My face I’ll grime with filth,
Blanket my loins, elf all my hairs in knots,
And with presented nakedness outface
The winds and persecutions of the sky.
The country gives me proof and precedent
Of Bedlam beggars who with roaring voices
Strike in their numbed and mortifièd arms
Pins, wooden pricks, nails, sprigs of rosemary,
And, with this horrible object, from low farms,
Poor pelting villages, sheepcotes, and mills,
Sometime with lunatic bans, sometime with prayers,
Enforce their charity. "Poor Turlygod! Poor Tom!"
That’s something yet. "Edgar" I nothing am.
– William Shakespeare
King Lear, Act 2, Scene 3. In the woods Edgar plans to disguise himself as a deranged inmate of Bedlam hospital called Poor Tom. He will smear his face with mud, strip himself, wear only a blanket and brave the wind, bad weather and natural elements almost naked. He has seen beggars from insane asylums mutilate their arms with pins and nails, pray and shout insane curses, forcing poor villagers and farmers to give them alms. Poor Tom, they call themselves. He is no longer Edgar, he announces, renouncing his family identity.