I was reading recently about how Shakespeare dealt with suicide differently if he was writing about Christian characters. In Christianity, suicide is always considered a sin, while in Ancient Rome, it could be considered a noble act under certain circumstances. Shakespeare, chameleon that he was, would treat the suicide based on the culture that he was writing about.<\/p>\n
When I first read this, it rang true for me. Hamlet laments that he wishes “that the Everlasting had not fix’d \/ His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter!” Macbeth asks “Why should I play the Roman fool, and die\/ On mine own sword?” Meanwhile, characters like Brutus and Cleopatra get heroic suicide scenes.<\/p>\n
But the more I think about it, the less sure I am that this holds up across the canon. Off the top of my head, I can think of about four or five (arguably six) Christian characters in Shakespeare who kill themselves. There may be others as well. So I guess the Question of the Week is in two parts:<\/p>\n
How many Shakespearean characters can you name who are Christian and commit suicide?<\/em><\/p>\n Do you think Shakespeare treats his non-Christian suicides differently than he treats these suicides?<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was reading recently about how Shakespeare dealt with suicide differently if he was writing about Christian characters. In Christianity, suicide is always considered a sin, while in Ancient Rome, it could be considered a noble act under certain circumstances. Shakespeare, chameleon that he was, would treat the suicide based on the culture that he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[74,91,122,58,52,125,24,46,117,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-antony-and-cleopatra","category-hamlet","category-julius-caesar","category-king-lear","category-macbeth","category-othello","category-question","category-religion","category-romeo-and-juliet","category-shakespeare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shakespeareteacher.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shakespeareteacher.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shakespeareteacher.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shakespeareteacher.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shakespeareteacher.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=381"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.shakespeareteacher.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6315,"href":"https:\/\/www.shakespeareteacher.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381\/revisions\/6315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shakespeareteacher.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shakespeareteacher.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shakespeareteacher.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}