The essays in Performing Maternity in Early Modern England explore maternity's textual and cultural representation, performative aspects and practical consequences from 1540-1690. They emphasize that the embodied, repeated and public nature of maternity defines it as inherently performative and ultimately central to the production of gender identity in the period.

Contents: Embodied and enacted: performances of maternity in early modern England, Kathryn M. Moncrief and Kathryn R. McPherson. Part I The Performance of Pregnancy: 'So troubled with the mother': the politics of pregnancy in The Duchess of Malfi, Sid Ray; 'Show me a child begotten of thy body that I am father to': pregnancy, paternity and the problem of evidence in All's Well That Ends Well, Kathryn M. Moncrief; Hermione's suspicious body: adultery and superfetation in The Winter's Tale, Michelle Ephraim; False fruit: deceptive maternities and the failure of new comedy in Middleton's A Mad World, My Masters, Robert Bell; Maternity in A Woman Killed With Kindness, Lisa Hopkins. Part II The Performance of Maternal Authority: 'Smock-secrets': birth and women's mysteries on the early modern stage, Janelle Jenstad; Disciplining the mother in 17th-century English Puritanism, Christina Luckyj; Male mothering and The Tempest, Suzanne Penuel. Part III The Performance of Maternal Suffering: Dramatizing deliverance and devotion: churching in early modern England, Kathryn R. McPherson; Speaking stones: memory and maternity in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, Chris Laoutaris; Maternity and child loss in Stuart women's diaries, Avra Kouffman. Part IV The Performance of Maternal Erasure: Nursing and influence in Pandosto and The Winter's Tale, Donna C. Woodford; Murder as birth in Macbeth, Gloria Olchowy; Tamburlaine's domestic threat, Mary Stripling; 'I'll mar the young clerk's pen': sodomy, paternity and circumcision in The Merchant of Venice, Douglas A. Brookes; Selected Bibliography; Index.