, a touch of this
sympathy is felt again when we hear his nonchalant reflections before
the battle:

To both these sisters have I sworn my love:
Each jealous of the other, as the stung
Are of the adder. Which of them shall I take?
Both? one? or neither?

Besides, there is nothing in Edmund of Iago's motive-hunting, and very
little of any of the secret forces which impelled Iago. He is
comparatively a straightforward character, as straightforward as the
Iago of some critics. He moves wonder and horror merely because the fact
that a man so young can have a nature so bad is a dark mystery.

Edmund is an adventurer pure and simple. He acts in pursuance of a
purpose, and, if he has any affections or dislikes, ignores them. He is
determined to make his way, first to his brother's lands, then--as the
prospect widens--to the crown; and he regards men and women, with their
virtues and vices, together with the bonds of kinship, friendship, or
allegiance, merely as hindrances or helps to his end. They are for him
divested of all quality except their relation to this end; as
indifferent as mathematical quantities or mere physical agents.

A credulous father and a brother noble,
... I see the business,

he says, as if he were talking of _x_ and _y_.

This seems a fair deserving, and must draw me
That which my father loses; no less than all:
The younger rises when the old doth fall:

he meditates, as if he were considering a problem in mechanics. He
preserves this attitude with perfect consistency until the possibility
of attaining his end is snatched from him by death.

Like the deformity of Richard, Edmund's illegitimacy furnishes, of
course, no excuse for his villainy, but it somewhat influences our
feelings. It is no fault of his, and yet it separates him from other
men. He is the product of Nature--of a natural appetite asserting itself
against the social order; and he has no recognised place within this
order. So he devotes himself to Nature, whose law is that of the
stronger, and who does not recogni