![]() ![]() ![]() The poem has eight verses of eight lines each, each verse concluding with a repetition of a four-line chorus. For example, Edgar in King Lear disguises himself as mad "Tom o' Bedlam". It was adopted as a technique of begging, or a character. If it happened at all, the numbers were small, though there were probably large numbers of mentally ill travellers who turned to begging, but had never been near Bedlam. ![]() It was commonly thought that inmates were released with authority to make their way by begging, though this is probably untrue. They claimed, or were assumed, to be former inmates of the Bethlem Royal Hospital (Bedlam). Aubrey writes that such a beggar could be identified by “an armilla of tin printed, of about three inches breadth” attached to his left arm. The terms "Tom o' Bedlam" and “Bedlam beggar” were used to describe beggars and vagrants who had or feigned mental illness (see also Abraham-men). In How to Read and Why Harold Bloom called it "the greatest anonymous lyric in the language." The poem was probably composed at the beginning of the 17th century. "Tom o' Bedlam" is the title of an anonymous poem in the "mad song" genre, written in the voice of a homeless " Bedlamite". ![]()
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