Most scholars agree that Othello was written in 1604, a year before King Lear. Yesterday's post was concerned with how Shakespeare used Pliny's Naturalis Historia as a source for a considerable amount of Othello's vocabulary. And he may have retained the content of Pliny's dedication of the work for an important moment in King Lear, as well. Pliny's dedication is an unusual one: it's to nature itself. Here it is:

Hail to thee, Nature, thou parent of all things! and do thou deign to show thy favour unto me, who, alone of all the citizens of Rome, have, in thy every department, thus made known thy praise.

Now compare that with the first words spoken by Edmund, the treacherous half-brother of Edgar, and one of the most villainous characters in Shakespeare. Edmund, who believes in what might be called a dog-eat-dog or survival-of-the-fittest approach to life, is here delineating why his plan to frame Edgar and become the sole inheritor of his father's land and title is from his point-of-view "natural":

Thou, Nature, art my goddess; to thy law

My services are bound. Wherefore should I

Stand in the plague of custom, and permit

The curiosity of nations to deprive me,

For that I am some twelve or fourteen moonshines

Lag of a brother?

It certainly seems possible at least that the seed that created this unequaled subplot (the story of Gloucester, Edgar and Edmund) was planted as Shakespeare was reading for his work on Othello.