Shakespeare was not only aware of the socio-cultural fears and anxieties generated by the older woman’s body but with the characterization of his tragic ageing females, Shakespeare becomes the first literary giant to explore the physiological and psychosocial condition that we have come to know as ‘menopause’. Although ‘menopause’ was not defined as a medical, physiological or sociocultural event for the early moderns, this book argues that such a medical and cultural transition can, in fact, be identified by sub-textual clues distinguished by various embodied anxieties. It explores several ageing women of the Shakespearean tragedies as they transition through this liminal menopausal period. Theoretically underscored by humoral theory, the analysis is metonymically centered upon the womb as the seat of menopausal anxiety. These menopausal undercurrents, not only permeate the dramatic action of each play, but also emanate outward to reflect the medical, physiological, cultural, social, and religious concerns generated by the ageing woman of the early modern period at large.

The population structure in the world is rapidly changing, to the extent that in 75 years we will face a tripling of the elderly population. Although women are favored in terms of life expectancy, they also live with a longer period of disability (approximately twice that of aging men), as well as with the enemies of all the elderly, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and dementia. Menopause is the endocrine event that overlaps with aging, potentially worsening both the quality of life and the risks of disease in women.While the effect of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) on menopausal symptoms is generally viewed as rapid and consistent, and is thereby accepted by the scientific community, its relationship to the other aforementioned chronic conditions associated with menopause is considered variable and controversial.In analyzing these complex issues, this volume yields new and significant insights into both the study of menopause-related disorders and their treatment, by illustrating the most recent information on mechanisms of actions of new estrogen receptors and on the use of sophisticated techniques of statistical analysis for population-based studies.

Nearly one-half of an American woman's life is spent after the cessation of reproductive function. A woman of 40 years has an additional life expectancy of nearly 40 years; a woman of 75, over 11 years. This pattern of longevity is likely to continue, so that by the year 2000, it has been estimated, 30 percent of the female population will be postmenopausal. While it is difficult to separate the results of aging from those of estrogen deprivation, it is important that we try to do so, since the results of the latter are amenable to treatment. The medical infirmities resulting from estrogen deprivation take a high toll among postmenopausal women. Nearly 200,000 hip fractures occur annually in this group, resulting in 15,000 deaths and a high morbidity rate. Sleep disorders, compromised sexuality, psychomotor alterations of the climacterium, and urinary tract disorders all contribute to a lowered quality of life. Appropriate treatment of these disturbing postmenopausal conditions requires an understanding of the underlying bio chemical, endocrinologic, psychologic, and pathophysiologic al terations of estrogen deprivation. Toward this end, the reader will find herein chapters dealing with estrogen metabolism in the postmenopausal female, end-organ response to estrogen deprivation, and bone metabolism and osteoporosis. Next, the reader will find chapters dealing with specific or gans, organ systems, or conditions related to the quality of life; for example, sexuality, urinary tract problems, sleep disorders, the breast, sports and exercise, the climacteric, and the psycho biology of the menopause.

This book explores a fresh and insightful interpretation of Hamlet’s Gertrude as a prominent and powerful figure in the play. It shows how traditional readings of this character, both performance-based and scholarly, have been guided and constrained by misogynistic perspectives on female power. Bringing together the author’s wealth of insight from a theatre practitioner’s perspective and combining it with a scholarly perspective, the book argues that Gertrude need not be limited to sex and motherhood. She could instead be played as Denmark’s blood royal Queen, her role in the play then being about female political power. Gertrude’s royal status could play out on stage through a variety of possible performance choices for stage design, stage business, acting processes, and the actor’s presence – both speaking and silent. Hamlet's Hereditary Queen takes into consideration Shakespeare’s source myths, historical studies of the position of queens and the issues concerning them in early modern England, Hamlet’s performance history, and the text itself. It questions traditional readings of Hamlet, and offers detailed analyses of relevant scenes to demonstrate how Gertrude’s Hamlet might play out on stage in the twenty-first century. This is an engaging and insightful interpretation for students and scholars of theatre and performance studies and Shakespeare studies, as well as theatre practitioners.

In early modern English medicine, the balance of fluids in the body was seen as key to health. Menstruation was widely believed to regulate blood levels in the body and so was extensively discussed in medical texts. Sara Read examines all forms of literature, from plays and poems, to life-writing, and compares these texts with the medical theories.

The Long Life invites the reader to range widely from the writings of Plato through to recent philosophical work by Derek Parfit, Bernard Williams, and others, and from Shakespeare's King Lear through works by Thomas Mann, Balzac, Dickens, Beckett, Stevie Smith, Philip Larkin, to more recent writing by Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, and J. M. Coetzee. Helen Small argues that if we want to understand old age, we have to think more fundamentally about what it means to be a person, to have a life, to have (or lead) a good life, to be part of a just society. What did Plato mean when he suggested that old age was the best place from which to practice philosophy - or Thomas Mann when he defined old age as the best time to be a writer - and were they right? If we think, as Aristotle did, that a good life requires the active pursuit of virtue, how will our view of later life be affected? If we think that lives and persons are unified, much as stories are said to be unified, how will our thinking about old age differ from that of someone who thinks that lives and/or persons can be strongly discontinuous? In a just society, what constitutes a fair distribution of limited resources between the young and the old? How, if at all, should recent developments in the theory of evolutionary senescence alter our thinking about what it means to grow old? This is a groundbreaking book, deep as well as broad, and likely to alter the way in which we talk about one of the great social concerns of our time - the growing numbers of those living to be old, and the growing proportion of the old to the young.

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