The Heart in the Age of Shakespeare

Studies of the body in various historical contexts have proliferated during the last twenty years, in part due to generous funding opportunities offered to those who wish to study the physical forms of the inhabitants of past societies. Bodies, and most importantly their component parts, deserve the attentions lavished upon them by academics; after all, although everyone who has ever lived was unique, each person possessed a physical form, and each body contained a heart. ‘The heart is where the action is, where it all begins and where, eventually it ends’, asserts William Slights, ‘the primary point of connection between felt interiority and the systems that helped to make sense of the social and physical universe’. Early modern clergy, anatomists and dramatists were all interested in inspecting the heart, and by drawing on anatomical illustrations together with art, drama, and poetry, Slights examines what he describes as graphic, passionate, narrative, villainous, and Shakespearian hearts. The beautifully illustrated nature of this monograph is striking; but, for a study that purports to focus on late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England, there is a remarkable amount of Italian, German, and, at one point, Aztec material. Comparisons can be commendable, lack of focus is not

Action (physics · Aesthetics · Art · Drama · Focus (optics · German · Literature · Narrative · Poetry · Point (geometry · Sociology · Classics · History · History of Medicine Studies · Literature: history, themes, analysis · Mathematics · Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Literary Criticism