Mining a series of previously uncharted conversations springing up in 16th- and 17th-century popular medicine and culture, this study explores early modern England's significant and sustained interest in the hysterical diseases of women. Kaara L. Peterson assembles a fascinating collection of medical materials to support her discussion of contemporary debates about varieties of uterine pathologies and the implications of these debates for our understanding of drama's representation of hysterica passio cases in particular, among other hysterical maladies. An important aspect of the author's...

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...