Selfishness In King Lear

Selfishness is a key theme throughout King Lear, and it is exemplified through two of Lear’s three daughters: Goneril and Regan. While the third daughter, Cordelia, has no interest in prestige and power, Goneril and Regan crave the authoritative positions, even if it means undermining their own father:
This man hath had good counsel. A hundred knights!
‘Tis politic and safe to let him keep
At point a hundred knights! Yes, that on every dream,
Each buzz, each fancy, each complaint, dislike,
He mayt enguard his dotage with their powers
And hold our lives in mercy.
(Shakespeare 1.4.340-346)
At the beginning of Act 1, Scene 4, Lear enters Goneril’s castle with his many knights and orders his attendant to prepare his dinner. He requests Osawald, Goneril’s attendant, to find his daughter. One of his knights informs him that Goneril is not feeling well (1.4.51), adding that he feels as though “there’s a great abatement of kindness” (1.4.60) within the castle. Lear agrees, adding that “[he has] perceived a most faint neglect of late” (1.4.68), as well, as proven upon Oswald’s return. Rather than referring to Lear as

She claims his entourage is “disordered… debauched and bold” (1.4.249) and that her castle has turned into “a riotous inn… more like a tavern or a brothel / than a graced palace” (1.4.251-253). With this initial reasoning, it only seems fair she commands her father to “disquantity [his] train” (1.4.256), only keeping “men as may besort [his] age” (1.4.258) who are less likely to be as rowdy. Lear exits, leaving Goneril with her husband, Albany. It is only then that readers discover that raucous knights are not her sole reason for dismissing half of her father’s entourage. She confides in Albany that her father’s one hundred knights is not politically beneficial to her, for he still has too much power and can “hold [their] lives in mercy”