Chaos/disturbance Of Nature Flashcards
“Know that we have divided in three our kingdom”
-beginning of the disturbance of nature
-goes against DROK and primogeniture(passing down to 1st son)
-foreshadows the chaos to follow
-by showing the chaos that follows this decision, Shakespeare is supporting primogeniture Prehaps to flatter king James who followed this
“Into her womb convey sterility , dry up in her the organs of increase”
-“dry up” created this very harsh imagery of a barren women
-cruel and unnatural thing for a father to wish on his daughters
“She that’s a maid now and laughs at my departure shall not be a maid long unless things be cut shorter”
-metaphor possibly for loss of power or loss of stability and depicts how things will get worse as more chaos happens
-rhyming couplet creates a difinitive ending
“Brought bear to beast”
-Edgar’s reduction to a beastly being shows the chaos and how power has shifted
“We are not ourselves when nature being oppressed commands the mind to suffer with the body”
-Lear is referencing the disturbance of nature through its personification as a powerful but oppressed force
-“mind” and “body” may refernce the body politics(the king as a head of the country) and the body natural (the king as a human and father)
“Storm and tempest”
-the storm reflects the disturbance of nature caused by Lears decision
-it also reflects Lears mental state and the tension with in the family.
-shows how Lears decisions have power to effect the whole country as the country itself descends into chaos(man and society and how men have power over society with their actions consequences)
“This heart shall break into a hundred thousand flaws”
-hyperbolic language references the unnatural nature of lears daughters treatment and how nature has been disturbed
“Blow winds and crack your cheeks! Crack natures mould.”
-lears emotion is shown through the assonance
-Lear commanding nature shows how he is not appealing to the natural divine right.
-he is asking for nature to be destroyed
“Wrathful skies, sheets of fire, bursts of horrid thunder, groans of roaring wind”
-Kent personifies nature to show how it holds its own power
-disturbance of nature
“When priests are more in word than matter…and bawds and whores do churches build…then shall the realm of Albion come to great confusion”
-metaphor of priests and whores shows the unnatural order of the country
-the fool warns of the effects on the whole country (man and society)
-“bawds and whores do churches build”- oxymoronic metaphor showing corruption and hypocrisy
“Proud in heart and mind, hog in sloth, fox in stealth, wolf in greediness”
-Edgar’s poor Tom character describes his unnatural nature(goes against Edgar’s actual character)
-animalistic imagery
emphasises the unnatural ways
-Allusion to the 7 deadly sins
-written in prose someyhing Shakespeare does to show people are hiding something as iambic pentameter is a heart beat so is “words of the heart”- the truth
“When madmen lead the blind”
-Gloucester is being literal here but it is also a metaphor for the state of the turmoil of the country
“All the idle weeds that grow in our sustaining corn”
-Cordelia’s metaphor for the unnatural order because the DROK was disturbed: the weeds could be R and G
-also could represent Lears mental state
“As I am a man”
-whilst Lear saying this shows how nature has been disturbed as he has gone from king to just man it also shows his journey from ego to grace- he has become humbled as a human (this could represent his journey to death)
-creates pathos
“We will resign during the life of this old majesty to him our absolute power”
-return to natural power
