CRITICISM

Andrews, Michael Cameron. “Shakespeare (1).” In This Action of Our Death: The Performance of Death in English Renaissance Drama, pp. 129-48. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1989.

Surveys death scenes and speeches in the plays written during the first half of Shakespeare's career, with particular attention to the English histories.

———.“Shakespeare (2).” In This Action of Our Death: The Performance of Death in English Renaissance Drama, pp. 149-68. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1989.

An overview of deaths represented and described in Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Coriolanus,and Antony and Cleopatra. Andrews judges that Cleopatra surpasses every other character in Renaissance drama in terms of transforming death into victory.

Bulman, James C. “Antony, Cleopatra, and Heroic Retrospection.” In The Heroic Idiom of Shakespearean Tragedy, pp. 191-213. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1985.

Compares the death of Antony to the deaths of other Shakespearean military heroes and judges it to be much more ambiguous due to its ironic treatment of heroic conventions. He finds a similar disparity between heroic vision and reality in the death of Cleopatra.

Butler, F. G. “Erasmus and the Deaths of Cordelia and Lear.” English Studies 73, No. 1 (February 1992): 10-21.

Analyzes the deaths of Lear and Cordelia in the context of Renaissance views on death as the soul’s release from bondage and entry into eternal bliss. Butler asserts that by the end of the play, Lear has fully prepared himself for death and is wholly concerned not with own demise, but with his daughter’s murder. The critic also argues that great tragedies are not intended to console us but to confront the existential reality of death and injustice.

Calderwood, James L. “Sacrifice.” In Shakespeare and the Denial of Death, pp. 58-67. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1987.

Considers several Shakespearean plays, particularly 1 Henry VI, Henry V, and A Midsummer Night's Dream, and discusses how sacrificial death brings about purgation—the carrying off of evil that plagues a society—and thus brings about new life.

Coppedge, Walter R. “The Joy of the Worm: Dying in Antony and Cleopatra.” Renaissance Papers (1988): 41-50.

Reads the deaths of Antony and Cleopatra as a recapitulation of the myth of the Egyptian deities Osiris and Isis. Just as Isis restored the dismembered Osiris, Coppedge maintains, so in her monument Cleopatra lovingly transmutes the shattered Antony into a god.

Dollimore, Jonathan. “Desire is Death.” In Subject and Object in Renaissance Culture, edited by Margreta de Grazia, Maureen Quilligan, and Peter Stallybrass, pp. 369-86. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Traces the linking of death, desire, and mutability in the early modern period, with brief attention to Shakespeare's sonnets and Romeo and Juliet.

———. “‘Desire is Death’: Shakespeare.” In Death, Desire and Loss in Western Culture, pp. 102-16. London: Penguin Press, 1998.

An expanded version of his 1996 essay (see above), with more extended discussion of Romeo and Juliet, Measure for Measure, and the sonnets.

Farrell, Kirby. “Self-Effacement and Autonomy in Shakespeare.” Shakespeare Studies 16 (1983): 75-99.

Identifies a recurring pattern in Shakespeare's plays of characters counterfeiting death in an attempt to achieve personal autonomy. Farrell contends that the comedies celebrate the notion of playing dead to cope with powerlessness, but that the tragedies demonstrate its perils.

Flachmann, Michael. “Fitted for Death: Measure for Measure and the Contemplatio Mortis.” English Literary Renaissance 22, No. 2 (Spring 1992): 222-41.

Suggests that Claudio's preparation for death and miraculous rescue emblematize the spiritual exercise—widely practiced in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries—of actually rehearsing one's death. Flachmann asserts that Claudio served as a surrogate sufferer for Shakespeare's original audiences, who would vicariously experience spiritual regeneration as Claudio is “fitted for death” but ultimately escapes its grasp.

Fly, Richard. “Accommodating Death: The Ending of Hamlet. Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, 24, No. 2 (Spring 1984): 257-74.

Views Hamlet as a paradigm of the impulse to defend individual worth against the forces of those who would deny distinctiveness, debase value systems, and homogenize death. The critic contends that although Hamlet passes through a period of despair, which induces a sense of the futility of life and enervates his will, in the graveyard scene it becomes clear that he has attained an almost philosophical detachment about human mortality.

Fothergill, Robert A. “The Perfect Image of Life: Counterfeit Death in the Plays of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries.” University of Toronto Quarterly 52, No. 2 (Winter 1982-83): 155-78.

Surveys Shakespeare’s modifications of the dramatic conventions of counterfeit death and presumed death, with an emphasis on Measure for Measure, Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, Much Ado about Nothing, and The Winter’s Tale.Fothergill emphasizes Shakespeare’s unique use of these conventions with the technique of several of his contemporaries, including Marston, Chapman, and Middleton.

Frazier, Harriet C. “‘Like a Liar Gone to Burning Hell’: Shakespeare and Dying Declarations.” Comparative Drama 19, No. 2 (Summer 1985): 166-80.

Asserts that there is no basis for claiming, as legal scholars have done for more than two centuries, that dying statements in Shakespeare's plays are always truthful. Frazier remarks on the variety, complexity, and subtlety of dying declarations in several plays, with special attention to Desdemona's final words in Othello.

Goy-Blanquet, Dominique. “‘Death or Liberty’: The Fashion in Shrouds.” Cahiers Élisabéthains 38 (October 1990): 25-40.

Discusses the assassination of Caesar and the suicides of Brutus and Cassius in the context of the doubt and uncertainly that infuse the dramatic world of Julius Caesar. Goy-Blanquet argues that the conspirators recognize that Caesar's murder cannot be justified, and so they attempt to turn it into a sacrifice for the cause of liberty.

Hillman, Richard. “Hamlet and Death: A Recasting of the Play within the Player.” Essays in Literature 13, No. 2 (Fall 1986): 201-18.

A psychoanalytic assessment of Hamlet's attitudes toward life and death. Hillman contends that throughout the play Hamlet struggles with spiritual isolation, repressed hostility toward his father, a conviction that human existence is meaningless, and a deeply entrenched, suicidal fatalism.

Holleran, James V. “Maimed Funeral Rites in Hamlet.” English Literary Renaissance 19, No. 1 (Winter 1989): 65-93.

Identifies a structural pattern of distorted rites, combining the sacred and profane, that mirrors the general breakdown of ceremony in Hamlet. Holleran pays particular attention to the denial of full burial rites for Ophelia; the reports of King Hamlet's funeral; Ophelia's attempt in Act IV, scene v to supply Polonius with the funeral Claudius deprived him of; and the play's final scene, which the critic regards as a perverse or parodic form of the Eucharist.

MacKenzie, Clayton G. “Renaissance Emblems of Death and Shakespeare's King John.” English Studies 79, No. 5 (September 1998): 425-29.

Describes representations in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century emblem books of the notion that from death springs life, and links these to the issue of familial regeneration in King John.MacKenzie posits that Arthur's reliance on a French king to rejuvenate his claim to the English throne is an inversion of the reproductive cycle, and thus his claim is fatally flawed.

Moisan, Thomas. “Rhetoric and the Rehearsal of Death: The ‘Lamentations’ Scene in Romeo and Juliet.” Shakespeare Quarterly 34, No. 4 (Winter 1983): 389-404.

A linguistic analysis of Act IV, scene v of Romeo and Juliet that seeks to show how the mourners' rhetoric, ostensibly employed to express their grief, actually serves as a means of denying or evading the reality of death.

Moro, Bernard, and Michèle Willems. “Death and Rebirth in Macbeth and The Winter's Tale.” Cahiers Élisabéthains 21 (April 1982): 35-48.

Compares Shakespeare's tragic and tragicomic treatments of death and renewal in Macbeth and The Winter's Tale. Macbeth and Leontes both introduce evil into their respective dramatic worlds, the critics point out, but Macbeth's disintegration is carried to its bitter end, whereas Leontes, by contrast, is an active participant in his own spiritual redemption and in the restoration of natural harmony.

Neill, Michael. “Finit coronat opus: The Monumental Ending of Antony and Cleopatra.” In Issues of Death: Mortality and Identity in English Renaissance Tragedy, pp. 305-27. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997.

Evaluates the contrasting ways that Antony and Cleopatra encounter death. Antony's botched suicide brings the very dissolution of his heroic identity that he has feared throughout the play, Neill argues, whereas Cleopatra's performance of her own death as a royal pageant becomes the act of ultimate distinction, in which the end crowns all.

Ogawa, Yasuhiro. “Grinning Death's-Head: Hamlet and the Vision of the Grotesque.” In The Grotesque in Art and Literature: Theological Reflections, edited by James Luther Adams and Wilson Yates, pp. 193-226. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997.

Proposes that Hamlet eventually comes to terms with death, but only after overcoming his existential malaise. Ogawa looks closely at Hamlet's obsessive concern with the predatory cycle to which all living creatures are subject, the emblematic significance of Yorick's skull, and the prince's adoption of an “antic disposition”—which Ogawa characterizes as a kind of grotesque mask Hamlet wears to conceal his plans for revenge.

Saunders, Claire. “‘Dead in His Bed’: Shakespeare's Staging of the Death of the Duke of Gloucester in 2 Henry VI.” Review of English Studies 36, No. 141 (February 1985): 19-34.

Assesses the death of Gloucester in 2 Henry IV (III, ii) in terms of its dramatic context. Saunders compares the duke's reported death and Cardinal Beaufort's subsequent onstage death, calling attention to Shakespeare's use of tableau, symbol, and emblem in the two episodes. The critic proposes that, taken together, these two scenes provide a meditation on holy and unholy ways of dying.

Schuman, Samuel. “‘Good Night, Sweet Prince’: Saying Goodbye to the Dead in Shakespeare's Plays.” Death Studies 20, No. 2 (March 1996): 185-92.

Surveys Shakespeare's portrayals of mortality and bereavement. In his evaluation of the relationship between the dead and those who have survived them in Shakespeare's plays, Schuman discusses Hamlet and King Lear, and touches briefly on The Comedy of Errors, Twelfth Night, The Winter's Tale, and Much Ado about Nothing.

Spevack, Marvin. “The Art of Dying in Shakespeare.” In Shakespeare Jahrbuch, pp. 169-73. Verlag Ferdinand Kamp Bochum, 1992.

Catalogs onstage deaths in Shakespeare's plays by genre and gender. There are fewer suicides in the histories than in the tragedies, Spevack notes, and in the latter group of plays, women are more likely to kill themselves to escape intolerable situations, while men who do so are more often motivated by grief or hopelessness.

Trombetta, James. “Versions of Dying in Measure for Measure.” English Literary Renaissance 6, No. 1 (Winter 1976): 60-76.

Examines the rift between nature and culture in Measure for Measure, as well as the play's association of death and sexuality, and its ambiguous ending. Trombetta maintains that the pageant of death, resurrection, and judgment the duke contrives represents a denial, rather than a transcendence, of the ineluctable fact of human mortality.

Van Tassel, Daniel E. “Clarence, Claudio, and Hamlet: ‘The Dread of Something after Death.’” Renaissance and Reformation, n.s. 7, No. 1 (1983): 48-62.

Asserts that Hamlet wholeheartedly accepts the imminence of his death and prepares for it according to the dictates of orthodox Christianity. Moreover, Van Tassel contends that Claudio in Measure for Measure becomes resolute for death—and thus worthy of a new life—with the duke's aid. The critic also discusses how Clarence's dream in Richard III prefigures his damnation if he should die without acknowledging and repenting his sins.

Watson, Robert N. “The State of Life and the Power of Death: Measure for Measure. In Shakespearean Power and Punishment, edited by Gillian Murray Kendall, pp. 130-56. Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1998.

Argues that Measure for Measuresubverts the belief that through procreation, piety, or honor, human beings can escape the annihilating effect of death. He contends that the play exposes these traditional consolations as illusory, manipulated by the state and its ruler—with the assistance of the church—to ensure the survival of the body politic.

Wheeler, Richard P. “Deaths in the Family: The Loss of a Son and the Rise of Shakespearean Comedy.” Shakespeare Quarterly 51, No. 2 (Summer 2000): 127-53.

Argues that the death of Shakespeare's son Hamnet ought to be taken into account when studying the plays written in the years immediately following that event. In considering the relationship between biography and text, Wheeler focuses on the theme of the lost but recovered child in Twelfth Night, but he also discusses the death of Arthur in King John and the motif in the Henriad of sons who die before their fathers.