What About Oswald?

Oswald is Goneril’s henchman. In Act One, he gets beat up by Kent and mocked by the King and his knights. In Act Two, Kent beats him again, threatens him at sword-point, and subjects him to the longest, most outrageous litany of insults ever penned:

"A Knave, a Rascal, an eater of broken meats, a base, proud, shallow, beggerly, three-suited-hundred pound, filthy worsted-stocking knave, a Lily-livered, glass-gazing super-serviceable Rogue, one-trunk-inheriting slave, one that would be a Bawd in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a Whoreson, Begger, Coward, Pandar, and the Son and Heir of a Mongrel Bitch, one whom I will beat into clamourous whining, if thou deny the least syllable of thy addition."

Later, Oswald is attacked and killed by Edgar while trying to deliver love letters across a battlefield (from the obsessive Goneril to the sociopathic Edmund). With his dying words, he asks Edgar to kindly deliver the letters, if he gets the chance. In his heart, he always wanted to be a postman.

What did he do to deserve all these indignities? He was rude to the King. Of course, Goneril asked him to do it, so he was just following orders. Except...he was really good at being rude to the King. He liked it.

I have to say, I love Oswald, and I think he’s an underrated bad guy part. He usually gets played as oily and effeminate, but I kind of see him as a seedy Basil Fawlty, a butler or steward who has to put up with the noisiest, rudest, most evil and/or insane guests in history. He never makes it onto the side of angels, but he squeezes into the “more sinned against than sinning” category because his only real crime was snobbery.

Mind you, it was armed snobbery...and, some of the later scenes near the battlefield might even count as highway snobbery.