O, reason not the need! our basest beggars
Are in the poorest thing superfluous.
Allow not nature more than nature needs,
Man’s life’s as cheap as beast’s.
– William Shakespeare
King Lear, Act 2, Scene 4. This is Lear’s response when Goneril and Regan questions why he needs his retinue of knights. Lear declares that need is not the point, the poorest beggars have at least something they don’t need. If you only allow people what they need to survive – "allow not nature more than nature needs" – then man’s life is no better than an animal’s. Lear is railing against the injustice of it all. The passage also foreshadows that Lear with soon be living alongside the poorest beggars.