This brief exchange reminds the audience of Goneril and Regan's dismissal of Lear's actions as those of an old man, unable to decipher or understand the actions around him. And just as Lear condemned the guiltless Cordelia, Gloucester now condemns the innocent Edgar, who has no knowledge of the false letter. The irony of the letter's message — that the old should be displaced — proves true for Gloucester. Clearly, he is not intuitive or quick enough to understand the plotting or undercurrents present around him. Gloucester buys into Edmund's trickery.
Gloucester asserts that the sun and moon play a role in current events. Gloucester absolves himself of any responsibility for his actions by giving power to the stars. Relying on astrological signs makes it easier to accept that Edgar might betray his father: "These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us" (I.2.100–101). This reflection echoes Lear's earlier statement about the astrological influences on man's life: "By all the operation of the orbs / From whom we do exist and cease to be" (I.1.110–111). Both fathers count on the stars to provide an excuse for their children's actions. But Edmund has his own opinion of these astrological signs, of which he says:
This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeits of our own behaviour, we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and stars; as if we were villains on necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves, and teachers by spherical predominance, drunkards, liars and adulterers by an enforc'd obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on. An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star! (I.2.115–125).
Edmund acknowledges that man is ultimately responsible for his actions. This passage also reveals how effectively Edmund is able to work the audience. He succeeds in making his father's beliefs and actions appear foolish. Gloucester's reliance on the stars appears to support Edmund's contention that his father is a witless old man.
