Shakespeare's creation Edgar from King Lear and Elizabethan attitudes toward mental illness.

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Edgar, Poor Tom O'Bedlam, fiend, peasant, messenger, and avenging knight - just who is the character that assumes all these personas? Shakespeare often plays with the motif of madness and ambiguous roles, but no character dramatically embodies these ideas as extensively as Edgar in King Lear. It has often been said that Shakespeare understood human nature better than any man ever did. If that is the case, then we have to believe that his creation, …

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…Arden Edition of the Works of William Shakespeare. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1957. Ray, Isaac. "Shakespeare's Delineations of Insanity." American Journal of Insanity. 1847. Volume 3:287-334. Shakespeare, William. King Lear. Ed. Stephen Orgel. New York: Penguin Putnam Inc. 1999. Shakespeare, William. The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. London: Oxford University Press. 1914. Truskinovsky, Alexander M. "Literary Psychiatric Observation and Diagnosis Through the Ages: King Lear Revisited" in Southern Medical Journal. March 2002. Volume 95, No. 3: 343-352.