ABSTRACT
The limited licence and independence of comment claimed by the deaths is finally subsumed back into the orthodox theological scheme, when Christ sits in judgement, and no grinning skeletons are to be seen. As the author have suggested in the case of his insertion of Eros/Thanatos poems into the revised Death's Jest-Book, Thomas Lovell Beddoes's writing is sometimes alive to the joke of 'being' or 'doing' Beddoes. The dance of death sequence in the final act of Death's Jest-Book seems intended to show a familiarity with the motif and tradition in Europe, and some of its cultural associations. The dance in Death's Jest-Book Act V, Scene iv reflects Beddoes's knowledge of the importance of the crowd to death's revels, and the convention of each death bringing a mortal partner into the circular Reigen for the last dance.
