Care and Contagion in Shakespeare's Changing World

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.

• Publication date: 13 November 2025
• Page count: 272
• Dimensions: Height 218 mm; Width 138 mm; Thickness 22 mm
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
• Format: Hardback
• ISBN-13: 9781350425071