On the Deathbed: Margaret Cavendish on What to Say in Times of Grief

Abstract

The article highlights a couple of fictitious speeches of dying persons, written by the 17th century philosopher, dramatist and author Margaret Cavendish. The speeches are included in her book Orations of Divers Sorts, Accomodated to Divers Places (1662), in which early modern society is displayed in various rhetorical situations. In the introduction Cavendish invites the reader on a tour through a metropolitan city, while eavesdropping on people talking. Her book is in a way a theatrical staging, which fits well with the Renaissance metaphor of »theatrum mundum«. Relating Cavendish’s intervention on this stage to early modern philosophical discussions on emotions and to the rhetorical genre as such, the article discusses how Cavendish conceived of the concepts of grief and comfort in her age.