King Lear Nature Quotes

Let it be so. Thy truth, then, be thy dower,
For by the sacred radiance of the sun,
The mysteries of Hecate and the night,
By all the operation of the orbs
From whom we do exist, and cease to be,
Here I disclaim all my paternal care,
Propinquity, and property of blood,
And as a stranger to my heart and me
Hold thee, from this, for ever. The barbarous Scythian,
Or he that makes his generation messes
To gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom
Be as well neighboured, pitied, and relieved
As thou my sometime daughter.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 1, Scene 1. Lear flies into a rage at Cordelia’s stubborn refusal to flatter him and play ball with his love test charade. Her truth will be her only inheritance, he tells her. He calls on the natural forces of the sun, moon and planets to assist in his disowning of Cordelia. Lear promises to treat her "as a stranger to my heart" (simile). He compares his daughter to a "barbarous Scythian" who eats their own children. When he says "Here I disclaim all my paternal care" the tragedy of the play starts to unfold, as Lear gives up his fatherly care and love for her. The first major betrayal in the play is Lear’s betrayal of his daughter Cordelia. This is a decision which will have far-reaching and serious consequences for Lear. And it is one he will later learn to regret when his two other daughters treat him exactly this way. They treat him with unkindness and show him no compassion, just as he does with Cordelia. It is ironic that the daughter who loves King Lear most and the one who respects him most to tell the truth is the one who is disinherited and banished from her own country. This betrayal and cruel abuse of power turns out to be Lear’s greatest folly. His astounding blindness to the true worth of Cordelia and her sisters is his most unforgiveable case of choosing appearances over reality.

Sure, her offence
Must be of such unnatural degree
That monsters it, or your forevouched affection
Fall into taint; which to believe of her
Must be a faith that reason without miracle
Should never plant in me.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 1, Scene 1. The King of France confronts Lear about his newly dowerless daughter Cordelia. He says that her offense must have been so unnatural to make Lear’s affection for her turn rotten. But he adds that it would take a miracle to make him believe she could do something like that.

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? why "bastard"? Wherefore "base,"
When my dimensions are as well compact,
My mind as generous and my shape as true
As honest madam’s issue? Why brand they us
With "base," with "baseness," "bastardy," "base," "base,"
Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take
More composition and fierce quality
Than doth within a dull, stale, tired bed
Go to th’ creating a whole tribe of fops
Got ‘tween asleep and wake? Well then,
Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land.
Our father’s love is to the bastard Edmund
As to th’ legitimate. Fine word, "legitimate."
Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed
And my invention thrive, Edmund the base
Shall top th’ legitimate. I grow, I prosper.
Now, gods, stand up for bastards!

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 1, Scene 2. In this soliloquy Edmund says that the only laws he shows loyalty to are the laws of nature, exposing him as a moral nihilist and one of the play’s evil villains. The proud and resentful Edmund laments his "base" status as the bastard son of the Earl of Gloucester. He questions the injustice of customs that deprive bastards like him of the birthright given to legitimate sons like his half-brother Edgar. Edmund, who does not feel bound by legal rules, shows his determination to set things right regarding this. Scheming for power, he plots to take Edgar’s legitimate inheritance of "land" – the Gloucester property and position. The letter referred to in his "bastard" speech is one Edmund forged implicating Edgar in a plot against Gloucester and which Edmund is about to present to father to trick him.

Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take
More composition and fierce quality
Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed,
Go to the creating a whole tribe of fops
Got ‘tween asleep and wake?

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 1, Scene 2. Edmund sells us the good side of being the bastard son of the Earl of Gloucester. He takes pride in the fact that bastards like him are conceived in a moment of passionate and natural lust. He sees bastards as superior in composition and quality than the whole tribe of "fops" (silly kids) legitimately conceived by half asleep parents in a tedious, stale bed.

O villain, villain! His very opinion in the letter. Unnatural, detested, brutish villain! Worse than brutish! Go, sirrah, seek him; I’ll apprehend him: abominable villain! Where is he?

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 1, Scene 2. Gloucester labels son and heir Edgar an unnatural, brutish and abominable villain and demands to know where he is. But he is too hasty to fall for the manipulating Edmund’s deception and lies, which he swallows hook, line and sinker. So Gloucester plays the blind fool and condemns his true son Edgar without ever giving him a chance to defend himself. So much for Gloucester family justice!

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 the stars: as if we were villains by necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by an enforced 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 on the charge of a star!…I should have been that I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardising.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 1, Scene 2. The amoral Edmund has nothing but scorn for people like his father who blame higher powers when things go wrong. He ridicules the foolishness of those like Gloucester who blame the sun, moon and stars for their fate. He believes that the motion of the heavenly bodies has nothing to do with determining human actions, including having a depraved nature. And he should know! He admits that his own evil is self-taught, indicating that he has a deep level of self-knowledge.

My father compounded with my mother under the dragon’s tail; and my nativity was under Ursa Major; so that it follows, I am rough and lecherous. Tut, I should have been that I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 1, Scene 2. Edmund says that his father Gloucester had sex with his mother under the constellation of Draco and he was born under Ursa Major. So it naturally follows that he has a rough and lecherous nature. But he absolutely believes that would have been the villain he is, had the most virginal star in the sky twinkled over his birth.

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 the organs of increase,
And from her derogate body never spring
A babe to honour her! If she must teem,
Create her child of spleen, that it may live
And be a thwart disnatured torment to her.
Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth,
With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks,
Turn all her mother’s pains and benefits
To laughter and contempt, that she may feel
How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is
To have a thankless child! – Away, away!

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 1, Scene 4. Lear finally realizes that his daughter Goneril is betraying him. For Goneril, living with Lear is not working out so well, so if he wants to stay with her she rules that he must lose 50 of his knights as they are too rowdy. Calling on the goddess of Nature, an enraged Lear curses his Goneril’s womb with sterility. And if the gods decide that she will have children, he wishes that she goes through painful labor and has a "thankless child" to make her life thoroughly miserable. Lear uses the metaphor of the pain of a snake bite to describe what it feels like to have a thankless child.

This is some fellow
Who, having been praised for bluntness, doth affect
A saucy roughness and constrains the garb
Quite from his nature. He cannot flatter, he.
An honest mind and plain, he must speak truth!
An they will take it, so; if not, he’s plain.
These kind of knaves I know, which in this plainness
Harbour more craft and more corrupter ends
Than twenty silly-ducking observants
That stretch their duties nicely.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 2, Scene 2. Cornwall calls into question Kent’s true nature and his real motivation behind the honest and plain speaking that he prides himself for. Accusing Kent of duplicity, he suggests that his bluntness is just a "garb" and strategy to conceal his real intentions. Kent is not able to flatter, says Cornwall, but his "garb" of honest speech hides more craftiness and dishonest purpose than is seen in twenty bootlicking servants who bow and flatter. Cornwall is not completely off the mark in calling Kent a deceiver. For the Earl of Kent is disguised here as the commoner Caius – Cornwall is not aware of this, but the audience is, making this a good example of dramatic irony.

That sir which serves and seeks for gain,
And follows but for form,
Will pack when it begins to rain
And leave thee in the storm.
But I will tarry; the Fool will stay,
And let the wise man fly.
The knave turns fool that runs away;
The Fool no knave, perdie.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 2, Scene 4. The Fool in this song uses a metaphor from nature, about rain and storm, to convey his loyalty to Lear. He is also foreshadowing the metaphorical storm to follow. He tells Kent that the person who serves for profit and puts on the appearance of loyalty will take off when it starts to rain and leave him in the storm. But the Fool will stay and let the wise man flee. The scoundrel who runs away is a fool, but this fool is no scoundrel, says the Fool.

O, sir! You are old;
Nature in you stands on the very verge
Of her confine. You should be rul’d and led
By some discretion that discerns your state
Better than you yourself. Therefore, I pray you
That to our sister you do make return.
Say you have wronged her.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 2, Scene 4. Regan doesn’t mince her words here and shows her disrespect for Lear, after he curses his other daughter Goneril because of her unkindness to him. Regan bluntly tells Lear that he is old and is at the very edge of his natural lifespan. She suggests that Lear, who has handed over his kingdom to his daughters, is too old to even govern himself. He should let others take care of him who understand him better than he understands himself. And he should go back to Goneril’s house and admit that he was wrong. In this speech Regan is patronizing and exerts her power by holding up Lear’s impotence before him.

O, reason not the need! our basest beggars
Are in the poorest thing superfluous.
Allow not nature more than nature needs,
Man’s life’s as cheap as beast’s.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 2, Scene 4. This is Lear’s response when Goneril and Regan questions why he needs his retinue of knights. Lear declares that need is not the point, the poorest beggars have at least something they don’t need. If you only allow people what they need to survive – "allow not nature more than nature needs" – then man’s life is no better than an animal’s. Lear is railing against the injustice of it all. The passage also foreshadows that Lear with soon be living alongside the poorest beggars.

No, you unnatural hags,
I will have such revenges on you both
That all the world shall – I will do such things –
What they are yet I know not, but they shall be
The terrors of the Earth! You think I’ll weep.
No, I’ll not weep.
I have full cause of weeping, but this heart
Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws
Or ere I’ll weep. – O Fool, I shall go mad!

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 2, Scene 4. Lear expresses deep hatred of his two daughters Gonerel and Regan, denouncing them as "unnatural hags," thus adding them to Shakespeare’s list of evil women. He vows "The terrors of the Earth!" and revenge for their betrayal of him. But despite his pain he will not weep even though he has good reason to. His heart will break into a hundred thousand pieces before he will weep, he says. In his final line to the Fool he foreshadows his own descent into madness, which happens shortly after this. Lear vents his rage here as his daughters strip away his knights and attendants, his dignity amd power. But all he can do is vent, for when he tries to assert his authority he find that he is powerless.

KENT: Where’s the King?
GENTLEMAN: Contending with the fretful elements;
Bids the wind blow the earth into the sea
Or swell the curlèd waters ‘bove the main,
That things might change or cease; tears his white hair,
Which the impetuous blasts with eyeless rage
Catch in their fury and make nothing of;
Strives in his little world of man to outscorn
The to-and-fro conflicting wind and rain.
This night, wherein the cub-drawn bear would couch,
The lion and the belly-pinchèd wolf
Keep their fur dry, unbonneted he runs
And bids what will take all.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 3, Scene 1. A gentleman tells Kent that Lear is contending with a horrific storm that is coming on. Nature is disrupted and so is Lear’s nature. Instead of seeking shelter he runs bare-headed through the wind and rain crying out for the world to end, while all animals take cover. Trying to "outscorn" the hostile elements, he bids them to drown the earth so that things might change or stop for him. As he clearly descends into madness, the physical storm becomes a metaphor for Lear’s inner emotional turmoil.

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drench’d our steeples, drown’d the cocks!
You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Smite flat the thick rotundity o’ the world!
Crack nature’s moulds, all germens spill at once,
That make ingrateful man!

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 3, Scene 2. Cast out by his daughters, a mad Lear is on the wild heath shouting at the storm and telling it to rage and blow for all it is worth. The once powerful King of Britain absurdly shouts orders to the raging wind, rain, thunder and lightning. He bids the storm to strike him with lightning and drown the whole world. Lear has lost all his power but does not appear to realize it. The tempestuous weather is a metaphor for the turmoil inside the mind of Lear, who is overflowing with anger and beginning to lose his sanity after clashing with his ungrateful daughters.

Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! spout, rain!
Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire are my daughters.
I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness.
I never gave you kingdom, called you children,
You owe me no subscription. Then let fall
Your horrible pleasure. Here I stand your slave,
A poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man.
But yet I call you servile ministers,
That will with two pernicious daughters join
Your high-engendered battles ‘gainst a head
So old and white as this. O, ho, ’tis foul!

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 3, Scene 2. In the middle of the storm on the heath, Lear rages against daughters Regan and Goneril who have turned him out of their homes. Seeing himself a victim of injustice, he accuses the storm of joining forces with his two wicked daughters to strike his old white head. The storm serves as a metaphor for Lear’s inner turmoil and mounting madness over his daughters’ unkindness. In this passage we also see him becoming aware of his powerlessness, as he first shouts orders to nature and then realizes that he has no power over the elements. He invites the storm to do its worst to him and "let fall Your horrible pleasure." Wallowing in self-pity but indicating that he has begun to acquire true self-knowledge, he describes himself as a "slave" and "poor" and a "despised old man."

Alas, sir, are you here? Things that love night
Love not such nights as these. The wrathful skies
Gallow the very wanderers of the dark
And make them keep their caves. Since I was man,
Such sheets of fire, such bursts of horrid thunder,
Such groans of roaring wind and rain I never
Remember to have heard. Man’s nature cannot carry
Th’ affliction nor the fear.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 3, Scene 2. Kent’s descriptions of the storm bring it vividly to life and spell out its dangers. He says that even nocturnal creatures would avoid this night that Lear and the Fool are standing around in. The angry skies frighten even the bats and confine them to their caves. Kent has never seen such a wrathful storm with its sheets of lightning and terrible wind and rain. It is too terrifying for human nature to bear, he adds.

GLOUCESTER: Alack, alack, Edmund, I like not this unnatural dealing. When I desired their leave that I might pity him, they took from me the use of mine own house, charged me on pain of perpetual displeasure neither to speak of him, entreat for him, or any way sustain him.
EDMUND: Most savage and unnatural.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 3, Scene 3. Goneril and Regan have taken charge of Gloucester’s castle and ordered him not to speak to Lear, appeal on his behalf, or care for him in any way. In this passage he complaints bitterly about the "unnatural" behavior of Lear’s daughters and Edmund quickly agrees. There is dramatic irony here, as the audience knows that Edmund cannot be trusted and is deceiving his father. Edmund is putting on a pretence of being outraged, while Gloucester is blind to his duplicity.

LEAR: Now all the plagues that in the pendulous air
Hang fated o’er men’s faults light on thy daughters!
KENT: He hath no daughters, sir.
LEAR: Death, traitor! Nothing could have subdued nature
To such a lowness but his unkind daughters.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 3, Scene 4. When Lear meets Edgar disguised as the near-naked and mad beggar Poor Tom, he believes that his dreadful state must have been caused by his daughters. When Kent points out that Poor Tom has no daughters, Lear is still convinced that nothing in the world could have reduced a man’s nature to such a low state except unkind daughters! All the problems of the world are caused by daughters, it appears to Lear – especially madness and poverty!

Is there any cause in nature that make these hard hearts?

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 3, Scene 6. A troubled King Lear wonders is there any reason why nature should provide such hard hearts lacking in kindness and compassion to Regan and Goneril. In a mock trial of his daughters, with Edgar and the Fool and Kent as judges, Lear is questioning whether evil is natural and a part of human nature, or whether it comes from somewhere else. In the sentences before this quote, Lear speaks of dissecting Regan to examine her heart: "Then let them anatomise Regan; see what breeds about her heart."
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