• Medical humanities · Dec 2011

    Biography Historical Article

    Plagued by kindness: contagious sympathy in Shakespearean drama.

    • Eric Langley.
    • Department of English, University College London, London, UK. eflangley@gmail.com
    • Med Humanit. 2011 Dec 1; 37 (2): 103-9.

    AbstractThis article considers Shakespeare's metaphors of transmission, contagion and infection in the light of period plague tracts, medical treatises and plague time literature. The author demonstrates how period conceptions of disease are predicated upon a notion of sympathetic transference and, consequently, how kindness, likeness and communication between characters in Shakespearean drama are complicated and fraught with period specific anxiety. This article situates Shakespearean literary texts within a precise historical and medical moment, considering how scientific conceptions contaminate dramatic text.

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