Elizabethan London provides the backdrop for Death by Shakespeare as Kathryn Harkup, best-selling author of A is for Arsenic and Making the Monster, turns her discerning scientific eye to Shakespeare and the varied and creative ways his characters die. Was death by snakebite as serene as Shakespeare makes out? Can you really murder someone by pouring poison in their ear? Could lack of sleep have killed Lady Macbeth? Kathryn investigates what actual events may have inspired Shakespeare, what the accepted scientific knowledge of the time was, and how Elizabethan audiences would have responded to these death scenes. Intriguing, well researched and very readable, Death by Shakespeare has it all: executions, poison, swordplay, bloodshed and the occasional bear-mauling.

Published by Bloomsbury Sigma
Paperback
ISBN: 9781472958204