Among the most bizarre opening scenes ever staged: King Lear

Re-read (millionth time, but first time in many years) the first act of "King Lear," and of course on coming back to this play it's as strange and compelling as when I first read it, probably as a teenager, and it struck me so vividly as something I had to know more about, leading me on the road to studying Shakespeare in college and beyond. How odd this play is: Lear's incredibly bizarre decision to divide up his kingdom and demand of his daughter "which of thee dost love us most?" Many critics have written about this as an act of medieval fealty: declaration of loyalty to the king, and so on, but of course it does not feel this way, it feels cruel, and out of some deep need of wound that Lear has suffered. Compare Lear with all of the great Shakespeare tragic heroes, and what's the difference? He's the only one without a wife/beloved - is she even mentioned in the play, ever? Lear is more like Prospero or some of the old men in the comedies, Duke Senior et al. - alone, embittered, old. But not that old, if you think about it - Goneril and Regan are probably pretty young (no children yet) and Cordelia just getting married, so Lear is not really at a point where he should be thinking about his own death. So why does he demand this declaration of life, and why does he flip out when Cordelia refuses to declare her love? What's the story of Lear's life, in other words: who was his queen, what happened to her, what kind of monster mother would raise two daughters like G & R? There may be a psychological explanation for his actions, there may be a political explanation, but there's no obvious explanation other than that he sets the play and his own tragic fall in motion. Other artists have adapted the Lear story, including Jane Smiley setting it on a contemporary farm, and it does still make sense as to a dividing up of an estate, however modest, and the jealousies that often provokes - but it stands all alone in Shakespeeare as among the most bizarre opening scenes ever staged - though the rage it suddenly evokes is echoed in other S plays, notably The Winter's Tale.