Nature in King Lear

Excerpted and summarized from W.H.Auden, King Lear. Lectures on Shakespeare.

Ed. Arthur Kirsch. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, 2000. 219-230.
Types of Nature in King Lear
1. Nature as an individual human beings inborn disposition
2. That which is truly and typically human
Example of both 1 and 2: When Lear calls his daughters unnatural hags (2.4.281)
3. Instinct (as opposed to social law or convention)
Example: Edmund, a natural son, feels he is more deserving than his brother in spite of the social law of
primogeniture.
4. A feeble-minded fool, a natural (who may also be opposed to convention)
Example: The Fool, who is without the gift of reason, may flout social law and may, therefore, often tell the
truth.
5. A personified force of that which endows matter with form
Example: Lears curse against Goneril.
Hear, Nature, hear; dear Goddess, hear:
Suspend thy purpose if thou didst intend
To make this creature fruitful.
Into her womb convey sterility (1.2.283-5).
6. Physical existence contrasted with peoples wishes
Example: Regan brutally tells her father that is old and dying, that Naturestands on the very verge/Of
her confine in him (2.4.149-50).
Types of Nature not found in King Lear
Nature in the sense of inorganic matter is not used in King Lear to contrast with human consciousness.
Such nature is present in the storm, but it is referred to as the heavens, the elements. What is the cause of
thunder, ask Lear, for thunder is regarded as not nature.

In the cosmology of King Lear, Lear refers to the gods

creating the storm, this dreadful pudder oer our headers (3.2.50) and Gloucester says, As flies to wanton
boys are we to th gods./ They kill us for their sport (4.1.36-34-7).
References to Nature in King Lear
Directions: On a matrix or grid, categorize the twenty-five references to nature listed below according to the
six types of nature found in King Lear. The references used as examples in the six types of nature are included
in this list.
1. Lear to his daughters:

Which of your shall we say doth love us most

That we our largest bounty may extend
Where nature doth with merit challenge (1.1.52-54).
2. Edmund announces:
Thou, Nature, art my goddess: to thy law
My services are bound, Wherefore should I
Stand in the plague of custom, and permit
The curiosity of nations to deprive me,
For that I am some twelve or fourteen moonshines
Lag of a brother? (1.2.1-6.
3. Gloucester says:
These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us. Though the wisdom of Nature can
reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself scourged by the sequent effects(1.2.112-115).
4. Lear exiles Kent for coming between our sentence and our power
Which nor our nature nor our place can bear (1.1.173-174).
5. Lear speaks to France of Cordelias being
wretch whom nature is ashamd
Almost t acknowledge hers (1.1.215)
6. And France answers that her offense
Must be of such unnatural degree
That monsters it (1.1.222-23).
7.

Lears curse against Goneril:

Hear, Nature, hear; dear Goddess, hear:
Suspend thy purpose if thou didst intend
To make this creature fruitful.
Into her womb convey sterility (1.2.283-5).

8. Kent meets Oswald before Gloucesters castle and says:

You cowardly rascal, nature disclaims in thee; a tailor made thee (2.2.55-56)
9. Cornwall says that Kent affects
A saucy roughness, and constrains the garb
Quite from his nature (2.2.103-4).
10. Lear at first tries to excuse Cornwalls behavior by saying that
We are not ourselves
When nature, being oppressd, commands the mind
To suffer with the body (2.4.108-10).
11. Regan tells Lear that he is old:
Nature in you stands on the very verge
Of her confine (2.4.149-50).
12. Lear, in pleading with Regan for her care, says that she knows The offices of
childhood better than Goneril (2.4.181)

nature, bond of

13. Lear cries out to Regan:

O, reason, not the need! Our basest beggars
Are in the poorest thing superfluous
Allow not nature more than nature needs,
Mans life is cheap as beasts (2.4.267-70).
14. Lear calls his daughters unnatural hags (2.4.281).
15. Lear tells storm:
Crack Natures moulds, all germains spill at once,
That make ingrateful man! (3.2.8-9)
16. Kent says:
The tyranny of the open nights too rough
For nature to endure (3.4.2-3).
17. Edmund tells Cornwall:
I may be censured, that nature thus gives way to loyalty (3.5.3-4).
18. Lear asks, Is there any cause in nature that makes these hard hearts? (3.6.81-82)
19. Albany says:
You are not worth the dust which the rude wind
Blows in your face! I fear your disposition.
That nature which contemns its origin
Cannot be bordered certain in itself (4.2.29-33).
20. The Doctor says that Our foster nurse of nature is repose (4.4.12)
21. The blinded Gloucester meets Lear and exclaims
O ruined piece of nature! (4.6.137).
22. Lear says:
I am even
The natural fool of fortune (4.6.194-95)
23. The gentleman proclaims that Lear has
. . .one daughter
who redeems nature from the general curse
Which twain have brought her to (4.6.209-11).
24. Cordelia asks the gods to Cure this great breach in Lears absurd nature (4.7.15).
25. Edmund says:
Some good I mean to do,
Despite of mine own nature (5.3.243-244).