In Shakespeare's King Lear, Poor Tom-a figure of madness, poverty, and linguistic play-acts as the personification of the semi-apocalyptic state into which the social world of the play descends. Edgar first appears fully as Poor Tom in Act 3, in the midst of the storm, when Lear's madness becomes fully displayed. That we encounter Poor Tom in the setting of the storm-addled heath associates him with the tempest, but in fact this association is suggested by the text from the very first introduction of the Poor Tom persona. In Act 1, scene 2, Edmund responds to Edgar's entrance with the following: "Pat he comes, like the catastrophe of the old comedy. My cue is villainous melancholy, with a sigh like Tom o'Bedlam. –O, these eclipses do portend these divisions. Fa, sol, la, mi." (134-137) Edmund's introduction of the Tom o'Bedlam character is preceded by his disparagement of astrological superstitions, which he then performs for Edmund as if in the voice of Tom o'Bedlam. Thus these lines create an association between the Tom o'Bedlam figure and a belief in astrological significance.
The language of "planetary influence" (125) in Edmund's speech immediately before Edgar appears establishes a theme of imagery relating to the natural world, the heavens, and weather. According to R.A. Foakes, the term "catastrophe" refers here to an "arbitrary or contrived denouement as in old fashioned comedy," but the word also suggests a natural disaster, such as a storm (n. 134). Following this possible image of a catastrophe in nature, "villainous melancholy" and "sigh" further suggest a connection between the Tom o'Bedlam figure and the natural world. In the speech in which Edgar engenders the idea to disguise himself as Poor Tom, he seems to pluck the character of the bedlam out of the very landscape:.
My face I'll grime with filth,.
Blanket my loins, elf all my hair in knots.
