Engel, William E., and Grant Williams, eds. The Shakespearean Death Arts: Hamlet Among the Tombs

In this edited collection, William E. Engel and Grant Williams, the editors, begin by defining their terms: "This volume takes as its point of departure the assumption that 'the death arts' designates a historical category vital for understanding early modern social interaction and cultural production" (1).They use negative definition but also positive definition as in the following: "[O]ur engagement with the death arts seeks principally to acknowledge the enduring legacy of the medieval ars moriendi, which instructed the dying person (the moriens) and their family in how to prepare for a religiously auspicious passing-that is, a 'good death' " (1-2).In the introduction, Engel and Williams identify and contextualize "the Shakespearean death arts" (19).This background sets the framework for the various contributions.Part 1, "Staging the Death Arts, " examines aspects of death in various plays.Discussing Shakespeare's ars moriendi, Andrew D. McCarthy makes a number of perceptive points, including the following: "Shakespeare's use of the ars moriendi to structure King Lear becomes explicit as Lear's behavior-and much of the language that describes it-draws repeated attention to the sin of impatience, one of the final sins the dying Christian is cautioned against" (43), and, to end the essay, "perhaps the playwright's greatest achievement is that he taught-and continues to teach-his audiences how to die" (45).There is a moral and didactic element to Shakespeare's art.Brian J. Harries interprets the dead and corpses, begins and ends with the death and discovery of the historical Richard III, observing, for example: "In the anonymous play Locrine, and in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and Hamlet, surviving enemies of deceased figures frequently use a moment of remembrance not to denigrate a quondam adversary, but rather to recast them in a positive light" (50; see also 49, 62).Looking at death and bodies in 2 Henry IV, Eileen Sperry concentrates on that play "and Hal's misrecognition of his father's death in Act 4. In this moment, Shakespeare uses both the tu fui and the related language of the sovereign's two bodies to engage the play's concerns with lineage and continuity in the face of certain death" (69).In Antony and Cleopatra, Grant Williams explores exemplum, posterity, and the dramatic.He argues that Shakespeare shows more

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