Tragedy was one of the principal instruments through which the culture of early modern England imagined the encounter with mortality. The essays in this book approach the theatrical reinvention of Death from three perspectives. Those in Part 1 explore Death as a trope of apocalypse – a moment of unveiling or discovery that is figured both in the fearful nakedness of the Danse Macabre and in the shameful ‘openings’ enacted in the new theatres of anatomy. In Part 2, the book explores the psychological and affective consequences of tragedy's fiercely end-driven narrative in a number of plays wherein a longing for narrative closure is pitched against a particularly intense dread of ending. The imposition of an end is often figured as an act of writerly violence, committed by the author or his dramatic surrogate. Finally, Part 3 focuses on the way tragedy articulates its challenge to the undifferentiating power of death through conventions and motifs borrowed from the funereal arts. Analyses of major plays by Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Kyd, William Shakespeare, John Webster, Thomas Middleton, and John Ford explore the relation of tragedy to the macabre tradition, to the apocalyptic displays of the anatomy theatre, and to the spectacular arts of funeral.