ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses Susan Zimmerman’s 2005The Early Modern Corpse and William Shakespeare’s Theatre, which the stage corpse’s socio-historical context. Early Modern dramatists were clearly similarly fascinated by the staging of bodies at birth and death. Certainly, some iconic Shakespearean deaths happen offstage – from Joan la Pucelle to Katharine of Aragon, via characters as diverse as John of Gaunt and Mercutio. Other corpses in all likelihood disappeared before or after death into traps, including Arthur in King John, according to Ichikawa’s arguments. The chapter examines one of Andrew Sofer’s central but contradictory contentions about Shakespeare’s use of babies onstage. Having cogently outlined the obvious disruptive difficulties of live babies as performers, Sofer continues: the use of fake babies runs its own risks. Babies and corpses’ deployment in Early Modern playtexts, stagecraft, and culture, and their cognitive impact then and offers persuasive reasons for reconsidering corpses and babies as a discrete cognitive category of stage prop.
