Page 13 - Knighted_Issue2.0

At gilded butterflies,…
And take upon’s the mystery of things,
As if we were God’s spies; and we’ll wear out,…
Packs and sects of great ones,..
That ebb and flow by th’ moon” (5.3.8-19).
Lear’s uses natural images to empower his asking for forgiveness once he realizes he is wrong.
By metaphorically placing himself in nature with his daughter as “birds” or that they are the
guards from the great ones of nature, he feels as if he could gain a closer relationship and spend
the rest of his life with his beloved daughter. His ideal world that is immersed in nature, however,
is countered by the real world when their relationship is broken after Cordelia dies. Estok
supports that Lear’s fantasy “that his idealizations of the natural world simply do not match up
with his experiences of that world” (“Shakespeare and Ecocriticism” 33). Lear simply cannot
form this type of merged father-daughter relationship where he is also equated to nature because
their relationship of inverted power never exists in the real world. Their relationship forms
through Lear’s governance and Cordelia’s obedience and because Lear dismisses his patriarchy
in both worlds, their relationship does not last long.
Cordelia’s death and Lear’s deathsignify the loss of the father-daughter relationship.
While Lear is able to gain forgiveness and reestablish a bond with his daughter once again, their
father-daughter relationship could have only existed through means of a patriarchal order and a
daughter’s obedience in the 16th and 17th century structure. Lear relates Cordelia to nature even
after her death. He says, “She’s dead as earth” (5.3.266). Lear’s final statement comparing
Cordelia to nature shows his effort in reestablishing the father-daughter relationship they once
had. He only wanted their relationship to exist through means of nature as he expressed earlier.