Modern English

*Edgar enters alone.* EDGAR. I heard the proclamation — they're hunting me. I hid inside a hollow tree and slipped past them. There's no safe road, no safe place — every port and crossing is watched, every guard on alert to catch me.

Modern English

While I can still move, I have to survive. I've hit on a plan: I'll take on the lowest, most wretched disguise a man can wear — something barely human, closer to animal. I'll smear my face with mud, wrap rags around my waist, knot my hair into tangles, and bare myself to the cold — letting the wind and the sky do their worst.

Modern English

The country is full of them — Bedlam beggars, madmen who go howling from door to door, driving skewers and pins into their own numbed arms — pins, wooden spikes, nails, sprigs of rosemary — and with that gruesome sight, they work their way through poor farms, small villages, sheepfolds, and mills, sometimes raving curses, sometimes whispering prayers, until people give them something out of pity.

Modern English

Poor "Turlygod," poor Tom — that'll do. It's something, at least. Edgar is gone. I am nobody now. *He exits.*