Margaret Wiltrout, student in English L315, Spring 1995
Lear's view of Nature is the orthodox one. To him, Nature is how things, especially human behavior, "ought" to be, in keeping with the Great Chain of Being. For Lear, Nature is an ideal for which humans strive, driven by their Reason.
Lear expresses this normative view of Nature (1.4.270-79) when he refutes Goneril's criticism of his knights:
My train are men of choice and rarest parts, That all particulars of duty know, And, in the most exact regard, support The worships of their name. O most small fault, How ugly didst thou in Cordelia show! Which, like an engine, wrenched my frame of nature From the fixed place; drew from my heart all love, And added to the gall.Lear is saying that his knights are in perfect keeping with his idea of Nature; they live up to the ideals, even in minute ways, both physically and morally. When Cordelia failed to live up to his version of normative Nature, her "small fault" seemed huge to Lear.
When Lear calls Goneril and Regan "unnatural hags" (2.4.277), it is because they have behaved contrary to the Natural Law encompassed in the Great Chain of Being by reversing the role of power and authority in the parent/child relationship. Even more horrible, they have forsaken the Natural ideal of filial love and loyalty.
Edmund sees Nature differently from Lear, acknowledging no "duty" connections in Nature, but only connections of "material cause and effect," according to Danby. Nature can't be manipulated by Reason since it is only a closed system, a structure of laws. But with his mind, a man can be free of nature and superior to it since, if he knows its laws, he can manipulate it--or human nature--for a given effect. Danby continues: "The machiavel will know it better than anyone else, and he will be freer to manipulate it. It is significant that in the figure of Edmund the sense of separation from nature and superiority to it goes with a sense of the individual's separation from the community and a feeling of superiority to his fellows. As Nature goes dead, community becomes competition, and man a nexus of appetites. Reason is no longer a normative drive but a calculator of the means to satisfy the appetites with which we were born" (38).
Edmund's view tells him that he should act to get whatever he can wrest from Nature to survive. He states his allegiance to this view of Nature in 1.2.1-22, ending his reflections with the cry, "Now, gods, stand up for bastards."
Danby, John F. Shakespeare's Doctrine of Nature. London: Faber and Faber, 1949.