Commentary on Act 1 sc 2
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Edmund Remember we last saw Edmund at the beginning of scene 1 - spoken about, well-nigh silent himself, observed and passive.  In this scene we will discover what that silence and passivity concealed - resentment, an active intelligence, an active evil.
The figure of 'the bastard' was a stock-figure in Elizabethan drama for a villain.  Edmund is a villain, and so follows the stereotype, but Shakespeare is careful to give him his own pronounced character, and to give some measure of substance to his complaints.  (As with Goneril and Regan, Edmund is both evil but also has some grounds for his resentment.)
Thou, Nature... This is a prayer - but a 'mock' prayer: to what degree does Edmund 'believe' in Nature, what does Nature mean to him?
It's a recurrent moment in King Lear - characters calling upon their gods.  We've already seen Lear do this in the last scene.  What are the gods to the characters?  They are a way of giving sense to human experience, an explanation: they are also a way of calling upon a more than human power.  But remember that this is a 'pagan' play acted within Christian Elizabethan England - for the audience these gods called upon, speculated about, praised and blamed, do not exist: the play takes place before any Christian revelation, any chance of access to the 'Truth' - so in that sense it takes place in a godless world, really. (Does Cordelia ever call upon any god?  I can't think of any example - though I may be wrong! Cordelia doesn't need the gods in the way the other characters do - it is as though she's a Christian before her time, and at times it seems in certain ways her story is almost 'Christ-like in its innocence and suffering)
Edmund is the direct opposite to Cordelia - but he also doesn't need gods in the way the other characters do.  As this soliloquy will make clear - he believes in nothing, and depends only upon his own actions to succeed.
Nature is a rich and complex word throughout the play, picking up multiple meanings, according to character and situation.  Edmund's sense of Nature is the most reductive as will be clear from this soliloquy:  Nature to him is what actually, really exists separate to human illusions and made-up rules.  Although he says: 'to thy law my services are bound', Edmund is using 'law' ironically, empty of meaning: he recognises no restrictions to his behaviour - or, if he does recognise a law, it is only the 'law' that you should look after number one, the 'law of the jungle' (though this latter phrase is a 19th century phrase).
..the plague of custom.. Why should he be deprived (of any place in society) by 'custom', the arbitrary practices of society, and those arbitrary arrangements are to him a mere nuisance, a 'plague'.  The question form of the sentence suggests Edmund's use of his reason : he is using his intelligence to question, to see through all those practices in society which most people follow blindly, merely because they have always been so.  Edmund's character suggests an active intelligence - although that intelligence is driven by resentment.
..the curiosity of nations.. These social arrangements, all these fine, fussy distinctions, are to Edmund empty: why should a difference of a few months make all the difference between what is possible for Edgar and what is possible for him?  (isn't there some substance to Edmund's question: why should the accident of birth make all the difference?  I suspect a 20th century audience might be more easily placed to feel sympathy with the gist of his questions - since such critical questioning lies behind the general commitment this century to try to provide as much equality of opportunity as possible, and the feeling that only some such commitment can legitimate (make fair) the different fates that individuals have in their lives)
At the time, there would perhaps be less automatic sympathy.  Think of Kent's I'll teach you differences (said when knocking Oswald down for his insolence to Lear in Act 1 scene 4) - for Kent, and for a whole strand of thought in Elizabethan (and later) social thought, what is important in maintaining society's well-being is precisely maintaining these intrinsic differences between people: society depends on clear, unchanging distinctions between different social levels.
What Edmund is complaining of more particularly was a genuine social problem in the hierarchical society of Elizabethan England: given the general practice of 'primogeniture' (the practice of leaving the family's lands to the eldest born son), what place was there for younger sons?  Edmund, of course,  is doubly disadvantaged: not only younger, but also illegitimate.
base 'base' was a word often applied to illegitimate children: it's a word which suggests not only social position but also the value of an individual in himself - in both cases, the lowest of the low.  Not only is Edmund deprived of the chance of inheritance, but he is also despised by society - adding insult to injury, perhaps.
my dimensions.. Edmund uses the argument that in himself (in terms of body and mind) there is no distinction between him and someone legitimate.  The social distinction, depending on no intrinsic difference, is then something merely tacked on, for no reason.
Indeed, Edmund will go on from saying that there is no difference to saying if anyone has the physical and mental advantage it is the illegitimate child - since, because of the lusty stealth of nature involved in the conception of the illegitimate child, the resulting child will have more energy.  (it was an available idea at the time that the character, health, well-being, intelligence etc of the child was set by the quality of the love-making which resulted in the child's conception.  A child produced in adultery was more likely to be produced by fully involved parents ( remember Gloucester's there was good sport at his making ) than a legitimate child conceived in the stale and tired sexual relations of marriage.
Note in Edmund's word fops a contempt for the legitimate, answering that contempt which he believes the legitimate world has for him.
..brand they us with base Edmund's repetition of these words suggests two things perhaps: (i) the more he repeats the words, the more they break down into mere sounds.  How strange it is that a mere sound should have such repercussions on a life!  How arbitrary it is.  Edmund is another of the characters in King Lear who is conscious of language.  But whereas Cordelia is aware of language as the medium in which only truth should be spoken, for Edmund language is a weightless series of sounds - empty, not to be believed in, and so he has no problem in saying anything he likes: language is just there to be manipulated.
(ii) Edmund is almost masochistically lingering on the insults he feels he has received - working himself up, fuelling his own resentment, in order to give him the determination to make his decision about what he now must do.
Well then For Edmund, the conclusions that follow from his thoughts so far in the soliloquy follow clearly: there is no anguish about what he intends to do - destroy his brother.  It is not a difficult decision.  Edmund has no pity or guilt about it.
Edmund suggests someone who is clever but without feeling.  He shows no regret about the consequences of his actions or the suffering they cause on those who should be closest to him.  Only right at the end, when Goneril and Regan have killed each other as a result of competing over him, he says as though stunned: Yet Edmund was belov'd.  It is as though he had never previously thought that that might be possible - and it is only then that he tries to do some good: save Lear and Cordelia.
Legitimate Edgar Edmund, over the next four lines repeats the word 'legitimate' four times - doing with it what he had earlier done with 'base' - repeating it and emptying it of meaning, making it ironic - because the word in itself will have no power to save Edgar.
I grow, I prosper Not 'I will grow...: it is not an intention, but a statement of fact.  Edmund has perfect confidence in the force of his will: what he intends, happens.
..stand up for bastards Edmund's prayer is ironic in several ways (i) given what he intends to do, it is a kind of joke asking the gods to help him (ii) it makes ironic, mocks, the way more moral people in society use calls upon the gods: he is repeating the way people 'should' behave - and in so doing, perverting it. (iii) Edmund, as a believer in the power of his own will-power, actually needs no help he thinks from anyone.
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