Disease, Diagnosis, and Cure on the Early Modern Stage

by Stephanie Moss, Kaara L. Peterson (Editor)

This collection of essays makes an important contribution to scholarship by examining how the myths and practices of medical knowledge were interwoven into popular entertainment on the early modern stage. Rather than treating medicine, the theater, and literary texts separately, the contributors show how the anxieties engendered by medical socio-scientific investigations were translated from the realm of medicine to the stage by Renaissance playwrights, especially Shakespeare. As a whole, the volume reconsiders typical ways of viewing medical theory and practice while individual essays focus on gender and ethnicity, theatrical impersonation, medical counterfeit and malfeasance, and medicine as it appears in the form of various political metaphors.

240 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 2004

Reviews

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

The way people of 400 years ago thought about medicine and the body is so different from ours it is difficult even to use the same words to describe it.

This series of articles uses the plays of (mostly) Shakespeare to illustrate individual medical beliefs, and in the process illuminate some parts of the plays that, in reading or performance, we pass over.

Obviously, there is an element of nerdery in this book, but overall it is fascinating, both for the "you what?"ness of some renaissance medical beliefs and practices, and for the "Oh wow, I never knew that line meant that" moments from Shakespeare.