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Circuits of disease correspond to previously unconsidered practices of caregiving in early modern English drama in this new volume by Darryl Chalk and Rebecca Totaro. They explore how the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries responded to and intersected with local and international ideas of communal care, health management, quarantine, embodiment, and theatricality. The role of the spectators who found themselves represented in such themes of caregiving in times of crisis finds new meaning in Chalk and Totaro''s framing. Foregrounded by pioneering archival research, chapters provide new insights into several Shakespeare plays performed on stages in London and at the court of King James I, as well as several plays by his contemporaries including Webster, Dekker, and Middleton. Contributors explore plague and privilege in Romeo and Juliet , servants and caregiving in King Lear , women and herbal medicine in The Winter''s Tale , astrology in The Duchess of Malfi , and the humour that attaches itself to illness in The Roaring Girl . These case studies expand our understanding of the caregiving that connected people across place and time as powerfully as the lived experience of disease did.
List of contents
1. Introduction: Care and Contagion in King Lear, by Way of Introduction Darryl Chalk
(University of Southern Queensland, Australia)PART I: Women's Care Networks
2. Domestic Communities of Care in Shakespeare's Later Plays Jennifer Forsyth
(Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, USA)3. Vegetal Care in The Winter's Tale Susan C. Staub
(Appalachian State University, USA)4. "A terrible childbed has thou had, my dear": Pregnant Embodiment and Caregiving Networks in PericlesKatarzyna Burzynska
(Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland)PART II: Alternative Care Networks
5. "Drown the lamenting fool": Heart Health, Weeping, and Contagion in Titus AndronicusClaire Hansen
(Australian National University, Australia)6. "We did not all dye thereof": Chemical Medicine and the Shut House in Ben Jonson's The Alchemist (1610) and Mary Trye's Medicatrix (1675)Kathleen Miller (
Trinity College, Dublin, Republic of Ireland)7. Astral Networks and Almanacs in The Duchess of MalfiKatherine Walker
(University of Nevada, USA)PART III: Denial of Network Care
8. Sallow Hal: Care and Concern in the HenriadLaurie Johnson
(University of Southern Queensland, Australia)9. "Power, time, means to meet"-Plague, Movement, and Wealth in Romeo and Juliet Eileen Sperry
(SUNY Empire State College, NY, USA)10. Community and Radical Self Care in Titus AndronicusMia Escott (Berry College, USA)
PART IV: Out of Network Care
11. Who Cares? Servants and Caregiving in King Lear Heidi Craig
(Texas A&M University, USA)12. Laughing at Illness: Contagion and Care in The Roaring GirlMolly Ziegler
(Open University, UK)13. Afterword Rebecca Totaro (Florida Gulf Coast University, USA)
