King Lear of King Lear" (1949), argues that "Lear" dramatizes, among other things, the current meanings of "Nature". The words "nature," "natural" and "unnatural" occur over forty times in the play, reflecting a debate in Shakespeare's time about what nature really was like; this debate pervades the play and finds symbolic expression in Lear's changing attitude to Thunder. There are two strongly contrasting views of human nature in the play: that of the Lear party (Lear, Gloucester, Albany, Kent), exemplifying the philosophy of Bacon and Hooker, and that of the Edmund party (Edmund, Cornwall, Goneril, Regan), akin to the views later formulated
Lear (play) Gravedigger's Boy, whose kindness towards the old King led to his murder. Eventually Lear, after becoming a prophet reminiscent of Leo Tolstoy, makes a gesture toward dismantling the wall he began. This gesture leads to his death, which offers hope as an example of practical activism. The play also features a character called Cordelia, wife of the murdered Gravedigger's Boy who becomes a Stalinist-type dictator herself. "Lear" features some punishing scenes of violence, including knitting needles being plunged into a character's eardrum, a bloody on-stage autopsy and a machine which sucks out Lear's eyeballs. However, it is often lyrical and