Through the play King Lear, we see Shakespeare grappling with the relationship between language and nature. He presents poetic language as a weapon, one that people can use to bring themselves into power. The play further examines this notion through speech acts, and how they harken to a grander use of language as a means of asserting dominance over nature. With King Lear, Shakespeare examines the ways in which humankind has manipulated its own stories in order to create arbitrary hierarchies that have no basis in nature; however, he is also coming to terms with the art of writing and theater by pondering how one can reconcile mankind’s rule over nature through a medium that exerts its own rule through its aim to represent it.

King Lear’s three daughters showcase the uses and limits of language, and the way people use it to re-present their own realities. When Lear is ready to divide his kingdom and hand it over to his three daughters, he asks them to vocalize their love for him. His eldest daughters Goneril and Regan poeticize their speeches in order to gain power over his land. Within her speech Goneril states, “Sir, I love you more than word can wield the matter,” after which Regan responds with, “I find she names my very deed of love; / Only she comes too short” (1.1.55, 71-72). Both of them poeticize their feelings, presenting hyperbolized speeches in an attempt to win over the land. The language they use in their speeches is sexual, but it also pertains to a moment of metatextuality. Although Goneril begins her speech by stating the limitations of language in expressing her love, she then continues to express this love by further embellishing and hyperbolizing her speech. This notion of word wielding matter is at the heart of the conflict present in King Lear and emphasized by the sisters’ relationship to language. Regan responds to her speech by critiquing its brevity, thus placing a larger emphasis on the quantity of her poetics. Language works in their favor as it creates a pathway towards power, a means of creation that Regan tries to harness towards the end of the play when she decrees, “Witness the world that I create thee here” (5.3.78). Yet, neither this nor the earlier attempts at manifesting a new reality through language work out for them, leaving them both dead by the end. It is their younger sister Cordelia who represents an opposing view of poetic language.

Cordelia refuses to participate in verbalizing her love, her first words in the play being an aside: “[Aside] What shall Cordelia speak? Love, and be silent” (1.1.62). Her first words after this question are an affirmation of action, to love and to let that speak for itself. She believes in the act of love so much that she doesn’t see the need for verbalizing it. Her second words, also an aside, further cement this idea: “…I am sure my love’s / More ponderous than my tongue” (1.1.77-79). Cordelia believes that her love is more substantial, has greater weight, than her words could ever express. Upon hearing these asides, one is not so shocked when her turn arrives to finally speak and she says nothing, both literally and figuratively. Language is actively transferring power, with Lear stating his intention to divide his kingdom into three and give them to his daughters so long as they successfully verbalize their love for him. Cordelia’s refusal throws everything out of balance, inspiring Lear to attempt a speech act through which he would disown her; yet, her response to this showcases a deeper understanding on her part of the powers at work here: “I yet beseech your majesty, / If for I want that glib and oily art / To speak and purpose not, since what I well intend / I’ll do’t before I speak….But even for want of that for which I am richer— / A still-soliciting eye, and such a tongue / That I am glad I have not, though not to have it / Hath lost me in your liking” (1.1.228-238). This art she speaks of is that of oration, the oral representation of feelings and actions that—until the act of verbalizing—were untainted by the embellishments of manmade expression. Cordelia believes that she is richer for not having this knack for oration because verbalizing actions and feelings does not happen in a bubble, but is instead filtered through the various cultural forces that make up the assemblage of personhood. This is the first thing she says after Lear disowns her, and it is remarkably longer than the short responses she gave prior to it. The speech act has forced Cordelia to elongate her own response, so that although she speaks of her opposition to having such a tongue, she uses a longer form of ten lines with an adorned rhetoric to do so. It is a challenge for a character like Cordelia to exist within the confines of a hierarchy-based society that imposes its own linguistic reality over the one already found in nature, a reality that King Lear tries so hard to hold onto.

In his play, Shakespeare is grappling with the use of language as a means of asserting dominance over nature. Speech acts are a prime example of this, as a person decides they can alter reality simply by the power of their word. When Lear attempts speech act for the first time in the play, it is out of a misplaced sense of power and pride. He thinks everything revolves around him, that he is powerful enough to make these decisions and expect nature to change accordingly. The moment he asks his daughters to tell him how much they love him, he is attempting a second-handed speech act, thinking their flattery and boasting of his ego will in turn further legitimize his own claim to power. The problem is that all this flattery was solely for the purpose of deposing him of his power, an act which Lear himself instigated. With these tensions combined we get his seminal speech: “They flattered me like a dog, and told me I had the white hairs in my beard ere the black ones were there.... when the thunder would not peace at my bidding…. They told me I was everything. ’Tis a lie—I am not ague-proof” (4.6.96-105). Lear is at a point in the play when his disillusionment is on full display and he is coming into terms with his own mortality. He directs his rage towards his elder daughters, who used such flattery for him; however, he doesn’t realize yet that it was he who demanded and rewarded this treatment in the first place. His mistake is when he demands them to poeticize their love for him, to bring their feelings into the realm of language and of the theater. Lear is descended from the legacy of culture’s imposition upon nature, and thus, he had thought he was entitled to power over it. The line where he speaks of his inability to control thunder is indicative of his coming to terms with the fact that he does not, and never has been able to, have power over nature and reality. The language surrounding monarchs—Lear’s excessive use of the royal we towards the beginning of the play—has regurgitated the rhetoric of hierarchy that keeps the king on top right after God. Lear has begun to realize the arbitrary basis of this, that, outside of the language of hierarchy, there is nothing in nature that proves the legitimacy of his position as a ruler of land and man. He recognizes that he is not everything people have been spouting at him, but is a mortal being like everyone else. A character who recognizes these arbitrary hierarchies early on in the play is none other than Edmund.

Edmund, the bastard son of the Earl of Gloucester, is early to criticize the creation of these roles. In the second scene of Act I, Edmund asks “Wherefore should I / Stand in the plague of custom…Why brand they us / With base” (1.2.2-10)? The notion that because he was born out of wedlock he should be considered less than his brother Edgar is one that does not make sense to him. The language he uses here, “brand they us,” implies that there is someone doing the branding. It shows that he understands that the signifiers placed upon bastards are manmade and thus, arbitrary. Edmund is refusing to agree with these hierarchies of man, and decides instead to use their own tactics against them. His father Gloucester is a good example of mankind’s blind agreement to further these beliefs, which is why the play opens with a conversation in which he affirms these beliefs against his bastard son—that just because one is born out of wedlock and the other is born in wedlock, then they are fundamentally different, when, in reality, none of this actually matters. Thus, Edmund decides to take the power over language, and thus perception, into his own hands: “Let me, if not by birth, have lands by wit; / All with me’s meet that I can fashion fit” (1.2.181-182). He decides that he will bring the macro into the micro, imposing his own reality over nature—an act that humankind has done for so long. Both Edmund and Cordelia understood the power that humans have exerted through language; however, whereas Cordelia decided to stay away from it because of this, Edmund chose to utilize it for his own pleasure. What seems so villainous when performed by Edmund—the re-shaping of his reality—is often seen as normal when the hero does it. Through this, he exposes the arbitrary nature of hierarchies, of one being base and the other on top, as manmade structures which man can just as well overturn. The story becomes one of language versus nature, a relationship that Shakespeare tries to reconcile; however, there is a broader conflict that Shakespeare must face, and that is the role of the playwright.

Within Cordelia’s struggle of translating her feelings into language can also be found a metatextual question regarding the playwright’s role in representing nature through his plays. By writing this play, Shakespeare is already translating nature first onto the paper, and then onto the stage. With this translation Shakespeare inserts his own subjectivities and realities, bringing a combination of his assemblages through to the stage. The transformation of nature to art becomes another form of culture imposing upon nature. If God has already created nature, thus purporting the first presentation of nature, then by trying to re-present nature through art, Shakespeare is asserting his own god-like control over it. Taking over that first act of creation and re-producing his own is another form of thinking one can control nature, even on a metatheatrical level, by trying to represent it. Shakespeare has been grappling with this realization, and the ending of the play shows where he stands. The original story that he models his play upon is that of king of the Britons, Leir of Britain, whose youngest daughter Cordelia ends up succeeding and ruling peacefully as queen for a few years afterwards. Shakespeare decides to change this ending and to kill Cordelia instead. When defending her position to her father in the play, Cordelia states that she is “So young, my lord, and true” (1.1.108). This statement is poignant due to its monosyllabic simplicity, a direct and plain form of speech that actively refuses the embellishments and poeticizing Lear is so desperate to hear. This is why Shakespeare changes the ending of the original story. He kills Cordelia because there is no room in the world for true, sincere expression; all language, in one way or another, alters the reality which it seeks to so truly express. As Edgar states in an aside, “[Aside] And worst I may be yet. The worst is not / So long as we can say’This is the worst’” (4.1.27-28). A playwright can never compete with the first act of creation—they will always come second to the act.