King Lear

         We are not ourselves

When nature, being oppressed, commands the mind

To suffer with the body.

––William Shakespeare, King Lear (2.2.296-298)

 

The discourse of King Lear and its complexity relating to Nature has not been a silent one. The quote––in which Lear does not refer to the physical world with “nature”, but human nature–– does carry with it associations as to how Lear’s view of the natural lies at the core of the play. The idea of Lear “not” being himself in his suffering calls to the way in which the forces of human nature, and really the natural world itself, “commands” him. Simon Estok writes regarding the destruction of Lear’s identity due to the dominance of Nature over him: “Lear, controlled by rather than in control of everything––especially (and most dramatically) the natural environment­­––loses his identity when he loses his ability to control spatial worth.” (24) The once powerful Lear, king of Britain, witnesses his power crumble before him in Shakespeare’s tragedy as he finds himself in contention without a sense of identity and belonging. The way in which Lear does “suffer” in the play illustrates a man forced to grapple with new questions of self-understanding and value with the loss of his kingship.

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In King Lear, the spaces that Lear occupies have a substantial effect on the changes in his highly vulnerable character. Beginning from his political control in the court, we transition to the storm on the heath, his madness on the Dover Cliff, returning to the court for his death at the end. We can call into question how Shakespeare utilizes these differing locations to expand––and evidently, to contract––Lear’s development as a character, father, king, and human. The decomposition of his sovereignty, and his tendency to cling to that absent power, becomes ever-present in his interactions with nature and the spaces that he exists in. Shakespeare employs sensory language––often relating to touch to present the way that bodies (particularly Lear’s) are manipulated or controlled within the play’s different spaces. In this essay, I will analyze these different locations that are presented in the play––and Lear’s interactions with them––so that we may accumulate deeper insight into understanding King Lear and what Maynard Mack once described as Lear’s “pilgrimage” that gains for him a certain “ripeness through suffering and struggle, only to die.” (Mack 117)

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As we assess the interactions of Lear with natural spaces, specifically on the Heath and the Dover Cliff mentioned later, an ecocritical lens proves beneficial in evaluating their implications. Not existing simply as an assessment of the natural elements, Estok writes that ecocriticism seeks out “effecting change by analyzing the function– thematic, artistic, social, historical, ideological, theoretical, or otherwise– of the natural environment”. (110) The obsession for control, and Lear’s anxiety of having lost it, links to Estok’s mention of “ecophobia”. Defined by a “fear of a loss of agency of control over Nature”, ecophobia and the “groundless hatred of the natural world” aligns itself with the fears regarding power in the play. In several moments do we see a certain angst towards the natural that rises from Lear’s uncertainty of power. However, it is not sufficient to describe Lear as wholly ecophobic. Lear’s initial condescension and frustration toward Nature can serve as reference points in the greater scheme of his sporadic shifts in character as he combats his griefs, confusions, and madness which culminate in his death. The changes, consistencies, and inconsistencies of Lear’s philosophies influenced by his presence in these different spaces serve to speak on his “pilgrimage” and the questioned “ripeness” at his time of death.

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Beginning in the space of the court––the first scenes of the play––Elizabeth Gruber writes that when “he surrenders his land, Lear initiates a process of de-materialization that culminates in his death.” (104) It is in division of his kingdom and the passing of his sovereignty to his daughters that we find the initiation of Lear’s loss of self. His breakup of the kingdom immediately displaces his identity, which according to Gruber is “intimately bound up with land”. (104). Not only is it Lear’s identity that binds itself with the land of the kingdom, but his own physical body as well. It can be said that the body of Lear which later becomes displaced and without shelter in the storm is integrated with this body of land that, with his kingship, he once could freely control, divide, and bestow.

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In gifting Goneril land “with champaigns riched / […] and wide-skirted meads” and Regan that “No less in space, validity and pleasure”, Lear metaphorically severs himself (his body and sovereignty) from the land that his identity depends on. (1.1.64-65, 81) The tragedy of Lear seems to stem from his certainty that his sovereignty as a father differs from his sovereignty as a king. The power granted within the space of the royal court and within the land of the country sets up Lear for the “de-materialization” of his mind and body after parting from it. Henry Turner posits that the presence of the map which charts the land of his kingdom in this scene “demonstrates […] Lear’s power not simply to distribute space but to control its very representation.” (171) Lear’s firm belief in his controlling grasp of the spaces around him prove important as charting his initial views of the world around him while also explaining his difficulty adapting to the events that follow proceed in the course drama.

 

Sensory language relating to the body is demonstrated in the court when Lear curses Goneril, commanding the “dear goddess” of “Nature”: (1.4.267)

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            Into her womb convey sterility,

            Dry up in her the organs of increase

And from her derogate body never spring

A babe to honour her.

                                    […]that she may feel

How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is

To have a thankless child. (1.4.270-273, 279-281)

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 Lear’s harsh reactions stem from an anxiety to recover his lost identity that is now controlled by Goneril and Regan, uncovering prevalent misogyny in these bursts of rage. Lear, who commands “Nature” to “convey sterility” in his own daughter, displays the marriage of religion with the natural world. Paul A. Cantor writes: “Lear believes that the natural and divine orders are one and the same, and both are aligned with human justice and law.” (232) To him, the supernatural forces coinciding with “Nature” are merely pawns of the land that he is no longer his. He thinks himself at liberty to order this “entity”, which Gruber tags as “Nature” in this context, to carry out his personal wishes. (107)

The passage presents Lear’s belief in not only his control over the women who now rule his land, but over their bodies and the physiological functions of them. Estok writes that in Lear, “Women are discursively, politically, and materially analogous with Nature”. (23) This ecocritical link, which may similarly be tokened as ecofeminist according to Estok, certainly positions Lear’s outburst against Goneril as an ecophobic one. His retaliation against her indicates his fear of the rapidly deteriorating agency over the world around him. From this fear, he rashly orders the divine qualities of “Nature” to reassert his dominance by invading the body of Goneril; he seeks to force her to empathize with his irrational behavior in the court with his band of knights.

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As his relations with Goneril and Regan worsen, Lear exclaims he would rather be cast out of the court space “To be a comrade with the wolf and owl”. (2.2.398) Gruber notes that this is followed shortly by Lear’s assertion that “Man’s life is cheap as beast’s.”, which points directly to the “Chain of Beings”. (2.2.456) (Gruber 110) The contradictory claim reinforces the conception of superiority for Lear and the natural world. Although he seeks a comradery, an equalness, with the “wolf and owl”, his ideology of the power over nature remains unchanged. Lear does, however, describe “Necessity’s sharp pinch!” when speaking of his comradery with the two animals. (2.2.399) This tactile pain of a “pinch” may be read as the reaction to survive intrinsic and reactionary in beings when confronted with the combative forces of Nature. Lear finds himself pinched in the scenes of the storm.

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Moving now to the space of the Heath, the homeless Lear is without any glimpse of power. Wandering in the environment that was once, by law, possessed by him, he is now entirely vulnerable to nature during the storm. The “nothing” that was proclaimed by Cordelia at the start of the play, playing in her banishment, now relates to Lear who is left with no shelter or connection to his daughters, or of human society in general. (1.1.90) The storm becomes the “sharp pinch” that opens the possibility for change in Lear’s conceptions of Nature and the environment. It is also where Lear becomes most foreign to his identity. Estok writes:

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In the worst of the storm, […] Lear sees homelessness as being the plight of other people in other places and not of himself where he is. […] he remains unable to see accurately. He is unable to see that home has become an impossibility for him. The ability to control space is what enables the possession of home. (25)

 

It is certainly true that Lear’s inability to control a space of his own pairs with his homelessness and lacking identity. In this moment, Lear is without a home, ironically at the expense of the unforgiving land that he once reigned over. However, Estok seems to overlook the implications of Lear’s connection to the storm itself. He accepts the storm’s dominance over him, calling it to wash over “ingrateful man”. (3.2.9) Lear succumbs to the storm, and Nature itself where he exclaims, “I never gave you kingdom, called you children; / You owe me no subscription. Why then, let fall / Your horrible pleasure. Here I stand your slave”. (3.2.16) This can prove indicative of a closer integration and acceptance between Lear and the natural world–– an acceptance that may be indicative of him closer to restoring his disheveled identity and opening the possibility for his relocation into a home space. 

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Of course, being removed from the court offers him no choice but to be within the storm. However, allowing himself to be a “slave”, rather than contending or resisting it, demonstrates a minute change in Lear’s perception, could serve as the “sharp pinch” that may incite further development after he has emerged from it. Although he cannot control this space, Lear’s acceptance of the storm makes for the argument that this does become something of a home space for him. Although he understands himself as a “slave” to the tempest, he continues to harp on the ingratitude of his three daughters, who he believes “owe” him “subscription. Here, Lear is at the bottom of the “Chain of Beings” that Gruber has mentioned, but he has not realized it.

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As the connection of land and body was mentioned before, an important link comes during Lear’s moment of empathy before being taken by Kent to the nearby hovel with the Fool. Shakespeare uses the sensory imagery of how the “contentious storm / Invades us to the skin” to emphasize again the susceptibility of his body to the storm. (3.4.7-8) It also may call back to Lear’s summoning of Nature to “convey sterility” in Goneril. Gruber sees “Nature” to be “a force that takes up residence in a human body”. (105) In this sense, Lear’s divided body out on the heath experiences a forced integration with Nature, which he once believe himself capable of dictating. The “contentious storm” forces his reflection that “When the mind’s / free / The body’s delicate: this tempest in my mind / Doth from my senses take all feeling else”. (3.4.11-15) Understanding the weak, vulnerability of both his mind and body within the storm and on the heath––all while still harping upon the “filial ingratitude” of his daughters (l.16)––prompts a moment of empathy toward those unfortunate “houseless heads and unfed sides” that constantly suffer like he has. (3.4.30) Nature, having removed him even further from his lost identity is what allows for Lear the knowledge that “heavens” should be “more just”. (3.4.36)

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The storm is not meant to signify an immediate rotation in Lear’s personality and humanity. He is still largely problematic, misogynistic, and even ecophobic after being bound closer to the forces of Nature in this scene. However, while Estok says that “his grand existentialism” of the world around him “is a failure to perceive his own identity accurately”, it should be said that the expectation for the recovery of his identity cannot be held so sharply. (25) In the arc of the play, where the storm scenes may fall at the center of the action, it is persuading to assume that in any existing redemption arc of Lear, he would logically turn his disdaining ways around after his extremely pitiful suffering in the storm. His “failure” to find his identity here should not allow for writing off of any possible self-connection. While he is still deluded by his notion of power, control, and perception of identity, his susceptibility to the storm and empathy on the heath indicate an altered connection with Nature and the society around him. It is this kind of change in vision and scope, that which he lacked in the court, that can shift Lear’s “pilgrimage”, as Mack described, to a point of “ripeness” before his death in the court again at the end Shakespeare’s play. He is not there, but demonstrates a change in ideology through the suffering of his body and in his lack of connection to any space.

We may now note Lear in the time after he has remained on the heath and in the hovel, in which he meets Edgar and the blinded Gloucester on the Dover Cliff. Crowned with flowers, Lear entering on the stage directions “mad” can only be reported by Edgar as a “side-piercing sight”.(4.6.79 SD, l.85) To this Lear responds: “Nature’s above art in that respect.” (4.6.86) At this point in the play, Lear is at his most inconsistent, sporadic, and nonsensical. And while Edgar really refers to the emotional pain of seeing Lear in this pitiful state, Lear’s comment on the beauty of Nature’s sights compared to the imitation of them in artistic reproduction indicates some sign of reverence and respect for the natural.

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Lear looks to establish “peace” between himself and a “mouse” with a “piece of toasted cheese” that will unite the creatures with the same sense of comradery as the “wolf and owl” that he had only nominally mentioned earlier in his rants to his daughters. (4.6.89) R.A. Foakes indicates in his Arden that Lear is “trying to catch the mouse”, which then brings once again Lear’s nagging lust for power and control, as he also offers his ”gauntlet” to incite battle between the two. Although speaking madly, and seemingly shattered by the weight of the storm, Lear does still crave sovereignty, even over the smallest beings. While cognitive that he cannot conquer the divine or temperate forces of Nature witnessed in the storm, he may in fact rule over those lower on the Chain of Beings, such as a mouse, and capitalizes on the chance.

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This delusion of power is now embodied by the crown of flowers, commenting on Lear’s tendency to attempt to regain sovereignty over the spaces that he occupies. Coming after his empathy and desire to “shake the superflux” of luxury and inequality while he is in the storm, it is of note that he must adorn himself with the crown of flowers at all. (3.4.36) Cantor writes about the role of clothing that does not serve a utilitarian role to humans, but rather highlights the “human urge to transcend the level of the mere body.” (247) His adornment of the crown, while not exactly luxurious, does strive to “transcend” and distinguish his body in some way from the space around him.

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Compared to Estok’s point that Lear is “completely” out of “touch” in the storm, it is really on the cliff that his return to his senses, and to really any space of home or recovery of identity, would seem most unlikely. The moral clarity he may have gained after enduring the storm seems to have vanished in his madness. He continues to see himself as “every inch a king” despite being the pitiful and “side-piercing sight” that Edgar renders him as. (4.6.106) When he does “stare”, we are to “see how the subject quakes.” (4.6.107) If this is directed at the blinded Gloucester, who cannot see him, Lear’s conception that his kingly gaze may incite trembling is also completely nonsensical. Gloucester may rather tremble at the immense grief he himself also has suffered from Edmund and the invasion of his own body when he is blinded. Lear is in no sense, and by no “inch”, a king here. He is not a king in court, and he is not a king in Nature.

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While he is largely completely detached from his sense of self, Lear’s complexity as a character is reinforced through minute moments of rationality and sensibility that are often marred by his recurring outbursts. Lear compares the female body to “centaurs” where he exclaims:

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Down from the waist they are

centaurs, though women all above. But to the girdle do

the gods inherit, beneath is all the fiend’s: there’s hell,

there’s darkness, there is the sulphurous pit, burning,

scalding, stench, consumption! (4.6.121-125)

 

The animalistic comparison of women to the “centaur” continues his ecophobia over his control of the world that has been left in the hands of women, specifically his daughters, who by patriarchal conventions, should revere him and his power asserted over them. Now that he knows he cannot control the divine or command the goddess of Nature to assert dominance over his inferiors (praying for Goneril’s barrenness), Lear instead expresses his loathing of all women. Surely, Lear has been mistreated by his daughters and has suffered in his displacement. However, the inconsistency of his personality and the reemergence of his ecophobic power trip are what contribute to the great difficulty that his “pilgrimage” faces in ever attaining normalcy.

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The inconsistencies of Lear’s personality are more prevalent than any other point in the play when he is mad on the Cliff. Shifting from his combat against the mouse and his misogynistic outburst, we do find some seeming understanding of Lear’s self. When Gloucester asks to “kiss that hand” of Lear, he replies: “Let me wipe it first, it smells of mortality.” (4.6.128-129) According to Holly Dugan, Lear’s exclamation that he is “every inch a king” is “strongly contradicted by his smell”. (Dugan 140) The smell of death itself, is what Dugan links with the common “smell of death” that, in the early modern period, “was constant and present” and “a part of everyday life.” (137, 135) This smell is “constant” for Lear. Dugan links the scents of death with the scent of “decomposition”, and Lear’s tribulations throughout the play may render the association of Lear as almost being corpse-like from his division of land that, as previously noted, is bound with his body. (136) He is decaying at an alarming rate from the point of parting with his kingdom, and the smell of that decay at Lear’s saddest point in the drama, is most pungent. Lear is understanding of his death––his “mortality”––which may well be the most natural attribute for any living being. Even for the maddest or most deluded, there is no controlling death. Dugan posits that Lear’s “anointed power of touch” is undone “with its smell”. (150) His body’s attempt to attain a tactile grasp on the space and environment around him is overpowered by the deathly smell of his “decomposition”. As Gloucester puts it: “O ruined piece of nature, this great world / Shall so wear out to naught.” (4.6.130-131)

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The acknowledgement of his “decomposition” here does demonstrate some indication of connection to his sense. His rage, hatred, and madness intertwined with his moments of rationality and metacognition are what further dislocate his identity, making it so challenging to return fully to one or the other. This is not only difficult in Lear’s conception, but for that of the reader and audience of Shakespeare’s play. At the Cliff, Lear finds himself in a mental limbo brought on by his struggle to understand himself and the world around him.

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Being taken from the heath, removed from the natural world, he is then placed back into the world of the court. Lear becomes reunited with Cordelia, and the space that he was once most familiar with. He finds himself reemerging from the madness he experienced on the heath and is struck by wonder at his daughter’s return. Being captured by Edmund, Lear demonstrates his true “ripeness” and full transition away from his powerless anxieties now that he has become connected again to Cordelia. He establishes his found security in space and identity where he states: “Come, let’s away to prison / We two alone will sing like bird i’the cage. When thou dost ask me blessing I’ll kneel down / And ask of thee forgiveness.” (5.3.8-11)  At this point, in his reconnection to Cordelia, Lear is accepting of his imprisonment under Edmund. His dream that they will “live / And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh / At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues / talk of court news” indicates a new perspective on what his connection to his environment and space will look like. (5.3.11-14)

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Lear does not view captivity as restrictive of his power that he no longer has but rather finds enjoyment now that he is empathetic and cognitive of his mistreatment of others. This moment is Lear’s true division of his power, and an open acceptance of the forces around him. It is also this same acceptance that may identify the prison as Lear’s home space. Although he is under captivity and cannot “control space” that would define a home like Estok has pointed out, his willingness and excitement to “live”––despite being in a prison––contrasts starkly with his battles against control, “mortality”, and the environment that has deteriorated him throughout the play. The conception of being in control of a space to establish a home for our identities might benefit by being flipped to be seen as a co-existence of our identity and the space inhabit when we think of what makes a home. It is not Lear who needs to dominate and manipulate space so much as he may need to be equal to it––whether it is a prison or a royal court.

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The connection of the body is also paralleled in their closeness and proximity at this moment in the play, where Lear embraces Cordelia.

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He that parts us shall bring a brand from heaven,

And fire us hence like foxes. Wipe thine eyes;

The good years shall devour them, flesh and fell,

Ere they shall make us weep! (5.3.22-25)

 

 According to John Danby, Cordelia is “standing for Nature herself”. (20) While not sufficient to say she must embody all of Nature, the connection can be made that through their new inseparability, Cordelia will bring new life to the decomposed Lear––restoring his body that was broken down in his loss of land, identity, and power. He no longer harps on what has been done wrong to him by Goneril and Regan in the past, and instead looks to his new and enriching life with Cordelia, despite the non-luxurious circumstances. The bright future that “shall devour” the traumatic past emphasizes Lear’s new perceptions and his acknowledgement of his own wrongdoing. When Cordelia answered “nothing” in Lear’s love test, there was the gift of land at stake. Now, in this moment between the two at the end, there is more materialistic “nothing” that is shared between them given their loss of power to the English. They will be sent to prison and are held captive without any royalty or power that they once held, which is far less than their fortunes at the play’s beginning. However, it is the change in their relationship at the end, and Lear’s connection to a more profound self-knowledge, that adds an enriching substance to the “nothing” of wordy love proclamations or gifts of land, power, and royalty.

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            It is then Edmund who interrupts Lear’s regeneration with the ordered killing of Cordelia and Lear in prison. Edmund, calling upon his “goddess” of “Nature” as well in Act 1 to align “himself with beasts […] as against custom, morality and order” according to the Arden, takes upon a malicious animalism against throughout the play. (1.2.1) (Foakes 179) Reminiscent of Lear’s contentious declaration of battle on the mouse, Edmund submits to his “goddess” of Nature, not for the blessing or intervention of the divine, but for his purposes to enact plans against Gloucester. Edmund hopes to validated himself and his own fractured sense of identity in not being “legitimate”. (1.2.18)

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The death of Cordelia, the most crushing tragedy of Shakespeare’s play, destroys Lear entirely and mitigates all that he has endured in his “pilgrimage” on the heath and the Dover Cliff. Reentering with her in his arms, Lear exclaims certainty of her death: “I know when one is dead and when one lives; / She’s dead as earth.” (5.3.259-260) Seeing that Edmund has assumed the role of a beast to combat “morality”, Cordelia’s death may read as a final cruel assertion of Nature’s power over Lear, who had previously attempted to demonstrate his command and superiority to it. Although Lear had once reached a point of joy and reconcile, his self-regeneration is cut entirely. Seeming to have been escaped from Nature’s dominating grasp that Estok has pointed to as contributing to his downfall, it is now clear that although having reached his point of “ripeness” in his humanity at the beginning of the final scene, Lear’s identity is once again shattered. This time, it stays that way.

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As Edmund states that the events of the play “come full circle”, it does so for Lear as well. (5.3.171)  In his last breaths, Lear asks to the men to “Look on her”, in the possibility that Cordelia’s lips move, signaling that she may be alive, and dies himself. (5.3.310) Lear has decomposed entirely, and he too is “dead as earth”, fully integrated with Nature like Cordelia as well as Goneril and Regan, who have died off stage.

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The arc of Lear in Shakespeare’s play does find redemption, a “ripeness”, yet has it pulled out from under Lear shortly after he finds the reconnection and relocation of his home, body, and identity. Shakespeare’s utilization of language relating to nature, the senses, and the body help chart Lear’s progression and regression over the course of the play and is able to allow for a better perception towards the immensely complicated philosophies of existence produced in the tragedy. King Lear not only comments on identity and power, but the ways in which people attempt to grasp their lack of it. Lear’s flaws––his anxiety for control, misogyny, ecophobia––are challenged by a desire to overcome the difficulties in understanding himself and those around him. As we track these moments of difficulty and complexity in Lear’s character within the court, in the storm, and on the Cliff, Shakespeare reminds us of the ways in which theatre and literature can simultaneously transcend and ground our perceptions of humanity––and the earth that we experience it all on.

 

Works Cited

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Shakespeare, William. King Lear. Edited by R.A. Foakes, Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2021

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Estok, Simon C. “Shakespeare and Ecocriticism: An Analysis of ‘Home’ and ‘Power’ in King Lear.” AUMLA: Journal of the Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association, vol. 103, May 2005, pp. 15–41. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,sso&db=mzh&AN=2005361301&site=eds-live&scope=site.

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Mack, Maynard. King Lear in Our Time. University of California Press, 1965. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,sso&db=cat09207a&AN=umf.oai.edge.fivecolleges.folio.ebsco.com.fs00001006.0a67c236.e31d.5628.99bd.cd3bf7af144f&site=eds-live&scope=site.

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Gruber, Elizabeth D. “Nature on the Verge : Confronting ‘Bare Life’ in Arden of Faversham and King Lear.” Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, vol. 22, no. 1, Jan. 2015, pp. 98–114. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,sso&db=edsjsr&AN=edsjsr.26569527&site=eds-live&scope=site.

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Estok, Simon. “An Introduction to Shakespeare and Ecocriticism: The Special Cluster.” Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, vol. 12, no. 2, July 2005, pp. 109–17. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,sso&db=edsjsr&AN=edsjsr.44086432&site=eds-live&scope=site.

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Danby, John. Shakespeare’s Doctrine of Nature: A Study of King Lear. Faber and Faber, 1948

Cantor, Paul A. “The cause of thunder: Nature and justice in King Lear”. King Lear : New Critical Essays. Edited by Jeffrey Kahan, Routledge, 2008. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,sso&db=cat09207a&AN=umf.oai.edge.fivecolleges.folio.ebsco.com.fs00001006.8bc2d40d.bb6c.54ed.98c3.ea42b36199ac&site=eds-live&scope=site.