It is fascinating to follow the changes that  Lear undergoes in just the first three acts of King Lear. It is evident from on the start of the play that he is a man suffering from insecurities, and is reliant on the reassurance of others. We first see this in Act I, when Lear demands that his daughters express their love for him in order to obtain a portion of his property. It is as though he is begging them to verbally fight over him when he says, “Which of you shall we say doth love us most? That we our largest bounty may extend Where nature doth with merit challenge.”

We see again King Lear’s reliance on others, and his need to surround himself by those who will serve him, when he insists that his 100 knights remain with him even after his “retirement”. He is even willing to go out of his way by alternating between the homes Goneril and Regan in order that he should keep his knights by his side. “Ourself, by monthly course, With reservation of an hundred knights, By you to be sustain’d, shall our abode Make with you by due turns.”

The Fool is yet another character that seems to remain by Lear’s side throughout several scenes in the beginning of the play. However, it is in Act 3 Scene 4 that we see a change in King Lear, specifically when he orders the Fool to leave his side and find shelter from the violent storm, “Prithee, go in thyself: seek thine own ease:” As the fool goes to find cover, King Lear seems to have an epiphany.

“Poor naked wretches, whereso’er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
Your loop’d and window’d raggedness, defend you
From seasons such as these? O, I have ta’en
Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp;
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
That thou mayst shake the superflux to them,
And show the heavens more just.”

In this speech, Lear seems to recognize the mistakes he made as king by not properly caring for the poor in his country. Lear is stripped away of not only the physical layers, a roof above his head that would protect his body, but the emotional layers as well, the people that would protect his ego. It seems that this is the first time in the play that we see King Lear thinking of others before himself.