"Nothing can be made out of nothing"

OSWALD:  What dost thou know me for?

KENT:  A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats;

a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited,

hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave


...


EDMUND: This is the excellent foppery of the
world, that, when we are sick in fortune,—often the
surfeit of our own behavior,—we make guilty of our
disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars:  as if we
were villains by necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion


...


KING LEAR:                        

It may be so, my lord.

Hear, nature, hear; dear goddess, hear!

Suspend thy purpose, if thou didst intend

To make this creature fruitful!

Into her womb convey sterility!

While reading the text king Lear, I was impressed by how often people attribute one thing or another to a person without seeming to give much thought. Perhaps I could put that into better terms and say that many of the characters exhibit the attitude of "the way things are cannot really be changed". As one example of this, in many instances in the text, there have been insults (which by their very nature seem to arbitrarily define the essence of a person, in a fixed, immovable way in the eye of the insulter). Perhaps Shakespeare is drawing out the idea of nature itself.


As evidence of this, Lear himself seems to believe in the power of nature. He invokes, after all, that nature work her powers in order for him to do his bidding. Earlier, Edmund seems to find some justification (whether sarcastic or not)by saying that he did not choose to be the way he is; nature decided it for him.


It is interesting when we compare these prevailing feelings of futility against the power of nature to the the respective attitudes of the sisters. Goneril and Regan seem contrariwise very capable of manipulating their father to get what they want, while Cornelia for having been honest is rejected. Is Shakespeare saying that the plotting deceivers blame nature for their actions? Cornelia does not seem to do so at all, rather looks at her nature as something to which she ought to be true. It would follow then that nature can seem a good thing when looked at from the perspective of being "good", and can be used as an excuse when trying to justify one's actions.


The way nature plays out in the text can teach us a lot about the way we view our own nature, then, and how we treat ourselves.