What About the Bastard?

“Thou, nature, art my goddess.” That phrase echoes across the years as it is repeated in thousands of playhouses and millions (if not billions) of audition halls. It’s how Edmund introduces himself when he’s not under the watchful (yet totally unseeing) eyes of his father, Gloster. He muscles onto the stage after Scene One, as if wrestling the plot away from the King and his family and demanding, everyone pay attention to me!

And boy, we do. There are few villains as fun as Edmund. Richard and Iago are the only comparable fiends who spring to mind. But we get so swept up in his diabolical charisma that we quickly forget his first words to us. What does he mean, “Thou, nature, art my goddess?”

The problem is mainly with “nature.” This play uses that word many, many times, and each time it seems to mean something else. Here it seems to mean some sort of Gaia spirit—what we would think of as a pagan prayer, except that Lear is set in pre-Christian times...so, strictly speaking, everyone was pagan. Nevertheless, Edmund’s prayer was meant for Renaissance ears, and they would probably have associated it with atheism, at the very least.

What does it mean, or what can it mean, today? When a modern audience hears “Thou, nature, art my goddess” unexpectedly, from the lips of a character who, up till now, has been practically invisible, what do we think? What if he said it while he was flipping a coin, or playing with a dagger? Or while he was looking at Regan, or Goneril (who are heading offstage as he enters)? Or what if he said it directly to a lady in the front row of the audience?

These all have meanings, and they all play upon the meanings of “nature,” spinning the word in different directions. The coin makes “nature” sound like luck, fate, happenstance. It becomes a comment on his bastardy: because he is “some twelve or fourteen moonshines/ Lag of a brother,” he is under the thrall of Bad Luck. The dagger puts a sharper edge on luck: Edmund will make his own luck, and no one will stop him.

Looking at the ladies makes “nature” a bit more physical, and makes “goddess” a lot more specific. It’s an ironic way to foreshadow the lust and attention that both sisters end up lavishing on him. The actor who chooses this interpretation will have a rich opportunity for humour when he says “My mind as generous and my shape as true / As honest madam’s issue.”

But I think my favourite is the brazen charm of the fourth choice: directly addressing the house. Here, we meet a Bastard who not only knows how to make an entrance, but also doesn’t give a damn about the tired old conventions of tragedy or even theatre. He’s laid his plots, and his fun’s just about to start, but Edmund pauses—just for a line or two at the top of the scene—to flirt with an audience member!

The most interesting thing about this moment, though, is that an actor can determine the direction of the whole character, and in some ways the whole play, by how he chooses to deliver “Thou, nature, art my goddess.”