The Graves When They Open, Will Be Witnesses Against Thee: Mass Burial and the Agency of the Dead in Thomas Dekker’s Plague Pamphlets

Abstract

Plague pamphlets like Thomas Dekker’s The Wonderfull Yeare (1603), Newes from Graves-end (1604), and A Rod for Runawayes (1625) recount devastating, large-scale outbreaks of bubonic plague in early modern London, chronicling a metropolitan state of crisis in which normality is suspended and Londoners live in mortal fear of the dead and the dying (while country folk live in mortal fear of Londoners). Amid the terror of contagion, with parochial cemeteries overflowing and the urban economy near a standstill, conventional funerary practices are supplanted by emergency measures. In his pamphlets, Dekker indicts sins—mostly of omission—committed in this climate against the infected and their mortal remains. Dekker laments that plague victims may be treated in death like convicted criminals or suicides but his especial horror is reserved for the mass grave which he understands as the worst possible affront to the dignity of the deceased. Although the historical accuracy of Dekker’s portrayal of plague burial is debatable (especially given the evidence provided by the 2015 New Churchyard excavations), he demonstrates striking conceptions of postmortem agency and individuality in the plague pamphlets. He recalls the dead from the convenient concealment of the grave and makes them visible once more (to the mind’s eye) and it is in this visibility that their agency resides.