“In Italian hand”: melancholy, gender and bibliographical codes in commemorative text

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay begins to locate female sadness in the complex popular literary environment of the seventeenth century. It focuses on bibliographical evidence to trace the physical presentation of despair in a set of commemorative pamphlets and canonical early modern theatre by William Shakespeare and John Webster. Doing so, this article aims to give insight into cultural cross-fertilization between popular literary milieus and enrich our understanding of how print conventions shaped and controlled female authorial voices.