Equity and Fairness: The Villains of King Lear

            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. In The Tragedy of King Lear, William Shakespeare draws our support for his villains as well as his heroes, asking us to explore what drives someone to action. 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. In Act One, Scene Two, we meet Edmund who is plotting against his half-brother, Edgar, in order to win the whole of their elderly father's fortune. Edmund attempts to persuade us that he is only doing what he must, on his own volition, because it is his rightful obligation. However, though Shakespeare raises the issue of whether past circumstances can mitigate fault, he falls short of casting a viable doubt on Edmund's guilt. In this way, King Lear suggests that people are given what they deserve, that there is justice in the end result and the way things turn out are always fitting.
             Edmund thinks about his own accountability immediately following the execution of his plan against Edgar. He presents his father with a letter, seemingly from his brother, in which Edmund has detailed Edgar's supposed greed and impatience in acquiring Gloucester's inheritance. After Gloucester reads the letter, Edmund appeases him with promises to seek out Edgar and confront him about his intentions. Gloucester exits and we are brought into the head of this illegitimate son who is determined to secure his financial position.
             To this end, Edmund coldly admits that he is aware of what he is doing. "This is the excellent foppery of the world," Edmund says. "That when we are sick in fortune.we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon and the stars; as if we were villains by necessity" (I.