This article responds to Harold Bloom's call to ‘read for the clinamen’– an author's creative misprision of, or characteristic divergence from, the work of a literary antecedent – offering an account of Shakespeare's deviation from a number of influential or source texts in his The Winter's Tale. From Ovid's tale of Pygmalion to Marston's Metamorphosis of Pigmalion's Image; from Greene's Pandosto to Aretino's Sixteen Postures, I demonstrate how Shakespeare evokes then revokes these precursory texts, swerving from the potentially malign influence of his predecessors. Discussion concludes in analysis of the critical and intertextual over‐determination of the statue scene.

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This article discusses developments in early‐modern literary and scientific conceptions of vision, examining the effect that anatomical discoveries had upon aesthetic representations of the eye. Analysing both scientific and poetic texts, I illustrate features of the period's depictions of the visual member, before moving into an extended discussion of Phineas Fletcher's somatic epic, The Purple Island. Fletcher's text, heavily aestheticised and scientifically informed, provides an opportunity to display anatomical innovation impacting upon traditional poetic motifs of the eyebeam. Contributing to current debate concerning Renaissance science, this article engages with the increasing critical interest in the previously neglected work of Fletcher.

This article considers Shakespeare's metaphors of transmission, contagion and infection in the light of period plague tracts, medical treatises and plague time literature. The author demonstrates how period conceptions of disease are predicated upon a notion of sympathetic transference and, consequently, how kindness, likeness and communication between characters in Shakespearean drama are complicated and fraught with period specific anxiety. This article situates Shakespearean literary texts within a precise historical and medical moment, considering how scientific conceptions contaminate dramatic text.