Something from Nothing: King Lear and Film Space

Abstract

In King Lear, Shakespeare accords nothingness an especially privileged epistemological position. The concept is introduced to the play by Cordelia. ‘Nothing, my lord’ (1.1.87) is all she will say when prompted to describe her love for her father: ‘Nothing’ (1.1.89). Twice she repeats her negation, and twice Lear intones Aristotle’s formula: ‘Nothing will come of nothing’ (1.1.90); ‘nothing can be made out of nothing’ (1.4.130). For William Elton this indicates Shakespeare’s interest in medieval and Renaissance debates concerning the correspondence between the Christian notion of Creation ex nihilo, formulated at the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, and Aristotle’s dictum ex nihilo nihil fit (1966, 181). Yet if Shakespeare touches on Aristotle, he is surely uncommitted to the philosopher’s formula. For one, the doubling repetition of each protagonist’s ‘nothing’ in the play’s first act indicates the fecund growth that Shakespeare’s language will come to associate with nothingness.

Then in the number let me pass untold, Though in thy store’s account I one must be: For nothing hold me, so it please thee hold That nothing, me, a something sweet to thee.

(Sonnet 136: 9–12)