THE PROGRESSION OF NATURE IN KING LEAR

BY: JAMES BRUTON, LEE WRIGHT, MATTHEW MCCULLEY, TAYLER RICHARDSON

QUOTE #1

• “It may be so, my lord./ Hear, Nature, hear; dear Goddess, hear:/ Suspend thy purpose if thou didst intend/ To make this creature fruitful./ Into her womb convey sterility,/ dry up in her organs of increase,/ and from her derogate body never spring/ a babe to honor her.” pg. 34. Act 1, Scene 4.

• In this instance, early on in the play, Lear has committed some very unnatural actions of his own, however he accuses Cordelia, the most natural of them all, of unnaturalness. He disowned her because he believed her natural love for him wasn’t enough.

QUOTE #2

• “Poor naked wretches, wheresoe’er you are,/ . . . How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,/ Your looped and windowed raggedness, defend/ you/ From seasons such as these? O, I have ta’en/ Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp;/ Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,/ That thou mayst shake the superflux to them,/ And show the heavens more just.” pg. 76. Act 3, Scene 4.

• Lear is beginning to shift towards more natural behavior, e.g. caring if his subjects are dying out in the elements. On the other hand, he is beginning to go crazy, as demonstrated by his unnatural desire to go out in the storm and take off all of his clothes.

QUOTE #3

• “We two alone will sing like birds i’ the’ cage:/ When thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down/ And ask of thee forgiveness: so we’ll live,/ And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh. . .”

• Lear has finally realized that he was wrong to disown Cordelia; he knows that she is his most loving and least homicidal daughter. He would rather be happy with her in prison than be unhappy with his freedom, which is the more natural decision (or so Shakespeare would have us believe).

THEME

• The natural order of the world can be easily subverted by hasty decisions and selfishness, leading to chaos and destruction, though order, and by extension peace, can be restored through reason.