Act 2 Blog 2

On the most basic, shallow level, Edgar’s transformation into Tom O’Bedlam is completely for the purpose of having a disguise in which no one can recognize him. After his ‘fight’ with Edmund, he needed to run away and disguise himself. However, I think that he does the particular disguise he chose for the reason that it represents a chaotic frame of mind, and truly puts forth the confusion and irony that this play presents. The first solidly good character we are introduced to as the audience has found that he must disguise himself as a madman in order to get by. He states in the play, after hiding in a rotted out tree trunk, that he must become "the basest and most poorest shape that ever penury and contempt of man.” This is also because Edgar feels as if he has no place in the world that he grew up in, and so he has been reduced to the standard of a beggar with no home. The fact that a bedlam is a institute for crazy people also lends deeper meaning to the name and disguise Tom O’Bedlam. As I said before, the chaos and craziness of this play is represented in the fact that perhaps the only (or at least most) sane person in the play is disguised as the craziest of all. Overall, he has disguised himself as Tom O’Bedlam because he needed a disguise and wanted to display his confusion in an outward manner.