ABSTRACT
This chapter examines accounts of death speech in which we also see women speakers who are aware of what their audiences expect from them. When discussing early modern women's speech, critics typically distinguish women's speech before death as a unique scene of speech, arguing that in this one instance restriction upon women's speech were lifted. The chapter suggests that two cultural traditions, one primarily associated with saintly deaths and the other with criminal ones, factor into the authorization of women's death speech. It discusses speeches that are compelled and desired by a present audience to death speeches that are not valued until after the female figure has died. Discussing the deaths of Cordelia and the Duchess of Malfi, the chapter explores their relationship to scaffold speeches for two reasons: they borrow similar patterns of relocating the desire for women's speech, and the heroine in each has her speech re-evaluated after her death.
