Shakespeare’s “One-Word Play”: “Nature” in King Lear

        It is often noted that a Shakespearean tragedy, as a typical Elizabethan or Jacobean play, is in almost diametric opposition to a classical tragedy: whereas the latter is a controlled and concentrated drama achieving its tightly-knit simplicity by observing “the rules” such as the “unities of time, place, and action,” the decorum of action,” and the “purity of genre”; the former simply disregards all these “rules” and abandons itself to such an extent that it often leaves the reader or audience/spectator the impression of having an expansiveness and looseness for its vitality.1  Now, King Lear is indeed such a typical Shakespearean tragedy.  Its action is truly not confined to one place or a short period of time, while a subplot is introduced in it to complicate the matter.  Besides, scenes of violence are presented directly on the stage, while scenes of “comic relief” or grotesque humor appear to make the play dubious in its purity as a tragedy.2

        Does this play with its expansiveness and looseness, then, demonstrate no unity of any sort?  Actually, most competent critics seem to agree that the play, in fact, has its own unity.  A. W. Schlegel, for instance, thus exclaimed in reference to the play’s double plot: “The incorporation of the two stories has been censured as destructive of the unity of action.  But whatever contributes to the intrigue or the denouement must always possess unity.  And with what ingenuity and skill are the two main parts of the composition dovetailed into one another!” (31).

        But is the unity of King Lear to be sought mainly in its complicated plot?  Robert B. Heilman does not think so.  He believes that “the unity of King Lear lies very little on the surface; it can be described only partially in terms of plot relationships; indeed, as in all high art, it is a question of theme; and theme extends itself subtly into the ramifications of dramatic and imagistic constructs” (169).  Yet, instead of telling us a dominating theme, Heilman just gives us a number of possible themes in the play: “deeds rather than words are the symbols of love,” “errors with regard to the nature of kingship, the nature of love, and the nature of language,” etc.

Other critics, of course, have considered the overall theme of the play.  Jan Kott, for example, has argued vigorously that the theme of King Lear is “the decay and fall of the world” (279).  And in the Folger Guide to Shakespeare it is suggested (echoing A. C. Bradley’s proposal that the play be renamed “The Redemption of King Lear”) that “the theme of the play may be described as the education and purification of Lear” (Wright & Lamar 290).

I think most themes proposed for the play are justifiable in their own right.  But I must call our attention to the fact that the play is not merely Lear’s story; it is Gloucester’s as well.  Hence, to make the theme focus on any one character is not quite proper.  We may well say that Hamlet is about the character of Hamlet, but not so well that King Lear is about the character of Lear.  Shakespeare has indeed produced a good number of “character tragedies” ( Othello, Macbeth, Coriolanus, Antony and Cleopatra, etc., in addition to Hamlet).  But to reduce King Lear to one single character named in the title is to forget improperly the double plot Shakespeare contrived purposely to demonstrate the play’s dominating theme.

In his “Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool,” George Orwell thus remarks with his critical acumen:

Shakespeare has a habit of thrusting uncalled-for general reflections into the mouths of his characters.  This is a serious fault in a dramatist, but it does not fit in with Tolstoy’s picture of Shakespeare as a vulgar hack who has no opinions of his own and merely wishes to produce the greatest effect with the least trouble.  And more than this, about a dozen of his plays, written for the most part later than 1600, do unquestionably have a meaning and even a moral.  They revolve round a central subject which in some cases can be reduced to a single word.  For example, Macbeth is about ambition.  Othello is about jealousy, and Timon of Athens is about money.  (159)

After this, Orwell adds, “The subject of Lear is renunciation, and it is only by being willfully blind that one can fail to understand what Shakespeare is saying” (160).

        Orwell’s critical acumen is really worthy of our admiration.  For me Shakespeare did write a number of “one-word plays,” of which Lear is but one, though not an obvious one.  If we want to give other definite examples, we can refer to Troilus and Cressida with its theme of fidelity, Measure for Measure with its of justice, and Coriolanus with its of pride.  However, in the case of Lear, I cannot agree with Orwell that “it is only by being willfully blind that one can fail to understand what Shakespeare is saying.”

        I do not believe Orwell was being willfully blind when he maintained that the subject of Lear is renunciation.  Nevertheless, I must say that Orwell was somewhat blindfolded, as so many others are likely to be, by the main plot of the play in his consideration of the play’s theme.  For the subplot (the Gloucester plot) simply has nothing to do with renunciation.  If we take a whole view of the play, we will admit that as Gloucester does not renounce anything like Lear, the theme of renunciation really cannot serve as the central unifier of the play

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Ironically, it seems, Orwell has forgot his own word.  He has forgotten that “Shakespeare has a habit of thrusting uncalled-for general reflections into the mouths of his characters.”  As I shall discuss below, in King Lear Shakespeare is in fact so preoccupied with his general reflections on the Great Nature and our human nature that the word “nature” is noticeably repeated again and again through the mouths of the characters.  I really wonder why Orwell and others have failed to observe the meaning and effect Shakespeare has intended to produce through this single word.

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To be sure, some critics have already noticed the frequent occurrence of the word “nature” in King Lear.  G. B. Harrison, for instance, observes in his Introduction to the play that apart from the use of animal images which constantly recur, Shakespeare “effected a grim irony by the use of two words which sound throughout the play like the tolling of a knell: ‘nature’ and ‘nothing’” (1139).  And he proceeds to interpret the meaning of “nature” in this play, thus:

Lear, Gloucester, and Edmund each in turn call on Nature.  To the old fathers nature is the goddess ...

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