bedlamite

There’s lots of Bedlamite fun throughout.

Bedlamite,” an obsolete Britishism, is there because it’s a word that a literary guy like Mercer would know.

An insane person; a madman; a bedlamite.

Music has, for a long time past, been avowedly mad, divorced from sense and fact; and runs about now as an open Bedlamite, for a good many generations back, bragging that she has nothing to do with sense and fact, but with fiction and delirium only; and stares with unaffected amazement, not able to suppress an elegant burst of witty laughter, at my suggesting the old fact to her.

What could excite the public rapture at his first appearance in this part, I am at a loss to guess: if his figure is not absolutely irreconcileable with the character, his action and expression are balanced between the declamation of Talma, the ravings of a bedlamite, and sometimes the barking of a dog.