It is now generally acknowledged that literature, in particular fictionalisations of life stories and life experiences, are a rich source of data for cultural and social gerontologists and other researchers working on matters concerning the human ageing process and the social impact of increasing longevity. In Fictions of Old Age in Early Modern Literature and Culture, published in Routledge's ‘Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture’ series, Nina Taunton acknowledges that ‘recent scholarship unveils a very different and complicated picture of the realities of old people's lives in the early modern period’ (p. 147). She presents this work with the aim of showing ‘how works of fiction intervene and complicate discourses of old age’ (p. 159), revealing how ‘the endless play in drama, poetry and performance … can help us understand early modern processes and experiences of old age’ (p. 168).

This book is a valuable contribution to academic studies of the ageing experience. Nina Taunton's focus on early modern texts is erudite and scholarly, revealing sound knowledge not only of early modern English literature, but of relevant contemporaneous works in French and Italian. Of particular interest is the picture that emerges of ‘traditional English’ attitudes towards and perceptions of the aged. Was there ever a traditional English way for coping with older people and the dependent? Taunton's perceptive analyses of Shakespeare's King Lear (first folio, 1623), The Comedy of Errors (first folio, 1623), and All's Well That Ends Well (first folio, 1623), among others, together with her in-depth study of Thomas Middleton and William Rowley's The Old Law (1656), and her commentaries on Simon Goulart's The Wise Vieillard (1621), Thomas Middleton's The Witch (1613?) and Thomas Heywood's The Wise Woman of Hogsdon (1638), reveal stereotypes and dogmas that prevailed during the early modern period in England. The emerging images are differentiated along lines of gender; the ageing experience of men is markedly different to that of women. Old men were perceived as being full of liquid: ‘Unfortunately for old men, a surfeit of phlegm accompanies the drying out of their bodies. This results in hair turning white and baldness’ (p. 17). On the other hand, ‘a woman was perceived to age much more quickly than a man’ (p. 84). In the Elizabethan period, ‘So deeply ingrained was the identification of old women with melancholia and witchcraft that neither Elizabeth's female courtiers nor Elizabeth herself could escape their taint’ (p. 106). Yet, by way of compensation, ‘freed from the treadmill of childbearing’ (p. 97), following their post-menopausal years women attained a position of ‘unrestrained power and self-regulation unavailable to old men (who are enfeebled and constrained by the very rules patriarchy sets in motion) and younger women, who must bear the brunt of male anxiety about heredity and female sexuality’ (p. 97). Old age also freed women to carry out their socially ascribed roles of carers and child-rearers: ‘The Norwich census of 1570 reveals, strikingly, that about a third of households headed by the old also contained children’ (p. 111). Widows sent their children to grandmothers; children were distributed among the dependent elderly who still owned property.

Nina Taunton's discussion of the problem of inheritance and the associated problem of care of older people as presented in King Lear is especially detailed and insightful. Taunton observes that ‘King Lear is about the ruinous consequences of disregarding the mutual duties of parents and children in the matter of land inheritance’ (p. 49), and about arrangements of reciprocity whereby ‘children have a duty to look after parents when they are old and infirm and as a result can expect to be looked after in their turn’ (p. 51). For Taunton, ‘one of the most important areas of conflict between Lear and his daughters is that his gift of land and wealth, along with executive control, clashes with the assumption of a parent's absolute right to lifelong care and respect’ (p. 49).

But the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were times of rapid change in England. While care of older people ‘continued to devolve upon the daughters of the house’ (p. 51), fathers increasingly made arrangements for their old age by drawing up agreements for the management of their wealth and property in favour of their eldest sons. Taunton argues that King Lear reflects the change in family structures that occurred during these two centuries, a change ‘from extended to nuclear [that] endorsed prescription and biblical strictures to honour parents and support them materially’ (p. 51), and that the play ‘copes with a range of anxieties about inheritance not necessarily experienced in medieval times’ (p. 51). The awareness of such changes in English society 400 years ago is relevant to changes in contemporary English society. A culturally specific system of inheritance constitutes a fundamental pillar of capitalism within the corresponding society so that, today, with legally sanctioned variations of the institutions of marriage and family structure, evolving customs regarding inheritance make the transfer of wealth and property from one generation to the next a major issue in cultural-ageing studies. Such variations in the definition and perception of the family can only have profound repercussions on the ‘traditions’ of dependency, reciprocal care and care-giving in English society today.

In her discussion of perceptions of witches and witchcraft, Nina Taunton draws on William Rowley, Thomas Dekker and John Ford's The Witch of Edmonton (1621) and Thomas Heywood's The Wise Woman of Hogsdon (1638). Numbered among the ‘cunning-folk’, wise women are old women who, robbed by time of their child-bearing faculties and their looks, need ‘extra powers’ in order to justify their existence and to survive, a requirement thankfully redundant in many societies today. Constructed as a duality, wise women perform ambivalent roles, at once malevolent and evil-intentioned, on the one hand, while clever and intelligent, on the other. For this reason, old women evoke an ambivalent response from their communities and Nina Taunton depicts them as ‘skating on thin ice’ in a hell-on-earth (p. 122).

Such touches of wry humour feature in this dense, intensely written and well-referenced book which requires and merits close reading. Nina Taunton observes that ‘old age itself has so far by and large escaped the notice of literary scholars’ (p. 76). An alternative observation may also be valid perhaps: until recently, cultural and social gerontologists had not appreciated the usefulness of fictionalisations as data sources for their studies. Nina Taunton goes a long way towards righting this wrong. Moreover, after reading Fictions of Old Age in Early Modern Literature and Culture, it is unlikely that early modern narratives and play scripts will be read, studied and interpreted, either by literary scholars or by cultural gerontologists, without taking into account the age of the characters presented and the age at the time of creation of each work's ‘fictionaliser’.