Lear's Relationship with Nature

Lear often addresses nature directly in the play, which is called an apostrophe. He asks nature to help him at some points and other times seems to lash out at nature as a whole. In act II Lear looks to nature to punish his daughter Goneril for treating him so poorly. He asks nature to curse Goneril by not allowing her to have children. In this portion of the play he is asking nature to do him a favor, to make Goneril suffer the way that he is. Act II closes with Lear being shut out of his two daughters house amidst a huge storm that seems to be brewing.

Preceding this occurrence in act III scene i, there is a monstrous storm in the kingdom. In the middle of this immense storm Lear is wandering around, challenging the storm attempting to antagonize nature to bring its worst. The fool tries to urge Lear to take shelter but he refuses, this almost seems as if he is trying to fight nature and see who is stronger. However the nature proves its strength when the storm rips his cloths from him, proving that his power means nothing to nature because nature is an equalizer. Lear trying to face nature head on shows his increase state of despair and his loss of a sense of reality. In the next scene of act III Lear is praying in the middle of the storm and repenting for not being a better King and helping the poor and others who were defenseless against storms like this one.

The fact that Lear is talking to nature directly is in itself evidence of him losing his mind, but it is also mad that he is the only one who will not take cover from the raging storm. It is clear that Lear's mental state is slowly deteriorating as he is losing his relationships with his daughters. Lear's relationship with nature mirrors his relationship with his daughters. In both cases he asks for loyalty to be shown but instead he is betrayed. In the past he looked to nature to be on his side but this storm shows how nature is also going against him immediately after all three of his daughters have just betrayed him. Lear has seemingly lost all that was meaningful to him which is driving him to madness.