ABSTRACT
To consider Thomas Lovell Beddoes on death is to consider Beddoes on all things, and to require body of work so replete with graves and ghosts to yield up a coherent system of belief on such matters would be an ill-fated experiment. A striking feature of Beddoes's use of the motif here is that it is the remaining body which appears to speak, and to explain the phenomena of dying: 'both will come again' seems to mean 'both will come back here, to me'. To what extent, and exactly where, the soul inhabits the physical body are issues that have a powerful hold on Beddoes's imagination, and an understanding of these issues must involve a close consideration of the central scene in Death's Jest-Book. In Beddoes's drama which answers and wrestles with its early modem precursors the idea is provocatively foregrounded, as the text is built around the reconstitution of a body.
