Lear’s advisors don’t know his plan for dividing his kingdom. The play begins with Kent and Gloucester wondering whether Albany or Cornwall is Lear’s favorite. Of course, the rest of the scene shows that the husbands don’t matter much. Lear is more worried about his daughters.
The opening scene compares earthly and heavenly inheritance. Goneril and Regan don’t love their father, but they get the kingdom. Cordelia loves her father and gets nothing. Yet, France realizes that Cordelia’s virtues merit love.
Edmund knows he can make his father anxious by implying that Edgar is impatient to receive his inheritance.
Scene three shows us that Lear’s daughters are already chafing against the rules he set in Scene one. “Idle old man,” Goneril remarks, “That still would manage those authorities / That he hath given away.” Their favor turns from grace to wrath.
Lear has servants looking out for him. Kent returns from banishment in disguise to help out his king. The fool tells Lear to his face that Lear is the fool, and this criticism anticipates Goneril’s rebuke of her father. The fool’s criticism is grace. Goneril’s criticism is wrath.
The first act exposes Lear’s lack of self-knowledge. Regan said in the first scene, “He hath ever but slenderly known himself.” “Who is it that can tell who I am?” Lear wonders in scene four.
Lear knows he mistreated Cordelia. “I did her wrong,” he tells the fool in scene five.
If Lear cannot find grace from his daughters, he must receive it from the gods. “Sweet heaven, keep me in temper; I would not be mad,” he cries in scene five. The problem is that Lear’s previous invocations of the gods have involved wrath. He spoke of Apollo and Hecate in scene one when he banished Cordelia. Who can show him grace?
Experiments in Criticism 