Death by Shakespeare

Starred review from February 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.

February 15, 2020
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(2020) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

April 15, 2020
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.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)