The Plague in Print: Essential Elizabethan Sources, 1558-1603

After the fourteenth century horror of the Black Death there were lesser recurrences of the plague over the next three hundred years. Totaro (English, Florida Gulf Coast University) has transcribed several texts dealing with the plague in Elizabethan England. They contain advice on how to prevent and treat plague, a treatise from the queen on civic action to be taken to avoid an epidemic, religious reactions and prayers and lists of the numbers who died by parish. The longest entries are an early (1564) dramatic allegory in which Death comes for Civis. This includes medical and theological information, laced with dark humor. It is a version of the late-medieval Everyman. The final entry, by playwright Thomas Dekker, is a stark picture of a society ruled by fear, with Death as king. The selections, each with an explanatory introduction, are well chosen to show how the plague affected the psychology of the Elizabethans, revealing another facet of that turbulent time. Annotation c2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Rebecca Totaro is professor of English at Florida Gulf Coast University. She is the author of Suffering in Paradise and coeditor of Representing the Plague in Early Modern England. A member of the Folger Institute Year-Long Colloquium “Vernacular Health and Healing” (2007-08), she was awarded a short-term fellowship at the Folger Shakespeare Library for her work on early modern meteorology and physiology, and recently received the 2010 Monroe Kirk Spears Award for the best essay of the year published in SEL Studies in English Literary Studies 1500–1900 for her essay, “Securing Sleep in Hamlet.”