He would have been, in fact, mad. Regan and Goneril are the only
pictures of the unnatural in Shakspeare; the pure unnatural--and you will
observe that Shakspeare has left their hideousness unsoftened or
diversified by a single line of goodness or common human frailty. Whereas
in Edmund, for whom passion, the sense of shame as a bastard, and ambition,
offer some plausible excuses, Shakspeare has placed many redeeming traits.
Edmund is what, under certain circumstances, any man of powerful intellect
might be, if some other qualities and feelings were cut off. Hamlet is,
inclusively, an Edmund, but different from him as a whole, on account of
the controlling agency of other principles which Edmund had not.
It is worth while to remark the use which Shakspeare always makes of his
bold villains as vehicles for expressing opinions and conjectures of a
nature too hazardous for a wise man to put forth directly as his own, or
from any sustained character.
[Footnote 1: Act iii. sc. 2.]
[Footnote 2: Act iv. sc. 3.:--
"ANT. Not far from where my father lives, a lady,
A neighbour by, bless'd with as great a beauty
As nature durst bestow without undoing,
Dwelt, and most happily, as I thought then,
And bless'd the home a thousand times she dwelt in.
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