payment page
Edgar, Gloucester’s heir and Edmund’s half-brother, enters the play naïve and innocent, easily duped by Edmund’s scheme. In a clear parallel to Cordelia, Edgar finds himself cast out from his family despite having done nothing wrong and maintaining loyalty to his father. Disenfranchised, he takes on the character of Poor Tom, a mad beggar, in order to hide from Gloucester’s men. Scholars interpret Edgar’s Poor Tom disguise in different ways. As Poor Tom appears before Lear goes out into the storm, we can read Poor Tom as part of the manifestation of chaos the storm represents. As the “natural” born son, Edgar should be the heir to the throne, but Edmund’s scheming has disrupted that order, just as Lear’s daughters abandoning him disrupts the order of filial duty. It’s also possible to read Poor Tom as a reflection of how Edgar feels at this moment. Cast out and abandoned, he is, in fact, little better off than a beggar. His madness represents how his entire world has been destabilized, seemingly arbitrarily.
At the end of the play, Edgar helps restore the natural order. He defeats Edmund, exposes Regan and Goneril’s treachery, and attempts to bring Lear back to power. Nevertheless, much like the uncertainty of who exactly will rule Britain at the end, Edgar’s mental state remains in question. Upon their reunion, Edgar, in the guise of Poor Tom, convinces Gloucester that he is jumping from a cliff. He then confronts his father as Edgar and tells him that he miraculously survived. It is possible to read this deception as staging a kind of rebirth for Gloucester, to help him forgive himself as Edgar has forgiven him. However, we can just as easily see this strange charade as cruel. After confronting Edmund, Edgar suggests that Gloucester’s blinding may have been divine punishment for his adultery (“the dark and vicious place where thee he got / cost him his eyes”), a draconian judgment. Much like his Poor Tom persona, Edgar remains something of a mystery.
