GONERIL: Hear me, my lord.
What need you five-and-twenty, ten, or five,
To follow in a house where twice so many
Have a command to tend you?
REGAN: What need one?

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 2, Scene 4. Lear starts off his retirement with an entourage of one hundred knights to attend him. Daughters Goneril and Regan first demand that he get rid of fifty, then in this passage they go so far as to suggest that he doesn’t need any at all. They are conspiring against Lear because they fear that he might use the knights against them to assert his authority again as King. Any power Lear may think he has left is rapidly disappearing. He is King without a kingdom, he may soon be a master without servants.