Infected texts: Plague and syphilis on the early modern stage

This study examines the impact of plague and syphilis on early modern playwrighting practices. I consider these diseases as traumatic events that shaped aspects of early modern culture, even as certain cultural frameworks of the period shaped the ways in which these traumas were perceived. I examine early modern medical treatises, pamphlet literature, published sermons and other religious literature, visual art, and ballads in order to contextualize my study of plague and syphilis. But my project focuses primarily on the ways in which professional theatre registered the impact of these diseases.The ways in which theatre represents the impact of disease are not always direct or obvious. Theatre was a popular form of entertainment with its own modes of expression, plot structures, and generic conventions. My study looks for sites of the impact of plague and syphilis in alterations to these conventions. I examine Ben Jonson's experiments with satire in The Alchemist variations to the conventions of revenge tragedy adaptations of the interlude form and Shakespeare's problem plays as instances where playwrights strategically use discourses of disease and modifications of genre to represent the disease experience. Alterations to convention reveal a remarkably nuanced set of responses to disease. Plague and syphilis evoked and defied early modern explanatory frameworks. As playwrights register the impact of these diseases, they produce texts that replicate that experience for their audiences. In their representations of plague and syphilis, the plays I study may be considered infected. Studying the specific form of expression that they give to their figuratively contaminated nature allows a deepening of our understanding of early modern art's capacity to reflect cultural trauma.