Lear instructs Kent to hasten to Regan with a letter telling of his plan to come and stay with her.
The Fool predicts what will happen assuring Lear that Regan will treat him like Goneril has, and points out Lear's folly in giving away his land to his daughters. Lear, who is afraid that he will go mad, asks if his horses are ready, and France, who now enters disguised more openly as a Gentleman, assures him that they are.
the final words of Act 1 are the couplet:
She that's a maid now (Cordelia has not consummated her marriage so she is still a maid),
and laughs at my (the Fool's) departure (from the play),
Shall not be a maid long (she will die),
unless things (the days of tribulation at the end of the world) be cut shorter. * (see note below)
* By considering the imagery of final judgement found in Lear, Chapter 4 of the book, Cordelia, King Lear and His Fool, "Is This The Promise End?" shows how it would have been much easier for the original audiences to understand the couplet in this way than it is for audiences today to do so.
