Goneril complains to her father about the riotous behavior of his retinue (the hundred men who still serve him) and directly blames Lear for allowing their sportive barroom behavior to continue unchecked. Goneril then asserts that if Lear does not take action to control these men, then Goneril will be forced to take action, a “discreet proceeding” (188).
Lear is shocked by these words of his own daughter. Goneril is both criticizing him and humiliating him. She is treating him as if he is an unruly and lowly lord who needs to be chastised or punished. Lear can understand neither how his own daughter can talk to him this way nor how he has lost his position of respect. His confusion leads to shock, and that, in turn, will lead to madness.
Goneril is unmoved by Lear’s reaction and continues to criticize his followers, who, she claims, treats her castle “like a tavern or brothel” (220). She asserts, then, that her only recourse is to reduce the number of men in his retinue, “to disquantity your train” (224). And Goneril also adds that those men who remain in Lear’s service should be older men who know how to behave themselves.
Lear, who realizes that Goneril now wants to make him a king without followers, believes that he still has one loyal daughter left to him – Regan. And, so, he plans to leave Goneril and Albany and live with Cornwall and Regan.
As he is leaving, Lear refers to Goneril as the personification of “Ingratitude,” whom he describes as being more hideous than a “sea-monster” (23638). He also refers to Goneril as a “detested kite” – an abhorrent scavenger bird like a vulture (at line 239). The image suggests that Goneril is pecking away and chewing the dead remains of her father.
Lear begins to realize the error he made in regards to Cordelia; he begins to realize that he allowed “folly” to take the place of “judgment” inside his head (lines 248-49). Judgment is another term for reason in the Renaissance. Lear recognizes that he acted foolishly and irrationally. He blames himself as much as (or even more than) he blames his daughter Goneril.
Lear, as he walks past Albany, also curses his eldest daughter before he exits. A father’s curse on a child was considered to be magically (or supernaturally) potent in Biblical times and even to some extent in the Middle Ages. Such a curse would be especially potent when it came from a king. In his curse, Lear asserts that Goneril should be barren or sterile (never to bear children). Or, if Goneril does have a child, then that offspring should be a “child of spleen” (259). In the Middle Ages and Renaissance there was a belief that the spleen was the source of negative and horrible emotions. Lear is saying that he hopes Goneril’s child is mean and malicious and spiteful and remains a torment to her for all of her life. Lear concludes his curse with the following famous (and often quoted) lines:
How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is
To have a thankless child! (265-66)
An ungrateful and mean-spirited child is more painful and more fatal than the worst of poisons. Lear then exits the stage.
The Duke of Albany, Goneril’s husband, was unaware of Goneril’s words and actions regarding Lear, and he is more than a little surprised at Lear’s curse.
Before Albany has a chance to discuss the matter, though, Lear returns. His anger and outrage are increased even more because he has just found out that Goneril has already dismissed half of his retinue (she has already ordered 50 of his 100 men to leave). Lear bemoans his situation again and utters the following:
Old fond eyes
Beweep this cause again, I’ll pluck ye out. (279-80)
The word fond means foolish. Lear, naturally, hopes that he never sees his oldest daughter again. This line also foreshadows the subplot with Gloucester, who is tortured and literally has his eyes plucked out (at the end of Act III). Shakespeare engages in some wordplay here and uses literal blindness as a metaphor for the blindness to the truth. Both Lear and Gloucester are blind to the truth regarding their own children.
But Lear is still blinded, for he hurries to the castle of Regan and Cornwall with the hope that his second daughter will treat him kindly and will also get revenge against Goneril. However, Lear will soon find out that Regan is even worse than Goneril. After Lear has left, Goneril explains that she acted the way she did because she was fearful of the harm that could be caused by his one hundred unruly followers. Albany responds with the following:
Well, you may fear too far. (306)
Albany is subtle, but he clearly does not agree with the actions taken by his wife. Goneril, though, opposes her husband’s judgment on this matter; and she intends to do even more.
Goneril sends a letter to Regan informing her of what has happened in her castle and requesting that Regan follows suit (the letter is mentioned at lines 309 and 312). Although this letter is different in the particulars from the one Edmund writes, both Goneril (in the main plot) and Edmund (in the subplot) use letters to bring ruin and harm to their fathers. The use of the letter, then, becomes a sign, a semiotic device, to link the plot to the subplot.
So, Goneril orders her sly servant Oswald to deliver this letter to Regan before Lear and his fifty followers should arrive in Cornwall.
Albany predicts (foreshadows) the result:
How far your eyes may pierce I cannot tell:
Striving to better, oft we mar what’s well. (324-25)
Albany is wondering how far Goneril is looking into (or anticipating) the future. Albany is content with his present circumstances. He is suggesting that there is no need to reduce the number of Lear’s retinue or to complain of Lear’s stay with them. However, Goneril is greedy and ambitious; and so she will spoil (mar) their present good fortune and eventually lose everything.
In the brief last scene of the first act, Lear sends Kent on ahead to inform Regan of his coming. Lear then engages in some more comic banter with the Fool, and the Fool continues to comment on Lear’s foolish actions.
The most complicated of the Fool’s jests is the following: “If a man’s brains were in his heels, were’t not in danger of kibes?” (6-7). Kibes are sores that develop on the feet when they are exposed to cold and dampness. After Lear agrees to this nonsense, the Fool then states the following:
Then I prithee be merry; thy wit shall never go slip-shod. (9)
The word prithee (a contraction of “pray to thee”) here means to suggest. The word slip-shod means wearing slippers (shod in slippers): slippers were recommended to people who developed kibes on their feet. The Fool literally suggests that Lear should be happy or merry because his wit or brains will never have to wear slippers because they are not in his feet or heels. But what the Fool actually intends is that Lear’s wit (or brains or head) will never receive warmth and dryness and comfort. The slippers thus symbolize Lear’s former house or palace. Lear is without a house and the comfort it affords. A few lines later the Fool also compares Lear to a snail without its shell (at line 23). The Fool realizes that Lear and his men will not be treated any better at Regan’s palace.
At the end of Act I, Lear is feeling miserable and desperate. He still cannot believe how badly he has been treated, and he realizes that his emotional state is tearing him apart:
O, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven!
(38)
Lear wishes to remain sane; but both his body and his mind are greatly weakened.