Submitted by,
Aleena Tom
II MA Language and Literature
23PENG12163
Submitted to,
Dr. Aravind R Nair
Assistant Professor
An Ecocritical Reading of Shakespeare’s play “King Lear”
The play reveals the human relationship with nature and environmental volatility and
the consequences of environmental disregard. Shakespeare depicts the story of exceptional
calamity leading to the death of a man in high estate. The calamities are shown are being
caused both by the hero’s weakness of character and an unfavourable combination of
circumstances. His suffering and fall are the consequences of his acts of omission or
commission. King Lear conforms to this pattern.
The Storm Scene
The storm scene in the play is woven as an integral part in the texture of the play.
When the hero’s life is encircled by the clouds of misfortune, nature reacts in sympathy. The
cruel daughters shut the king out and throws him to suffer the punishment of the weather. The
place where Lear wanders in the storm is a heath; a wasteland with no shelter anywhere. Kent
and the Fool try to comfort him, joined by Mad Tom and Gloucester. The King plucks away
his gown so that he can feel the fury of the wind more intimately. He calls on the wind and
storm to flatten the thick rotundity of the earth, to destroy all seeds of life. It is a commotion
in nature that will expose all the guilty men and send them in punishment. But Lear is more
sinned against than sinning. The storm is in a sense an outward manifestation of the storm in
Lear’s mind. But it also helps to make him mad, but madness is also an experience that
finally redeems the King from the terrible experience of filial ingratitude. Nature’s violence
becomes symbolic of man’s encounter with evil in the storm scenes. Lear can fight against
the ingratitude of his daughters by exposing himself to the terrors of nature.
“No, rather I abjure all roofs, and choose to wage against the enemity of the air…”
He confronts with the fretful elements calling cataracts and hurricanes to turn their fury upon
him. In the magnificent apostrophe to the storm he prays to crack nature’s mould all
germenes spill at once that make ingrateful man. If the storm is the ‘servile ministers’ of
man’s wickedness, the naked, savage, beastial person of mad Tom coming out of the hovel
symbolizes the revulsion from humanity and deception of human love and human reason.
Episode of the Heath
The storm in King Lear is a dramatic background to the tempest of human emotions.
The storm outside is symbolical of the gathering passions in the mind of Lear. It is a night of
bleak winds sorely ruffling, of cataracts and hurricanes, of curled waters swelling above the
main, a night wherein the cub-drawn bear and the belly-pinched wolf would keep their fur
dry. Lear’s outfrown the storm. The storm not merely symbolizes the passion of Lear, but also
helps to carry forward the climax. So far as Lear’s emotions are concerned, the storm serves
two purposes; Physical exposure and the meeting with Edgar disguised as Tom o’ Bedlam are
two of the final incidents which hasten the madness of Lear. Up to the moment that meets
with Edgar, Lear has not lost self-consciousness. The sight of Edgar completely unhinges
Lear’s mind and he commences to strip off his clothes.
The sufferings of Edgar also reach the climax in the scenes laid on the heath. The
pretended madness of Edgar is obviously the climax to the tragedy of his sufferings. When
Gloucester meets with Edgar, he also comes to experience the highest point of his misfortune.
The height of Gloucester’s misfortunes is to experience the double nemesis of the injury from
the favoured son and favours from the injured son. The King has a natural repugnance to the
short and musty straw. But the art of our necessity is strange and Lear resolves to accept the
situation. He wants the Fool to get in first but Edgar disguised as Tom rushes out and the Fool
comes out running in terror taking Edgar for a spirit. When Lear sees Edgar, he is fascinated
by the unaccommodated man. Then Gloucester arrives on the scene and requests Kent to take
the King to another hut. Lear refuses to be separated from his noble philosopher; Edgar.
Throughout, the hovel figures as an important centre around which all persons go but into
which none enter.
Dramatic Use of Madness
Shakespeare exploits popular superstitions about ghosts, fairies, the unnaturalness of
nature like the storm and eclipses, and devices like madness and disguise, mistaken identities
etc to the maximum extent to make his plays appealing to the audience. In King Lear the
storm and madness are treated with great dramatic effect. Lear’s madness is real madness; it
is caused by the ingratitude of his children. Edgar’s madness is a feigned one; but he is driven
to put on the guise of madness by his brother’s treachery and his father’s thoughtless cruelty.
The Fool’s words add fuel to Lear’s madness and Edgar’s madness throws him into the depth
of madness. The pathos of this scene is relieved by the jests of the Fool, the prattle of mad
Tom and Lear’s own dialogues. Madness saved Lear from violent death; it also helps him to
recover from the blows of evil fortune. Lear becomes a regenerated man, and his reunion
with Cordelia provide a proper conclusion to the play.
Unnatural events within the play
The first scene of the play is a masterpiece in dramatic construction. It starts like a
ritual ceremony; an all-powerful king makes an important decision that is to affect his
kingdom and his children – the division of his kingdom. This happens in contrast to a
King’s role in maintaining unity within the kingdom.
Lear makes an unnatural request to his daughters to praise him publicly. Cordelia’s
refusal to praise him is seen as both natural- honest and truthful and unnatural-
disobedient and unfaithful.
Lear curses his daughters – Lear gets extremely violent and angry with Cordelia when
she fails to flatter him like his sisters. In his anger, he curses and disinherits her. Lear
calls Goneril a degenerate bastard, he says, “Ingratitude, thou marble hearted fiend,
more hideous, when thou show’st thee in a child”.
Unnatural blinding of Gloucester; Shakespeare has introduced the scene with a
definite purpose. The theme of filial ingratitude is explored in the parallel stories of
Lear and Gloucester. The two stories meet in this terrible episode, and shows the
extent to which human nature can degenerate.
Edgar is forced to become a mad Tom – real madness vs faked madness.
Cordelia’s death – her death represents the ultimate disruption of natural order. The
death of Lear and Cordelia is the inevitable end of the tragedy as Shakespeare
conceived it.
