Author's Note: Hello, dear readers! So...yeah, I haven't written anything in a while, and I mean a WHILE: nothing non-academic since I started university at the end of August. That being said, I've started attending weekly writing sessions with a group of friends, and since we were free-writing today, I just blew off an entire one-shot because inspiration finally (THANK F**KING GOD) decided to strike.
I've become very interested in King Lear of late (I'll be doing an independent study on the play in the spring), and the character of Edgar, in particular, fascinated me from the start. The fact that someone who started off with so little discernible personality wound up having a line count exceeded only by Lear himself, and who ended up playing at least five different parts throughout the course of the play, could exist boggled my mind, and I was very disappointed to see how little critical work was written about this enigmatic, dynamic, groundless figure. Naturally, my creative muse couldn't resist.
This story is set shortly after the soliloquy in Act 2, scene 3 ("I heard myself proclaimed, and by the happy hollow of a tree escap'd the hunt"). I also quoted liberally from the play, so...yeah. No real Shakespearean diction, though. My muse wasn't nearly so generous as to offer me that.
Disclaimer: I don't own a single version of King Lear, and trust me, there are a LOT.
Poor Turlygod. Poor Tom. The words echoed incessantly through his mind as he made his way across the heath- steps faltering, flagging, limbs flailing their frenzied way about as though they belonged to some poor beleaguered puppet with its strings limply cut. A damp wind, honed blade-sharp with the biting chill of incipient winter, sliced its merciless way through raw air and skin, the keen, wailing music of its movement a wild note of cacophonous discord in a land plagued everywhere else with silence.
Silence...silence, the absence of sound, absence of living presence, of motion, of speech…. He had seen, had had, too much of that of late, far too much- enough to last five of the good King's lifetimes of four score years. Too much of silence, and too little of life….
A particularly strong gust of wind buffeted him, and wet leaves and gorse flowers, stinking of the rot wrought of late autumn's plague-ridden touch, slapped hard against his muddied chest. Pale, shaking hands, bone-thin and bramble-scratched, flew up with nearly frantic speed to claw the dead things off. Some bestial thing, the snarling scream of a creature in a cage, rose in his throat like bile, choking him in its vehement need to be given voice-! And God knows he tried, truly, he tried, he wished...but his mouth was stopped. Pain rent his very soul asunder, but where any other man would have been able to set it free with roaring voice, he was left only with that wretched silence. A knife to the tongue, a noose to the neck, it wrapped its slinking arms around him in an embrace tighter than that of any lover's, and its caress stole away even the sound of his tears.
X X X
Perhaps it was a fitting conclusion for him, this strange exile: this place where speech had no sound, and feeling no words. A divine punishment, a divine justice, for all the times he'd stood passively by and let others speak for him. Elder-and-legitimate-son he might have been, but politician and courtier he certainly was not; that role was his brother's, and he played it far too well for anyone's liking, like an actor who'd versed himself for so long in his part that it had become akin to his second skin, his second self. Glib, charming Edmund. Edmund with the handsome face, the honey-smooth voice, the silver tongue. Edmund, teller of tales. Edmund, thief of hearts. Edmund, so much the adroit diplomat that were it not for his habitual sullenness of demeanor, his bastardy might have been a thing easily and eagerly forgotten.
He-who-had-been-Edgar (for Edgar was no more, perhaps had never been)...he was none of those things. Neither the crowd-please nor the deft social dancer, he stuttered where Edmund soared, took refuge in dim corners and empty rooms because there were times when it was simply easier to put his voice into the hands of those would could wield it with more eloquence and ease than he could ever hope to do. Easier to hide behind a curtain of silence than to bare himself to his elders' incredulity, his brother's quiet triumph, his father's shame. ...How easy, too, it would be, for that shame to turn to the incandescent rage that had pushed him to this state. Words had power, no matter that they had not been Edgar's words at all, no matter that he knew not what they had been or to whom they'd belonged. Words were- they were born, they lived, they died; they had presence, had impact. Silence? The silence whose captivity he knew so well? It was a nothing, a nonentity. The absence of being. Who could believe something that never had been?
X X X
Truly, it was not so difficult as he'd feared, this business of being mad. Frustration and reminiscence had brought him to his knees, had knotted bloodied fingers into thick, tangled hair dripping mud, but it was weariness that kept him thus prostrate upon the ground, and behind tightly closed eyes, devils danced, without any effort having been put towards their conjuration- devils with his father's face and his brother's voice. Twisted beings, both a temptation and a torment, letting rise a deafening chorus of base desires and ill intents fit to make even the demons of Hell weep. He shivered, not from cold but from the effort of closing his mind to their cries. Desperate hands slid down the lengths of wiry arms, their long and ragged nails gouging bloody tracks into the besmirched flesh. Shy thing, worthless thing, more blushing girl than man, barely fit to speak to swine, the devils hissed, and he struck out at their grotesquely smiling faces with neither thought nor hesitation. They were upon his very body, swarming him like bees at a hive- a sharp stone, a branch of hawthorn, mind pleading drivethemoffpleasepleaseIcan'tbearthemdrivethemoff, soaked skin impervious to the pain of new bruises and shredded punctures as the hellish forms crumpled and fell, slinking wounded and defeated into the recesses of his veins like the vermin they were.
Blood seeped sluggishly from wounds he neither felt nor saw, mingling with the dirt and the mist to paint him in bilious black poison, reeking of savage visions and the life force of an innocent who had no place in this nightmare world of silence and devils with once-loving eyes. Let him be dead, let him be mute, banished, DEAD, and he dug his nails in once more, watched the blood spill out with all the sick fascination of a child. There were words inked into it: all of the paltry questions he'd leveled at his brother and the desperate protestations left unsaid. They all escaped him now, burning as they went and taking the weakness with them, leaving only strength and resolve in the ashes. He laughed, a high, strangled sob of a sound, laughed like the world turned without care as the words fell to the mud to be trapped, buried, forevermore.
Edgar I nothing am. Those were the last to leave, the last to fall, and as they did lightning split the sky and the core of his being with it. The knife fell from his lips, the noose from his throat, and he screamed. No words, but the fevered sound said more than any words ever could, mingled with the moaning wind and the growling thunder to create glorious music- angels breaking open the sky with their tears and burning the world to the ground. He screamed, the world sang and the heavens cried, and the silence was no more.
...I'm sorry if it sucks? I'm very, very rusty when it comes to writing.
I honestly had a lot of fun writing this, and didn't think TOO much about it while I was doing so. I'd love to discuss the play with anyone who's interested, though! I'm always down to geek out over Shakespeare.
Drop me a review, whether you enjoyed this or not! Reviews give me life. :)