“As a Lover’s Pinch”: Death, Corpses, and Female Sexuality in Four Plays of Shakespeare

By Staff Writer Sylvie Thode ’20

Phaedra’s suicide, Antigone’s live entombment and subsequent suicide, Clytemnestra’s murder, the death-arias of Puccini’s and Wagner’s heroines: one need only take a brief dramaturgical glance at the Western theatrical canon to see that the conspicuous death of a woman is often the showpiece by which a writer proves his talent. Shakespeare is no different; indeed, some of his most well-known plays are famous for the tragic deaths of their central women. In many of these plays however, Shakespeare makes the woman’s death so striking specifically by infusing it with a potent sense of sexuality. Through looking at the death scenes and corpses of the main women of Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, and King Lear, we can see larger trends emerge concerning female sexuality in Shakespeare and its relationship to death, corpses, and the female body writ large. For Ophelia, Juliet, and Cleopatra, their sexuality at death acts as a reflection of the sexuality associated with them in life; Cordelia’s death scene, on the other hand, reverses her status as a sexually-mature woman by casting her as a virginal child in death. I argue that the difference Shakespeare draws between these two approaches to a sexualized death demonstrates that the corpse can either fulfill the wishes of the dead person or of those who outlive them. Ultimately however, it is whose wishes that are granted by the dead body that matters.

At first glance, Ophelia’s death scene seems to be a strikingly beautiful, lyrical depiction of a woman drowning. However, as one delves deeper with an eye towards its abundance of sexual images, it becomes evident that the natural world in the scene is parallel to a sexual aggressor, presenting a forceful, male-coded form of sexuality that has plagued Ophelia elsewhere in the play. At the center of Ophelia’s death is a willow tree that, as Queen Gertrude states, “shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream” (IV.vii.181). The small pronoun “his” here is important to note: Shakespeare designates the willow tree as masculine. He continues to do so by stating that the “long purples,” presumably orchids (which are known for their phallic shape), that grow from its base are given a “grosser name” by “liberal shepherds” (IV.vii.184). Thus in this scene, nature itself is phallic, crass, and “envious” to touch Ophelia’s body (IV.vii.187). This coarse eroticism and desire to touch Ophelia then acts as a parallel to Hamlet’s interactions with Ophelia elsewhere in the play, such as when he grabbed her “with his doublet all unbraced” much to her alarm (II.i.88). Even in her death, in a scene of intimacy with nature that one would expect to be pure or even sublime, Ophelia cannot escape the uncouth male sexuality that has been plaguing her throughout the play.

By drawing strong parallels between Ophelia’s drowning and classical scenes of nymphs being raped by river gods, Shakespeare further underscores this aggressive sexuality associated with Ophelia at her death. The trope of a woodland spirit being pursued and eventually raped by a river god is one instantly recognizable in classical literature; it notably occurs in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, from which Shakespeare often took inspiration. Shakespeare creates this allusion by referring to Ophelia as “a creature native and endued / Unto that element” (IV.vii.193). This line implies that Ophelia is native to the scene of nature in which she lies, and is thus like a woodland nymph or another form of faerie creature. When Ophelia falls into the water, the river’s water pulls her down: as Gertrude states, “her garments, heavy with their drink, / Pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay / to muddy death,” leaving Ophelia “drowned, drowned” (IV.vii.195–199). Nearly all of the words in this sentence — “heavy,” “drink,” “pulled,” “death,” and “drowned,” are words that carry potent sexual connotations, according to scholar Gordon Williams’ A Dictionary of Sexual Language and Imagery in Shakespearean and Stuart Literature. The word “pulled” is particularly important: as Williams states, “pulled” refers to the male action within the coital act (Williams 1109).

The physical implication of “pulled” and the other sexually suggestive words in these lines then demonstrate that the river not only literally drags Ophelia down toward its depths, but in doing so the river is also engaging in its own male-coded sexual act. It is also worth noting that in stating that the river drags Ophelia down “to muddy death,” Shakespeare does not specify whose “death” it is: this ambiguity allows us to interpret that “death” as literally the extinction of Ophelia’s life, or, if we take the erotic sense of the word, as the orgasmic pleasure of the personified river (Williams 409). This duality invokes Book V of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, in which the river god Alpheus drags down the nymph Arethusa in order to rape her. By drawing this allusion, Shakespeare demonstrates that Ophelia’s death is linked to the literary tradition of rape scenes and so posits that for Ophelia, death is not a release but rather only a continuation of the aggressive male sexuality that has been forced on her throughout the play. The presentation of Ophelia’s death as a pseudo-rape is also especially meaningful when one considers that she is presumably still a virgin (whether she and Hamlet have had premarital sex is often debated, but is not supported concretely anywhere in the text).

After Ophelia is dead, Hamlet, the perpetrator of that sexual aggression, continues to sexualize her body when he wrestles with Laertes in her grave. In Shakespeare’s time as in our own, the grave was often referred to as “the final resting place” not only because of its finality, but also because of the visual similarity between a body lying in a coffin and a body lying in bed, which is of course the quintessential “resting place.” This visual and idiomatic link between graves and beds then casts a darkly sexual overtone to the scene at Ophelia’s grave: when Ophelia is dead, Hamlet finally enters her “bed.” Furthermore, Hamlet’s language in this scene is hyperbolic as he boasts of his love for Ophelia: “I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers / Could not with all their quantity of love / Make up my sum…Woo’t weep? Woo’t fight? Woo’t fast? Woo’t tear thyself? / Woo’t drink up esill? Eat a crocodile?” (V.i.264–271). With this hyperbolic language, Shakespeare suggests that Hamlet is posturing, explicitly emphasizing his masculinity and his individual capability to have been intimate with Ophelia, in contrast to Laertes’ familial claim to her. Masculine sexuality continues to dominate the scene around Ophelia’s corpse as Hamlet and Laertes wrestle over her. The act of wrestling, given its necessary close physical contact, suggests not only brute male force, but also a tinge of homoeroticism. Over Ophelia’s corpse two men, trying to prove their own force, engage in an act that centers their forceful sexuality. Even as a corpse on stage, which one would expect would be the focus of the audience’s attention, Ophelia is overshadowed by the masculinity of the men present. In both her death scene and her scene as a corpse, Ophelia’s exit from life is thus sexually charged in a way that mirrors how she was the object of male aggression when alive.

Juliet’s death in the 1597 romantic tragedy Romeo and Juliet similarly acts as a reflection or fulfillment of her sexuality in life; however for Juliet this sexuality is positive and desired, unlike Ophelia’s. Shakespeare presents Death as Juliet’s lover or husband, and so in dying, she achieves the eternal marriage and consummation that she desired with Romeo. Juliet is first likened to being Death’s wife when she is in fact not even dead — upon seeing her sleeping under the influence of Friar Laurence’s potion, Lord Capulet mourns her “death,” stating:

“O son [Paris], the night before thy wedding day

Hath Death lain with thy wife. There she lies,

Flower as she was, deflowered by him.

Death is my son-in-law, Death is my heir;

My daughter he hath wedded. I will die

And leave him all. Life, living, all is Death’s.” (IV.v.35–40)

Capulet envisions Juliet’s death as a wedding to Death himself, complete with an official consummation (“flower as she was, deflowered by him.”) He claims Death as his son-in-law thrice in two lines, thus enforcing to the audience that Juliet has transitioned from being a bride of Paris to a bride of Death. One cannot disregard the dramatic irony in this statement of Capulet’s as well, seeing as Juliet is at this moment a wife of Romeo’s, not Paris’, and certainly not a wife of Death’s. The idea of Juliet being a bride of death is also especially interesting considering the importance of Catholicism to Romeo and Juliet. Death, particularly if we consider him a personified character, is equal but opposite to Christ, the bringer of eternal life. By casting Juliet as Death’s bride, Shakespeare subtly inverts the Christian idea of the Church being the bride of Christ and the erotic relationship between a believer and God as depicted in the Old Testament’s Song of Songs.

While Capulet calls Juliet’s “death” as a marriage to Death, Romeo perceives that same “death” as a romantic tryst with Death, rather than an official marriage. When he sees Juliet in the crypt, Romeo bemoans his loss of Juliet, or more specifically, his loss of her to Death. He proclaims that Death “hath sucked the honey of [Juliet’s] breath,” which suggests an act of prolonged kissing, and that Death has kept Juliet “to be his paramour” (V.iii.92; 105). Each man then sees Death as the completion of what he wanted from Juliet: Capulet wanted her in a stable marriage so that he might have an “heir,” whereas Romeo wanted to be Juliet’s true husband (thus giving him cause to describe Death with the specifically-extramarital term “paramour”).

This notion of death as the fulfillment of the characters’ expectations or desires in life emerges strongly in the suicides of the two lovers; the manner in which each lover carries out their suicide reflects the sexuality that each desired of the other. The eroticism of Juliet’s suicide is overt: she inserts a dagger, whose shape carries phallic connotations, into her flesh. While more subtle, Romeo’s suicide — drinking poison from a chalice — is permeated with erotic connotations as well. The chalice is an ancient symbol of female genitalia, and thus by synecdoche, of female sexuality in general. According to Williams, it dates back to Circe’s chalice in The Odyssey, but by Shakespeare’s time, the connection between cups and female genitalia had grown even stronger due to contemporary medicine’s picture of the uterus matching the aesthetic shape of a chalice (Williams 354). Each lover then achieves their death by using an item that represents the other’s sexual organ. Shakespeare also here plays on the popular pun in Elizabethan England of “death” as another word for orgasm (Williams 371). Death then acts as the true consummation in Romeo and Juliet’s marriage; in killing themselves, they unite eternally, in a way that is more permanent than their marriage could ever have been given their warring families, and fulfill that marriage with an equally symbolic consummation.

Once the two lovers have become corpses, Shakespeare embellishes this concept of death as fulfillment of life’s desires by staging their corpses in a type of pseudo-marriage that is more fulfilling than the marriage they had in life. In the final scene, the two corpses lie next to each other, with both of their parents present (except for Romeo’s mother, who has died of grief). Friar Laurence, who officiated their covert marriage earlier in the play, is also present, thus occupying the role of the clergy for the wedding. In creating this wedding tableau — two spouses side by side, their parents, a religious officiator — Shakespeare demonstrates that the only way in which Romeo and Juliet can be happily married, with their families present and reconciled, is through their deaths. In Romeo and Juliet then, the conflation of sex and death serves as a fulfillment of the characters’ ultimate desire in life.

Shakespeare similarly likens Cleopatra’s death to consummation with a lover or husband in Antony and Cleopatra (1607); however, there are notable differences between this depiction of death as a lover, and the similar depiction in Romeo and Juliet. Firstly, Cleopatra herself makes the comparison between Death and a lover — as she is dressed by her servants Iras and Charmian, Cleopatra cries out to Death, stating “Husband, I come!” (V.ii.286). While one might at first glance believe that the word “husband” refers to Antony, he and Cleopatra never married. The word “husband” then is ambiguous — it could refer either to Antony, reflecting Cleopatra’s hope that they will achieve in the Underworld what they could not in life, or it could also refer to Death himself, since she and Death are entering into an eternal relationship. However, I would argue that the answer to this ambiguity is unimportant; rather, what matters is that Cleopatra herself is the one to draw the connection. She continues to liken Death to a lover when she sensually states that “the stroke of death is as a lover’s pinch / Which hurts and is desired” (V.ii.294–295). By creating this relationship narrative herself, rather than it being constructed by her father or lover as it is for Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, Cleopatra demonstrates that she has a purposeful role in her suicide, that she has “immortal longings” to die on her own terms (V.ii.280). Therefore through comparing these two suicides, both suffuse with sexuality and incited by a doomed love-affair, we can see that it is less important that death and sex are equated in both; rather, what ultimately matters to our understanding of these characters and their motivations is who it is that equates the two.

In looking further at the manner in which Cleopatra commits suicide, it becomes evident that she uses her moment of death to further reshape how others had viewed her sexuality. According to the stage directions, Cleopatra applies the asp “to her breast,” saying, “Come, though mortal wretch, / With thy sharp teeth this knot intrinsicate / Of life at once untie” (V.ii.303). In exposing her breast to the snake, she visually positions the snake as both her lover and her death, thus further continuing the linkage between the two from her earlier statement. In addition to its literal position, the snake also symbolically holds phallic connotations both because of its shape and its eventual injection of fluid (venom) into Cleopatra’s flesh.However, Cleopatra sees the snake most as her child, “[her] baby at [her] breast, / That sucks the nurse asleep” (V.ii.308). In creating this image of a baby suckling, Cleopatra herself frames her suicide as a kind of maternal procreative sexuality, which invokes something far more sacred than regular sexuality. In doing so, she rewrites the narrative of her sexuality that others had constructed — she is often called a whore elsewhere in the play by the Roman characters, and is accused of ruining Antony with her lascivious female allure. By presenting herself as a mother figure at the moment of her death, Cleopatra professes that she is not “wanton” nor a “strumpet”; rather, she connects herself to the most sacred form of female sexuality.

Furthermore, the treatment of Cleopatra’s body after her death essentially creates a victory for her — she is treated with respect by her enemy and given an honorable burial next to her lover Antony. Retaining respect after defeat or death is paramount for Cleopatra: she is driven to commit suicide specifically to prevent the embarrassment of being taken enslaved to Rome and seeing “some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness / I’th’ posture of a whore” (V.ii.218). By examining the treatment of her corpse, we can see that ultimately, despite being politically defeated, she dies having maintained the respect that she desired in life. Caesar grants Cleopatra a proper military funeral (“our army shall / In solemn show attend this funeral”) and allows her “to be buried by her Antony” (V.ii.357). Through this burial Cleopatra achieves both political success (she is granted a hero’s burial), and personal success (she will rest forever with her lover Antony). The corpse here then acts as a wish-fulfiller precisely because of its proper burial; the burial gives meaning and power to Cleopatra’s suicide.

Cordelia, however, stands in opposition to how Cleopatra, Juliet, and Ophelia are treated at their death; Cordelia’s corpse is treated as a child’s, devoid of sexuality, by her father. Lear enters the final scene of the play bearing Cordelia’s corpse after she has been hanged. This visual image, of the father bearing the daughter, strikes a visual chord with the audience due to its visual resemblance to the archetypal Pietà, though with the genders reversed. Furthermore, Shakespeare provides the stage direction that Lear then “lays her down.” The action of laying Cordelia’s body on the ground, presumably gently done by the actor, poignantly suggests a parent tucking their child into bed and emphasizes Lear’s gentleness as opposed to his harsh irascibility earlier in the play. It is also important to note here that Cordelia is not a child or even a virgin; she is married to France, and by extension we can presume that they have consummated that marriage. However, Lear treats her body as a childlike virgin’s, not only through his physical actions, but also through his proclamation that she has the ability to “redeem” him (V.iii.264). Redemption, with its overtly Christian overtones, is often something for which humans plead to saints to intercede on their behalf. Such saints, especially when female, are often virginal martyrs killed for their beliefs. Through his diction then, Lear reveals that he sees Cordelia as one such virginal martyr. By examining how Lear understates Cordelia’s adult sexuality, we can see that after all the play’s events have progressed, he wishes to return to its beginnings, before he had banished Cordelia, before she had been married, back to when she was only his youthful daughter.

Through his repeated emphasis on Cordelia’s voice, or her lack thereof, Shakespeare continues to develop Lear’s refusal to treat Cordelia’s corpse as an adult’s. Cordelia’s death, like Ophelia’s, is not portrayed on stage; through that very choice, Shakespeare denies her the chance to have any “last words” or to make a dramatic final speech that is often expected of women in tragedies (as in Romeo and Juliet or Antony and Cleopatra). From the moment then that the audience sees Lear enter bearing Cordelia’s body, their attention is drawn to the fact that they have not seen or heard Cordelia die. As the scene progresses, Lear obsesses on Cordelia’s voice. His very test to see if she is living (holding up a mirror to lips to see the condensation from her breath) is in its essence a test for speech: for after all, breath and speech are both in their simplest form just air being pushed out of the mouth. Later on, he continues to look for speech when he leans in close to Cordelia, as he asks “what is’t thou sayest?” (V.iii.270). However, in neither of these instances does he get a response: Cordelia’s voice is clearly gone. Even the manner of Cordelia’s death, being hanged by a slave as Lear tells us in line 272, is a removal of her voice. The trope of women being hanged in tragedies extends all the way back to ancient Greek tragedies, with the suicides of powerful women such as Antigone and Iocaste. As it does in Greek tragedy as well as in Shakespeare, hanging as a means of death represents to the voice of the woman being physically choked off. By so pointedly removing Cordelia’s voice in her final scene on stage, Shakespeare not only portrays Cordelia as an infant-like body without the capability for speech, but also draws a poignant and crushing parallel to the opening scene in which Cordelia refuses to use her voice. In the play’s beginning however, Cordelia chose not to speak, while by the end she is physically unable to use her voice, having had her throat crushed by the noose.

Although there is one indication of Cordelia’s sexuality in this scene, it is implied to be an isolated form of sexuality, one limited to Cordelia alone, and so supports Lear’s vision of her as a virginal martyr. Lear tests if Cordelia is alive by holding up a mirror to see “if that her breath will mist or stain the stone” (V.iii.260). Cordelia is so close to the mirror that she is essentially kissing her own reflection; Lear thus frames Cordelia’s corpse within a sexuality of which no one else can be a part. In his doing so, we can see Lear’s desire to protect Cordelia and keep the outside world from harming her; unlike the family of Juliet or Ophelia, he treats Cordelia’s corpse as something that deserves privacy. In having Lear use this specific method to test whether or not Cordelia lives, Shakespeare invokes the common trope in Renaissance paintings of denoting a woman as sexually promiscuous by painting her as she looks at herself in a mirror. (Notable examples of this trope in Renaissance painting include Titian’s Venus with a Mirror (1555) and Caravaggio’s Martha and Mary Magdalene (1598).) Shakespeare creates this allusion to draw our attention to what is different between Cordelia and these painted women: while the painted figures can gaze at themselves and actively create a form of sexuality, Cordelia, as a corpse, is devoid of all the sexuality that would be expected from this visual image of a woman facing a mirror. Therefore, in comparing the corpses of these four women, it becomes clear that Cordelia is the outlier; her death and corpse are scarcely sexualized, and even when her corpse is sexualized, it is done in a way that is modest and caring, rather than brash and manipulative (as it is for Ophelia and Juliet).

In looking at these four women, we can also notice that Cordelia and Ophelia’s wishes are not made manifest by their death; rather, a different sexuality is projected onto them in death than the one which they desired or inhabited in life. Juliet and Cleopatra’s deaths, on the other hand, reflect the sexual atmosphere which they possessed in life (Cleopatra), or which they desired to possess (Juliet). A larger overall theme of how Shakespeare views sexuality for women then emerges — through his descriptions of their deaths and subsequent corpses, he makes clear that sexuality can be a tool of empowerment for women that they can use to achieve their ultimate objectives. Juliet and Cleopatra, although they are the women to commit suicide, die happier than either Ophelia or Cordelia; through using their sexuality in killing themselves, they achieve a “happy” death that fulfills their goals and desires.