This study takes a look at a controversial question: what do the acts and shows of grief performed in early modern drama tell us about the religious culture of the world in which they were historically staged? Drawing on performance studies, it provides detailed readings of play texts to explore the politics, pathologies and parodies of mourning.

'...a timely and welcome contribution to this field...a densely argued, rewarding study, offering readers a wealth of material regarding rituals of mourning and commemoration in the studied texts and early modern England more generally...' - Wolfram R. Keller, Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik

'In eloquent prose, and with clarity and precision of argument, Döring shows how the Shakespearean theatre, in its repetitious, commemorative, and comic performances of mourning, accomplished the necessary cultural work of habituation.' - Katharine Goodland, Sonderdruck aus Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen

Autorentext
TOBIAS DÖRING is Professor of English Literature at the Ludwig Maximilians-Universität, Munich, Germany, and review editor for the yearbook of the German Shakespeare Association. His previous books include Caribbean-English Passages (2002) and Performances of the Sacred in Late Medieval and Early Modern England (2005).

Inhalt
List of Illustrations Acknowledgements A Note on Citation Introduction PART 1: POLITICS OF MOURNING Heavens Hung with Black: Elizabethan Rituals of Mourning Remembrance of Things Past Memory Battles and Stage Laments Facing the Dead: Theatricality and Historiography PART 2: PATHOLOGIES OF MOURNING Well-made Partings and the Problem of Revenge Translating Tradition: The Spanish Tragedy and Titus Andronicus Foreign Funerals and Colonial Mimesis: Historical Exchanges Hamlet and the Virtue of Assumed Custom PART 3: PHYSIOLOGIES OF MOURNING Secrets and Secretions Tears and the Uncertain Signs of Inwardness Rhetoric and the Techniques of Emotional Engineering Women, Widows and Mimetic Weeping PART 4: PARODIES OF MOURNING Mock Laments: The Play and Peal of Death Round about her Tomb they go: Much Ado About Nothing Ralph Roister Doister and the Anxiety of Borrowed Rites Noting and Ghosting: What Stage Paradoies Do Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index