Questions of personal responsibility, free will, and justice move our sympathies through a work of literature, causing readers to relate with or despise characters as they are shaped within a piece. ... We are invited to determine culpability for characters' deeds and to decide how fitting are their punishments. Shakespeare tests our sensibilities in letting us meet his villains intimately through their soliloquies. ... These are not just subtle differences in character between father and son, however, but also clues to Edmund's irreverence toward Gloucester. ... The sense we make ...

• Word Count: 2076
• Approx Pages: 8
• Grade Level: High School