William Shakespeare | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 69 pages of analysis & critique of William Shakespeare.
This section contains 18,393 words
(approx. 62 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by Walter C. Foreman, Jr.

SOURCE: “An Art of Dying,” in The Music of the Close: The Final Scenes of Shakespeare's Tragedies, University Press of Kentucky, 1978, pp. 29-71.

In the essay below, Foreman diagrams the variety of ways in which Shakespeare's tragic protagonists meet their ends. Looking closely at the deaths of the central characters in both the minor and major tragedies, he considers the depth of the characters' understanding of themselves and the world, their sense of identity, their will to be in control of their fates, and the creativity of their confrontations with death.

I will be a bridegroom in my death. 

Death, that first and most obvious characteristic of a Shakespearean tragedy, so often becomes for the tragic figures a thing to be desired. At least from Richard II on, a death wish is either acted on or deeply and extensively felt by nearly all of them. Actually there seems...

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This section contains 18,393 words
(approx. 62 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by Walter C. Foreman, Jr.
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Critical Essay by Walter C. Foreman, Jr. from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.