Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.15291/SIC/2.5.LC.1
‘Crack Nature’s Molds’: Reasoned Madness and Evolution in King Lear
Matthew Smith
; University of Alabama
Abstract
King Lear as a product of evolutionary progressions is logical because the play is framed around two ideas of society and generation in direct confrontation. The sociopolitical ramifications of King Lear are clarified when viewed as an evolutionary progression because societal causality is mirrored in nature. The connection between Lear’s madness and nature’s role in determining societal evolution is demonstrated in the evolutionary notion that “everybody is what he typically is because his progenitors were what they were . . . [i]n the molecular structure of the minute germ of him,” (Maudsley 4) and that and social events are connected with the mechanistic march of nature. When Lear bellows “Crack nature’s molds, all germens spill at once,” (3.2.8) he is requesting the impossible, that the laws of causation be terminated and evolution be put on hold.
Keywords
Evolutionary Criticism; reason; philosophy; Shakespeare; King Lear; consilience; evolution; mechanism; madness; nature
Hrčak ID:
140982
URI
Publication date:
15.6.2015.
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