Death by Shakespeare Snakebites, stabbings and broken hearts

Kathryn Harkup

Book - 2020

William Shakespeare found dozens of different ways to kill off his characters, and audiences today still enjoy the same reactions - shock, sadness, fear - that they did more than 400 years ago when these plays were first performed. But how realistic are these deaths, and did Shakespeare have the knowledge to back them up? In the Bard's day death was a part of everyday life. Plague, pestilence and public executions were a common occurrence, and the chances of seeing a dead or dying body on the way home from the theatre were high. It was also a time of important scientific progress. Shakespeare kept pace with anatomical and medical advances, and he included the latest scientific discoveries in his work, from blood circulation to treatmen...ts for syphilis. He certainly didn't shy away from portraying the reality of death on stage, from the brutal to the mundane, and the spectacular to the silly. Elizabethan London provides the backdrop for Death by Shakespeare, as Kathryn Harkup turns her discerning scientific eye to the Bard and the varied and creative ways his characters die. Was death by snakebite as serene as Shakespeare makes out? Could lack of sleep have killed Lady Macbeth? Can you really murder someone by pouring poison in their ear? Kathryn investigates what actual events may have inspired Shakespeare, what the accepted scientific knowledge of the time was, and how Elizabethan audiences would have responded to these death scenes. Death by Shakespeare will tell you all this and more in a rollercoaster of Elizabethan carnage, poison, swordplay and bloodshed, with an occasional death by bear-mauling for good measure.

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Subjects
Genres
Informational works
History
Published
London ; New York : Bloomsbury Sigma 2020.
Language
English
Main Author
Kathryn Harkup (author)
Physical Description
368 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 353-359) and index.
ISBN
9781472958228
9781472958211
  • Prologue
  • Chapter 1. Our Humble Author
  • Chapter 2. All the World's a Stage
  • Chapter 3. Will You Be Cured of Your Infirmity?
  • Chapter 4. Off With His Head!
  • Chapter 5. Murder, Murder!
  • Chapter 6. The Dogs of War
  • Chapter 7. A Plague O'both Your Houses!
  • Chapter 8. Most Delicious Poison
  • Chapter 9. To Be, or Not to Be
  • Chapter 10. Excessive Grief the Enemy to the Living
  • Chapter 11. Exit Pursued by a Bear
  • Epilogue
  • Appendix
  • Bibliography
  • Acknowledgements
  • Index
Review by Booklist Review

William Shakespeare never shied away from death in his work. Elizabethan England provided a wealth of gruesome inspiration for the Bard. Pestilence and plague spread like wildfire throughout the country, leaving hordes of corpses in their wake. Grisly public executions competed with the theater as a medium of entertainment. Shakespeare was so inspired, he was able to snuff out characters in 74 different ways. Were these character deaths scientifically accurate or the product of creative license? Harkup (Making the Monster, 2018) explores this question in this intriguing book. Calling on historical research and scientific information, she explains just how Juliet could have appeared dead for 72 hours. While the Bard was well-versed in the medical advancements of his time, his knowledge of poison was lacking, and his depictions of poisoning, though entertaining, didn't necessarily reflect reality, the most glaring example being Cleopatra's suicide by snake bite. The research is concrete, and the writing is infused with sly humor. Harkup serves a delectable stew of history, science, and wit that is sure to sate the appetite of any Anglophile.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Noting that "spectacular deaths, noble deaths, tragic deaths and even mundane deaths" alike appear in William Shakespeare's plays, chemist Harkup (A Is for Arsenic) analyzes all the gory details in her outstanding study. Harkup presents research not just into the lethal instruments employed by Shakespeare's characters, but into the hazardous living conditions with which his audience was familiar. The recurrent plagues, terrible weather, and rudimentary medical care of the age, she shows, are all referenced in the plays. If everyday life didn't do in Shakespeare's characters, they had hangings (Henry V), burning at the stake (Henry VI, Part 1), beheadings (Henry IV, Part 2), poisonings (Hamlet), and suffocation (Othello) to look forward to. Harkup covers each manner of death from a scientific perspective, speculating on, for instance, what an autopsy of King Lear's Cordelia would reveal. She also looks at the stagecraft involved in violent Elizabethan productions (sheep's blood was a popular choice), and devotes an appendix to listing each and every demise in the plays. Fans of the Bard are sure to devour this, but even those with only a passing familiarity with Shakespeare's oeuvre will find Harkup's survey tough to resist. (May)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review

Chemist, journalist, and blogger Harkup examines the many ways Shakespeare chose to kill off his characters--something that happens in most of his plays. "Shakespeare's tragedies and histories," writes the author, "are littered with the bodies of characters who got in the way of someone's ambition or were cut down because of some perceived insult." Readers will need a strong stomach to get through many of Harkup's descriptions: of the process of hanging, drawing, and quartering, for example, where convicted individuals were cut down from the scaffold before death "and were still able to watch as their entrails and heart were drawn out of their abdomen and burnt on a fire in front of them." Or consider the visceral effects of various poisons: Cyanide, for one, causes "massive cell death," resulting in "headache, dizziness and convulsions, as well as vomiting and rapid pulse, before collapse and death." Cleopatra's snake bite was not likely to have been "soft as air," as Shakespeare described it, since Egyptian cobra bites are very painful, especially on the breast, which is where Cleopatra placed the snake. Most of Shakespeare's victims die in sword fights; Harkup notes that his actors were expected to be skilled at swordsmanship, and many trained at fencing schools. With battles an important feature in Shakespeare's histories, it's no wonder that death by sword recurred, but there were other causes, too, including smothering, beheading, drowning, and suicide. In an appendix, the author provides a chart listing all of the plays' victims and the means by which they died. A few, like Othello, took their own lives out of guilt; others, like Lady Montague in Romeo and Juliet, died of grief. Besides investigating the plays, Harkup gives historical background about Elizabethan perils, such as executions, plague, syphilis, death in childbirth, tuberculosis, and infected wounds. She speculates about what Shakespeare knew about causes of death; like other contemporary playwrights, he did know that audiences loved violence. A brisk, informative, and startling look at Shakespeare. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.