Abstract
Shakespearean tragedy offers a theatricalized inversion of the leaky humoral body by presenting unspoiled female cadavers. Instead of highlighting the superfluous, involuntary bloodshed of the womb, these death scenes sanitize the female corpse, cultivating a more classical embodiment. Posthumously producing the female body on stage often serves no plot purpose, which extends the erotic spectacle by subjecting her to blazon poetry in male-authored language. By figuratively dissecting the female corpse, the audience engages in an egotistical exploration of the female body beyond what is visible. As the poetic device moves from abstract to carnal, the characters on stage are exposed to the audience’s gaze, which ultimately culminates in a critique of the male blazoner attempting to garner rhetorical control over the female corpse.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
This framework is not an exclusive rule, but a pattern that emerges in Shakespeare’s canon. My interest here is to explore how the trend connects to the leaky humoral body, rather than discussing the few deaths that occur outside of this paradigm.
- 2.
Galen, On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body, translated by Margaret Tallmadge May (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press 1968), 2 vols., book 14. Also quoted by Laurent Joubert, Popular Errors, translated by Gregory David De Rocher (Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 1989), 222 and Andreas Vesalius, De humani corportis fabrica libri septem (Basile, 1543), chapter 18, book 5.
- 3.
Jane Sharp, The Midwives Book: or the Whole Art of Midwifery Discovered (London: printed for Simon Miller, 1671), 236. See also Philip Barrough, The Method of Phisick, Containing Cases, Signs, and Cures of Inward Diseases in Man’s Body (London: Richard Field, 1596), 189–90. See also Israel Spach’s Gynaeciorum, sive de mulierum tum communibus (Strasbourg: Zetzner, 1597), where menstruation is described as a “diarrhea on account of excessive coldness of the womb,” 42.
- 4.
Edward Jorden, A Brief Discourse of Disease Called the Suffocation of the Mother (London: John Windet, 1603), 17.
- 5.
John Sadler, The sick woman’s private looking glass (London: Anne Griffin, 1636), 44.
- 6.
Hippocrates, “Diseases of Women 1,” translated by Ellis Hanson Signs 1:2, 567–584 (1875): 570.
- 7.
Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, translated by Helene Iswolsky (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 21.
- 8.
Galen is the main ancient advocate for bloodletting in On therapeutics, to Glaucon 1.15 (K 11.43–6; Daremberg II, 729–31) and On Treatment by Bloodletting 9; K 11.279–80.
- 9.
Levinus Lemnius, The Secret Miracles of Nature (London: Jo Streater, 1658), 31.
- 10.
Galen, Opera omnia, ed. C. G. Kühn, 20 vols (Leipzig: Knobloch, 1821–33), 17B:822; 5:138.
- 11.
See Remberti Dodoai, Medicinalium observationum exempla rara (Colgne: 1571), 38–9 and 64. C. Stampart van der Wiel, Obervationes rariores (Leiden, 1687), 196.
- 12.
Nicholas Culpeper, Culpeper’s Directory for Midwives (London: Peter Cole, 1662), 90. See also Daniel Sennertus, Nicholas Culpeper, and Abdiah Cole, Practical Physic: The Fourth Book in Three Parts (London: Peter Cole, 1664), 90.
- 13.
Daniel Sennert, 221.
- 14.
John Sadler, 49.
- 15.
Daniel Sennert, 90 and Jane Sharp, 302.
- 16.
Richard Napier, 8 November 1615, 9:00 A.M., MS Ashmole 196, f. 143v; Mr. Gerence James [Marks], 13 April 1602, 2:00 P.M., MS Ashmole 221, f. 35v.
- 17.
Thomas Nash, Pierce Penilesse his supplication to the devil (London: Richard Jones, 1592), 26.
- 18.
Lucy Munro, “‘They eat each others’ arms’: Stage Blood and Body Parts,” 73–93 in Shakespeare’s Theatres and the Effects of Performance (London: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2013), 86.
- 19.
Reginald Scot, The Discovery of Witchcraft (London: 1584), 288–290.
- 20.
Gail Kern Paster, “‘In the Spirit of Men there is no Blood’: Blood as Trope of Gender in Julius Caesar,” 284–298. Shakespeare Quarterly 40:3 (1989): 287.
- 21.
My thanks to Ariane M. Balizet for pointing this out to me. For more, see her Blood and Home in Early Modern Drama: Domestic Identity on the Renaissance Stage (New York: Routledge, 2014), 131–138.
- 22.
Valerie Traub, “Jewels, Statues, and Corpses: Containment of Female Erotic Power in Shakespeare’s Plays,” 215–238. Shakespeare Studies 20 (1988): 220.
- 23.
Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” Screen 16.3 (1975): 9.
- 24.
Galen, Claudii Galeni Pergameni, secundum Hippocratem medicorum facile principis opus De usu partium corpius humani, trans Niccolò of Reggio (Paris: Simon de Colines, 1528), bk 14, 409 and Andreas Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica (Basel: Johannes Oporinus, 1543), 532.
- 25.
Susan Zimmerman, The Early Modern Corpse and Shakespeare’s Theatre (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005), 94.
- 26.
See the blazon of Rosaline (2.1.17–21) and Queen Mab (1.4.53–95), and the anti-blazons in the text (2.2.40–2, 3.3.105).
- 27.
As other scholars have noted, Cleopatra’s monument is sexualized, offering a linguistic parallel to her erotic power. See Janet Adelman, Suffocating Mothers, 186–7.
- 28.
Jannifer A. Low, “‘Bodied Forth’: Spectator, Stage, and Actor in the Early Modern Theater” Comparative Drama 39:1 (2005), 5–6.
- 29.
Sir Walter Raleigh, The Poems of Sir Walter Raleigh, ed. by John Hannah (London: George Bell & Sons, 1892), accessed through Bartleby.com, 2011.
- 30.
Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, translated by Helene Iswolsky (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 21.
- 31.
Robert Weimann, Author’s Pen and Actor’s Voice: Playing and Writing in Shakespeare’s Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 180–208.
- 32.
Sasha Roberts, ‘“Let me the curtains draw”: The Dramatic and Symbolic Properties of the Bed in Shakespearean Tragedy’ in Staged Properties in Early Modern English Drama, 153–176 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 157. See stage direction to draw the curtain ( Othello 5.2.118).
- 33.
Ivan G. Sparkes, Four-poster and Tester Beds (Haverfordwest: Shire Publications, 1990), 6.
- 34.
Of the 350 allusions to beds in Shakespeare’s canon, only six plays require a bed as a stage property for a production: Henry IV, Part II, Cymbeline, The Taming of the Shrew, Romeo and Juliet , and Othello . For more, see Sasha Roberts, 153–160. Roberts states that The Taming of the Shrew also requires a bed for performance , yet the bed is merely talked about in this scene.
- 35.
Henry Jackson, Letter to D. G. P. dated September 1610, Oxford, Corpus Christi, MS 304, fols 83v–84r. Translated by Patrick Gregory in Record of Early English Drama, Oxford, ed. John R. Elliot, Alexandra F. Johnston, Alan H. Nelson, and Diana Wyatt, 2 vols (Toronto, 2004), vol 2, 1037–8.
References
Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and His World. Translated by Helene Iswolsky. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984.
Balizet, Ariane. Blood and Home in Early Modern Drama: Domestic Identity on the Renaissance Stage. New York: Routledge, 2014.
Barrough, Philip. The Method of Phisick, Containing Cases, Signs, and Cures of Inward Diseases in Man’s Body. London: Richard Field, 1596.
Culpeper, Nicholas. Culpeper’s Directory for Midwives: or, A guide for women, The Second Part. London: Peter Cole, 1662.
Dodoai, Remberti. Medicinalium observationum exempla rara. Colgne: 1571.
Galen, On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body. Translated by Margaret Tallmadge May, 2 vols. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press 1968.
Galen. Claudii Galeni Pergameni, secundum Hippocratem medicorum facile principis opus De usu partium corpius humani, trans Niccolò of Reggio. Paris: Simon de Colines, 1528.
Galen. Opera omnia. Edited by C. G. Kühn, 20 vols. Leipzig: Knobloch, 1821–33.
Hippocrates. “Diseases of Women 1.” Translated by Ellis Hanson. Signs 1, no 2 (1875): 567–584.
Jackson, Henry. Letter to D. G. P. dated September 1610, Oxford, Corpus Christi, MS 304, folios 83v–84r. Translated by Patrick Gregory in Record of Early English Drama, Oxford, edited by John R. Elliot, Alexandra F. Johnston, Alan H. Nelson, and Diana Wyatt, 2 vols. Toronto, 2004.
Jorden, Edward. A Brief Discourse of Disease Called the Suffocation of the Mother. London: John Windet, 1603.
Joubert, Laurent. Popular Errors. Translated by Gregory David De Rocher. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 1989.
Lemnius, Levinus. The Secret Miracles of Nature. London: Jo Streater, 1658.
Low, Jannifer A. “‘Bodied Forth’: Spectator, Stage, and Actor in the Early Modern Theater.” Comparative Drama volume 39, number 1 (2005): 1–29.
Marks, Gerence James. Case files, 13 April 1602, 2:00 P.M., MS Ashmole 221, f. 35v.
Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Screen 16, issue 3 (1975): 6–18.
Munro, Lucy. “‘They eat each others’ arms’: Stage Blood and Body Parts.” In Shakespeare’s Theatres and the Effects of Performance, edited by Tiffany Stern and Farah Karim-Cooper, 73–93. London: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2013.
Napier, Richard. Case files, 8 November 1615, 9:00 A.M., MS Ashmole 196, f. 143v.
Nash, Thomas. Pierce Penilesse his supplication to the devil. London: Richard Jones, 1592.
Paster, Gail Kern. “‘In the Spirit of Men there is no Blood’: Blood as Trope of Gender in Julius Caesar,” 284–298. Shakespeare Quarterly 40:3 (1989): 287.
Raleigh, Sir Walter. The Poems of Sir Walter Raleigh, edited by John Hannah. London: George Bell & Sons, 1892.
Raynalde, Thomas. The Byrth of Mankynde, trans Richard Jonas. London 1540.
Roberts, Sasha. ‘“Let me the curtains draw”: The Dramatic and Symbolic Properties of the Bed in Shakespearean Tragedy.’ In Staged Properties in Early Modern English Drama, edited by Jonathan Harris and Natasha Korda, 153–176. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Sadler, John. The sick woman’s private looking glass. London: Anne Griffin, 1636.
Scot, Reginald. The Discovery of Witchcraft. London: 1584.
Sennertus, Daniel, Nicholas Culpeper, and Abdiah Cole. Practical Physic: The Fourth Book in Three Parts. London: Peter Cole, 1664.
Shakespeare, William. The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works. Edited by Richard Proudfoot, Ann Thompson, and David Scott Kastan. London: Arden, 2001.
Shakespeare, William. The Norton Shakespeare. Edited by Stephen Greenblatt, Walter Cohen, Jean E. Howard, Katharine Eisaman Maus, Gordon McMullan, and Suzanne Gossett, 3rd edition. New York City: W. W. Norton & Company, 2015.
Sharp, Jane. The Midwives Book: or the Whole Art of Midwifery Discovered. London: printed for Simon Miller, 1671.
Spach, Israel. Gynaeciorum, sive de mulierum tum communibus. Strasbourg: Zetzner, 1597.
Sparkes, Ivan G. Four-poster and Tester Beds. Haverfordwest: Shire Publications, 1990.
Traub, Valerie. “Jewels, Statues, and Corpses: Containment of Female Erotic Power in Shakespeare’s Plays,” Shakespeare Studies 20 (1988): 215–238.
van der Wiel, C. Stampart. Obervationes rariores. Leiden, 1687.
Vesalius, Andreas. De humani corportis fabrica libri septem. Basel: Johannes Oporinus, 1543.
Weimann, Robert. Author’s Pen and Actor’s Voice: Playing and Writing in Shakespeare’s Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Zimmerman, Susan. The Early Modern Corpse and Shakespeare’s Theatre. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Kenny, A. (2019). The Tomb Womb. In: Humoral Wombs on the Shakespearean Stage. Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05201-0_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05201-0_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-05200-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-05201-0
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)