by Richard Hogsflesh

Created on: October 31, 2011   Last Updated: November 02, 2011

Although plenty of characters die in Shakespeare’s plays, most of them do so in fairly conventional manner. The vast majority fall in battle, are stabbed, or commit suicide. Most of the really spectacular deaths in Shakespeare’s plays take place offstage, no doubt as much due to the limitations of Elizabethan special effects as questions of good taste. Here are a few deaths which go beyond simply getting rid of a character, and can be described as spectacular.

Death by blade

Stabbings are ten a penny in Shakespeare; the most spectacular is that of Julius Caesar, who is set upon by about twenty conspirators, including his adopted son. There are also several decapitations (all of which take place offstage). That is Macbeth’s fate, and that of various characters in the ‘Henry VI’ plays. A novel use is made of decapitation in ‘Cymbeline’, in which the heroine, Imogen, mistakes the villainous Cloten’s headless body for that of her husband, Posthumus, putting herself through a lot of unnecessary heartache in the process.

Death by poison

The best poisonings come in ‘Hamlet’. First, old King Hamlet has been poisoned by his brother in a deeply unorthodox fashion, the ‘leprous distilment’ being poured in his ear while he sleeps in an orchard. Then, in the chaotic final scene, Hamlet and Laertes are fatally poisoned by cuts from a trick sword; Gertrude accidentally drinks poison; and Claudius is forced to drink poison and then stabbed with the poisoned sword for good measure. Alcohol is poison of a kind, and in ‘Richard III’, not content with having stabbed him a couple of times, the Duke of Clarence’s assassins play it safe by then drowning him in a butt of malmsey wine.

Death by animal

Cleopatra and her handmaidens kill themselves using snakes in one of Shakespeare’s greatest death scenes (which could easily fit in the poison category too). But the best animal-related death is the one that gives this piece its title. Antigonus in ‘A Winter’s Tale’ is pursued from the stage by a bear. We later hear that the bear ‘tore out his shoulder bone’ while eating him, which probably makes this the goriest death in Shakespeare, even if we are spared the sight of it actually happening.

Cruel and unusual punishments

Characters are frequently executed in Shakespeare’s plays, usually by the noose or the axe. There are two that really stand out. Joan La

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