Death By Shakespeare: Snakebites, Stabbings and Broken Hearts

by Kathryn Harkup

Overview

An in-depth look at the science behind the creative methods Shakespeare used to kill off his characters.

In Death By Shakespeare, Kathryn Harkup, best-selling author of A is for Arsenic and expert on the more gruesome side of science, turns her expertise to William Shakespeare and the creative methods he used to kill off his characters. Is death by snakebite really as serene as Cleopatra made it seem? How did Juliet appear dead for 72 hours only to be revived in perfect health? Can you really kill someone by pouring poison in their ear? How long would it take before Lady Macbeth died from lack of sleep? Harkup 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 reveals this and more in a rollercoaster of Elizabethan carnage, poison, swordplay and bloodshed, with an occasional death by bear-mauling for good measure.
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 theater was a fairly likely scenario. Death is one of the major themes that reoccurs constantly throughout Shakespeare's canon, and he certainly didn't shy away from portraying the bloody reality of death on the stage. He didn't have to invent gruesome or novel ways to kill off his characters when everyday experience provided plenty of inspiration.

Shakespeare's era was also a time of huge scientific advance. The human body, its construction and how it was affected by disease came under scrutiny, overturning more than a thousand years of received Greek wisdom, and Shakespeare himself hinted at these new scientific discoveries and medical advances in his writing, such as circulation of the blood and treatments for syphilis.

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 over 400 years ago when these plays were first performed. But how realistic are these deaths, and did Shakespeare have the science to back them up?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781472958228
Publisher:	Bloomsbury USA
Publication date:	05/05/2020
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	274,913
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.60(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Kathryn Harkup is a chemist and author. Kathryn completed a doctorate on her favorite chemicals, phosphines, and went on to further postdoctoral research before realizing that talking, writing and demonstrating science appealed a bit more than hours slaving over a hot fume-hood. She currently writes a monthly poison blog for the Guardian and gives regular public talks on the disgusting and dangerous side of science. Kathryn's first book was the international best-seller A is for Arsenic, which was shortlisted for both the International Macavity Award and the BMA Book Award.

Table of Contents

Prologue 9

Chapter 1 Our Humble Author 11

Chapter 2 All the World's a Stage 43

Chapter 3 Will You Be Cured of Your Infirmity? 71

Chapter 4 Off With His Head! 103

Chapter 5 Murder, Murder! 139

Chapter 6 The Dogs of War 171

Chapter 7 A Plague O'both Your Houses! 205

Chapter 8 Most Delicious Poison 237

Chapter 9 To Be, or Not to Be 269

Chapter 10 Excessive Grief the Enemy to the Living 293

Chapter 11 Exit Pursued by a Bear 313

Epilogue 337

Appendix 341

Bibliography 353

Acknowledgements 361

Index 363

Editorial Reviews

★ 02/10/2020

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)

Publishers Weekly

[Harkup] 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.” —Kirkus

“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. ” —Publishers Weekly STARRED review

“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.” —Booklist

From the Publisher

2020-01-21
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.

Kirkus Reviews

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