This study offers an incisive new reading of the romantic playwright Thomas Lovell (1803-1849) Beddoes's work as shaped by the contemporary discourses of radical politics, life science, and gender. Reappraising his opus magnum Death's Jest Book in a context powerfully defined by both English and German romantic culture, this study unveils Beddoes's complex vision of history before the backdrop of the writer's fascination both with Early Modern culture and with proto-modernist forms of aesthetic experimentation.