74 Ways Characters Die in Shakespeare’s Plays Shown in a Handy Infographic: From Snakebites to Lack of Sleep

In the grad­u­ate depart­ment where I once taught fresh­men and sopho­mores the rudi­ments of col­lege Eng­lish, it became com­mon prac­tice  to include Shakespeare’s Titus Andron­i­cus on many an Intro to Lit syl­labus, along with a view­ing of Julie Taymor’s flam­boy­ant film adap­ta­tion. The ear­ly work is thought to be Shakespeare’s first tragedy, cob­bled togeth­er from pop­u­lar Roman his­to­ries and Eliz­a­bethan revenge plays. And it is a tru­ly bizarre play, swing­ing wild­ly in tone from clas­si­cal tragedy, to satir­i­cal dark humor, to com­ic farce, and back to tragedy again. Crit­ic Harold Bloom called Titus “an exploita­tive par­o­dy” of the very pop­u­lar revenge tragedies of the time—its mur­ders, maim­ings, rapes, and muti­la­tions pile up, scene upon scene, and leave char­ac­ters and readers/audiences reel­ing in grief and dis­be­lief from the shock­ing body count.

Part of the fun of teach­ing Titus is in watch­ing stu­dents’ jaws drop as they real­ize just how bloody-mind­ed the Bard is. While Taymor’s adap­ta­tion takes many mod­ern lib­er­ties in cos­tum­ing, music, and set design, its hor­ror-show depic­tion of Titus’ unre­lent­ing may­hem is faith­ful to the text. Lat­er, more mature plays rein in the exces­sive black com­e­dy and shock fac­tor, but the bod­ies still stack up. As accus­tomed as we are to think­ing of con­tem­po­rary enter­tain­ments like Game of Thrones as espe­cial­ly gra­tu­itous, the whole of Shakespeare’s cor­pus, writes Alice Vin­cent at The Tele­graph is “more gory” than even HBO’s squirm-wor­thy fan­ta­sy epic, fea­tur­ing a total of 74 deaths in 37 plays to Game of Thrones’ 61 in 50 episodes.

All of those var­i­ous demis­es will now come togeth­er in a com­pendi­um play being staged at The Globe (in Lon­don) called The Com­plete Deaths. It will include every­thing “from ear­ly rapi­er thrusts to the more elab­o­rate viper-breast appli­ca­tion adopt­ed by Cleopa­tra.” The only death direc­tor Tim Crouch has exclud­ed is “that of a fly that meets a sticky end in Titus Andron­i­cus.” In the info­graph­ic above, see all of the caus­es of those deaths, includ­ing Antony and Cleopa­tra’s snakebite and Titus Andron­i­cus’ piece-de-resis­tance, “baked in a pie.”

Part of the rea­son so many of my for­mer under­grad­u­ate stu­dents found Shakespeare’s bru­tal­i­ty shock­ing and unex­pect­ed has to do with the way his work was tamed by lat­er 17th and 18th cen­tu­ry crit­ics, who “didn’t approve of the on-stage gore.” The Tele­graph quotes direc­tor of the Shake­speare Insti­tute Michael Dob­son, who points out that Eliz­a­bethan dra­ma was espe­cial­ly grue­some; “the Eng­lish dra­ma was noto­ri­ous for on-stage deaths,” and all of Shakespeare’s con­tem­po­raries, includ­ing Christo­pher Mar­lowe and Ben Jon­son, wrote vio­lent scenes that can still turn our stom­achs.

Recent pro­duc­tions like a bloody stag­ing of Titus at The Globe in 2014 are restor­ing the gore in Shakespeare’s work, and The Com­plete Deaths will leave audi­ences with lit­tle doubt that Shakespeare’s cul­ture was as per­me­at­ed with rep­re­sen­ta­tions of vio­lence as our own—and it was as much, if not more so, plagued by the real thing.

via The Tele­graph/Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Shake­speare Cours­es: Primers on the Bard from Oxford, Har­vard, Berke­ley & More

Read All of Shakespeare’s Plays Free Online, Cour­tesy of the Fol­ger Shake­speare Library

Shakespeare’s Rest­less World: A Por­trait of the Bard’s Era in 20 Pod­casts

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Mark Twain Knocks New Year’s Resolutions: They’re a “Harmless Annual Institution, Of No Particular Use to Anybody”

Twain

Now that anoth­er New Year’s Day has come around, we must once again ask our­selves: do we believe in New Year’s res­o­lu­tions, or don’t we? As with most insti­tu­tions, Mark Twain, that most quot­ed of all Amer­i­can humorists, both believed and did­n’t believe in them. Or maybe we could say that his lack of belief tran­scend­ed run-of-the-mill cyn­i­cism to become a kind of devout faith in human fol­ly itself.

Here we have a few words on the sub­ject from the man him­self, first pub­lished in the Jan­u­ary 1, 1863 edi­tion of the Ter­ri­to­r­i­al Enter­prise, the Vir­ginia City, Neva­da news­pa­per where the young Twain worked for a time:

Now is the accept­ed time to make your reg­u­lar annu­al good res­o­lu­tions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usu­al. Yes­ter­day, every­body smoked his last cig­ar, took his last drink, and swore his last oath. To-day, we are a pious and exem­plary com­mu­ni­ty. Thir­ty days from now, we shall have cast our ref­or­ma­tion to the winds and gone to cut­ting our ancient short com­ings con­sid­er­ably short­er than ever. We shall also reflect pleas­ant­ly upon how we did the same old thing last year about this time. How­ev­er, go in, com­mu­ni­ty. New Year’s is a harm­less annu­al insti­tu­tion, of no par­tic­u­lar use to any­body save as a scape­goat for promis­cu­ous drunks, and friend­ly calls, and hum­bug res­o­lu­tions, and we wish you to enjoy it with a loose­ness suit­ed to the great­ness of the occa­sion.

Twain made a career of skew­er­ing the count­less pieties of Amer­i­can life, and the cul­ture’s per­haps overzeal­ous spir­it of self-improve­ment pro­vid­ed him a vast and nev­er ful­ly deflat­able tar­get. His assess­ment feels as true today, and makes us laugh just as much today, as it must have 153 years ago. So keep enjoy­ing the friend­li­ness, fes­tiv­i­ty, and human com­e­dy of the New Year’s hol­i­day as Twain would have. If you do make a res­o­lu­tion, keep it to a man­age­able lev­el of moral­i­ty. And don’t for­get to revis­it the oth­er per­spec­tives on New Year’s we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured from such oth­er cul­tur­al lumi­nar­ies as Neil Gaiman, Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, and Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sci­ence of Willpow­er: 15 Tips for Mak­ing Your New Year’s Res­o­lu­tions Last from Dr. Kel­ly McGo­ni­gal

A New Year’s Wish from Neil Gaiman

The Top 10 New Year’s Res­o­lu­tions Read by Bob Dylan

Woody Guthrie’s Doo­dle-Filled List of 33 New Year’s Res­o­lu­tions From 1943 in Life, Music| Jan­u­ary 1st, 2014

Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Go-Get­ter List of New Year’s Res­o­lu­tions (1955)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Patti Smith Creates a Detailed Packing List for Going on Tour: Haruki Murakami Books, Loquat Tea & More

Patti Smith Packing List

Pack­ing lists are not inher­ent­ly punk rock.

But the hand­writ­ten pack­ing list God­moth­er of Punk Pat­ti Smith scrawled upside down on a pho­to­copied receipt from a children’s book­store on the eve of a 40-date Euro­pean tour comes close. One can kind of imag­ine her stuff­ing her adap­tors, her Japan­ese pants, and her “9 under­wears” into a shop­ping bag or a dirty day pack, using it as a pil­low in the back of the van…

Behold the real­i­ty, below.

Patti Smith Suitcase

Smith’s hard shell case is kit­ted out with prac­ticed pre­ci­sion, its con­tents pared to the lean­est of  lux­u­ry-brand neces­si­ties to keep her hap­py and healthy on the road.

It’s not often you find a devo­tee of Ann Demeule­meester black jack­ets and $8 tooth­paste who’s will­ing to night­ly wring their socks and undies over a hotel room sink, but accord­ing to her Ban­ga tour diary, Smith is.

Oth­er essen­tials in Smith’s tour bag include loquat tea for her throat and plen­ty of read­ing mate­r­i­al. In addi­tion to the Hunger Games, she elect­ed to take along some old favorites from author Haru­ki Muraka­mi:

I decide this will be essen­tial­ly a Haru­ki Muraka­mi tour. So I will take sev­er­al of his books includ­ing the three vol­ume IQ84 to reread. He is a good writer to reread as he sets your mind to day­dream­ing while you are read­ing him. thus i always miss stuff.

Read­ers, use the com­ments sec­tion to let us know what indis­pens­able items you would pack when embark­ing on a 40-city tour with Pat­ti Smith.

via That Eric Alper

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pat­ti Smith’s List of Favorite Books: From Rim­baud to Susan Son­tag

Pat­ti Smith Reviews Haru­ki Murakami’s New Nov­el, Col­or­less Tsuku­ru Taza­ki and His Years of Pil­grim­age

Pat­ti Smith Doc­u­men­tary Dream of Life Beau­ti­ful­ly Cap­tures the Author’s Life and Long Career (2008)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Her play, Fawn­book, opens in New York City lat­er this fall. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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