Explication de texte: KING LEAR Edmond / Gloucester 1.2. 1-78 MS. Karima LAHCEN

Introduction:
The passage we are to examine is the first part of scene 2 Act I. of King Lear comes right after the exposition scene which is long, intense and crowded. This scene begins with Edmund standing alone engaged in a soliloquy on stage and then he is joined by his father Gloucester. He is the protagonist of the scene. It also triggers off the subplot of Gloucester and his two sons. We can divide this excerpt into two movements. In the first one, Edmond figuratively asks Nature why society sees him as inferior to his brother and reveals his plan to undermine his position and in a second movement he puts this plan into execution. These two movements create a progression from theory to practice and reveal a shift from margin to centre, from bastardy to legitimacy, and from art to artfulness. This fluctuation reveals that in this passage as in the rest of the play there are series of crises: a crisis of space, of identity and of the logos. Therefore, I will try to analyze how this instability and fluctuation is articulated and for what end?
In my first part, I will show that we are dealing with a paradoxical scene. Edmond the marginal stands alone in the centre of the stage and confesses his will to move to the centre of power.

My first part is entitled:
I. From the margin to the centre: I will discuss first the notion of space metaphysical/political/ and social and secondly the value of justice.

Edmond’s deceptive enterprise depends on something he calls nothing and this will lead me to my second part:

II. The quality of nothing or the staging of deceit: we will see that the confines of knowledge are not clear and that there is scarcely any difference between knowing something and knowing nothing. If Knowledge is at stake in the play, so is staging; where