An innovative study of the Renaissance practice of making epitaphic gestures within other English genres. A poetics of quotation uncovers the ways in which writers including Shakespeare, Marlowe, Holinshed, Sidney, Jonson, Donne, and Elizabeth I have recited these texts within new contexts.

Contents List of illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction: Reciting 'Epitaph' and 'Genre' in Early Modern England "Here lies": Pointing to the "Graue Forme" "Turn Thy Tombe Into a Throne": Elizabeth I's Death Rehearsal "In good stead of an epitaph": Verifying History "Killing rhetorick": The Poetics of Movere "An theater of mortality": In Sincerity, Onstage "Lapping-up of Matter": Epitaphic Closure in Elegies Epilogue: "Epitaph" for Epitaph Bibliography Index

Scott Newstok teaches English at Rhodes College, USA. He is the author of How to Think like Shakespeare and Quoting Death in Early Modern England; editor of Paradise Lost: A Primer; and co-editor of Weyward Macbeth, a collection of essays exploring the intersection of race and performance.