Beware More than the Ides: Shakespeare's Trail of Bodies

Shakespeare's plays read pretty on the eye. Vivid imagery, brilliant wording, poetic turns. But those plays are meant for the ear, to be performed. Lustily, for the player to chew the scenery amid ghosts and mix-em-ups and especially his many death scenes. 

A general consensus puts Shakespeare's onstage death count at 74 characters. This is in just 38 plays, 17 of which were comedies. Many more characters shuffle off the mortal coil offstage for practical or emotional reasons. Estimates of Shakespeare's full carnage range to well over 200 characters, depending on how the count defines a killing. 

And I've counted. The tragedies, anyway. I can't get excited about the historical plays. My math is as follows: Body count equals (a) clear deaths during the play, (b) clear deaths pending at the final curtain, and (c) deaths immediately before Act I where the character pops up later as a ghost. 

It's March, so let's open with Julius Caesar. Famously, Caesar is first to meet his maker, and things get out of hand from there -- the whole point of the play.

1. 
   Julius Caesar: group stabbing;
2. Cinna the Poet: torn apart by mob;
3. Portia: suicide offstage, swallowing hot coals;
4. Cicero: executed offstage;
5. Cassius: assisted suicide, sword; 
6. Titinius: suicide, sword;
7. Young Cato: death in battle; 
8. and finally Brutus: assisted suicide, sword. 

That's a lot of suicide, but the play orbits around honor and what's honorable. The losers take the high road out. Brutus and Cassius are so concerned about honor, or status really, that they have to find somebody else to do the bloody part.

If eight deaths sound like a pile, it's middle of the Shakespearian pack. Slightly less stabby is Romeo and Juliet, at six: 

1. Mercutio: swordfight;
2. Tybalt: swordfight;
3. Lady Montague: grief, offstage;
4. Paris: swordfight, 
5. Romeo: suicide by poison;
6. and Juliet: suicide by dagger. 

Othello takes out only five and only after Iago has head-cased everyone: 

1. Roderigo: stabbing; 
2. Desdemona: smothered;
3. Emilia: stabbing;
4. Othello: suicide, dagger;
5. and Brabantio: grief, offstage.

Desdemona gets an extended I'm-not-dead-yet revival despite having been suffocated. That kind of suffering and speechifying end isn't unusual for Shakespeare, but showing her murder onstage is. He preferred to kill off his men for the crowd, usually by sword or such carving. Shakespeare wrote in and for his time. 400 years ago, the main characters were men, so following the action to the tragic end was important to the drama. 

By contrast, the women tended to die offstage. Being a man of his times, his female characters were often thematic devices for the main men. Shakespeare also wrote for patrons and royals, and he would've thought twice about offending his meal tickets. Of course, it wasn't even women playing his women back then. Lads got those parts, and a good director wouldn't risk a grand death scene on a young actor's chops.

Whatever the reasons, the lead woman dying offstage sets up the bring-out-her-body moment. Cue Hamlet. Hamlet gets a bad rap for inaction, but he's responsible, one way or another, for every death other than the father he wanted to avenge. 

1. King Hamlet: Poisoned shortly before play, a ghost;
2. Polonius: stabbed, mistaken identity; 
3. Ophelia: drowned offstage, possible suicide and duly brought on;
4. Rosencrantz: executed offstage;
5. Guildenstern: executed offstage;
6. Gertrude: poisoned by mistake;
7. Laertes: poisoned stabbing;
8. Claudius: stabbed, then poisoned;
9. and finally Hamlet: poisoned stabbing.

Poisoning is my favorite Shakespearian gimmick. Most often, he can't be bothered to specify the actual poison. It's just boom, you're poisoned. But that was a way to do it back then, which goes double for those stabbings. Were Shakespeare writing today, his swordfights would be shootouts.

King Lear edges ahead with eleven deaths, most in its grim finale: 

1. First servant: stabbed;
2. Cornwall: stabbed;
3. Oswald: stabbed;
4. Gloucester: shock of joy, offstage;
5. Regan: poisoned by jealous sister, offstage;
6. jealous sister Goneril: suicide by dagger, offstage;
7. Edmund: killed in duel;
8. Cordelia: hanging, offstage;
9. Lear: Grief and exhaustion;
10. Fool: fate unknown, presumed dead;
and 11. Kent: resolved to commit suicide. 

Speaking of grim, there's Macbeth. Its death count is whatever anyone wants it to be given the major battles, violent repression, and general mayhem. The confirmed dead is eleven. You have to believe Macbeth cleaned up his assassin situation before anyone talked, but here's the confirmed eleven. 

1. 
   Macdonwald: killed in battle offstage;
2. Thane of Cawdor: executed offstage;
3. Duncan: stabbed offstage;
4. Duncan's Guard #1: stabbed offstage;
5. Duncan's Guard #2: stabbed offstage;
6. Banquo: Stabbed in ambush;
7. Lady Macduff: stabbed;
8. Macduff's son: stabbed;
9. Lady Macbeth: suicide offstage, unspecified;
10. Young Siward: killed in battle; 
11. and Macbeth: killed in battle on or offstage, beheaded offstage.

Those deaths happen in perfect order to frame the tragic fall. For all of Macbeth's carnage, most of the killing happens offstage unless a director loves an opening battle scene. Instead, the scenes follows Macbeth between the violence and wrestling with his conscience. It starts with arguably the most important but overlooked death, Macdonwald. Macbeth disembowels the guy offstage, showing both his heroic loyalty and the killer within. When he finally goes full tyrant, the murder moves onstage, with Banquo and Macduff's family. 

Shakespeare's bloodiest tragedy, though, is way bloodier. His top massacre is Titus Andronicus, an early play that wallows in its violent excess--on purpose. The play is about brutality and how far people will take their grudges. Death count, here we go:

1. Alarbus: ritual sacrifice;
2. Mutius: stabbed, filicide;
3. Bassianus: stabbed;
4. Martius: beheaded, offstage;
5. Quintus: beheaded, offstage;
6. Tamora's Nurse: stabbed;
7. the Clown: hanged;
8. Chiron: slashed throat, ground into powder, and baked into pie served to his mother;
9. Demetrius: same;
10. Lavinia: stabbed;
11. Tamora: stabbed and fed to wild beasts;
12. Titus Andronicus: stabbed;
13. Saturnius: stabbed;
and 14. Aaron: buried up to neck and left to die. 

Take that, Game of Thrones.

Stabbings and poisonings were his old reliables, but Shakespeare had a full arsenal when it came to dispatching characters. Guilt and served as pie, as examples seen above. A few others:

• 
  Snakebite;
• Heavy sweat;
• Indigestion;
• Dismemberment and tossed into fire;
• And the topper of toppers, bear. 

Poetic turns or not, it's a mistake to read Shakespeare as stilted or stuffy. He was putting on a show, blood, guts and all. It's endless amusement for a literature nerd, almost as fun as watching actors land those deaths in the footlights.