The place of death and sorry execution
Comedy of Errors, Act 5, Scene 1
Public execution was a common event in Shakespeare’s day. Convicted criminals were beheaded, hanged, burned, boiled and squeezed to death, and all in front of an audience. Scaffolds were sited at Newgate, Tyburn and other parts of London, and if you didn’t witness the event itself, grim reminders could be seen as you went about your daily business on the streets of the capital. Severed heads looked down on pedestrians crossing London Bridge; the bodies of gibbeted murderers swung in the breeze. Tourists sometimes made the trip out to Wapping, where those convicted of piracy were hanged at the low-water mark and left there until they had been washed three times by the tide. It is no surprise that executions in all their grisly variety get a mention in many Elizabethan and Jacobean dramas.
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Dozens of characters are sent to their deaths by execution in Shakespeare’s plays, almost all of them in the histories. Traitors, thieves and witches all receive the ultimate punishment for their crimes. But the death penalty was such a common occurrence in Elizabethan and Jacobean England that Shakespeare even includes it in some of the plays normally considered comedies. In the Comedy of Errors, Aegeon of Syracuse travels to Ephesus in search of his long-lost sons, but a recent ban imposed on Syracusians entering the city leads to his arrest. Aegeon has broken the law and the punishment is death: ‘if any Syracusian born / Come to the bay of Ephesus, he dies’. The sad tale of his search for his displaced family gains him some leniency and he is given one day to find someone who will lend him money to pay a hefty fine, but if he does not pay he will be executed.1
Death sentences for what may seem relatively minor crimes are not confined to the Comedy of Errors. Another play, Measure for Measure, also listed as a comedy in the First Folio, has become known as a ‘problem play’, not least because three men are condemned to death for sex outside of marriage, but only two are saved: ‘Is any woman wrong’d by this lewd fellow, / As I have heard him swear himself there’s one / Whom he begot with child, let her appear, / And he shall marry her: the nuptial finish’d, / Let him be whipt and hang’d.’ The fact that the women in Measure for Measure, though equally guilty, are shamed and forced to marry (some more willingly than others), but not hanged, shows how unevenly the law could be applied in Shakespeare’s day. This play, and several others, show the Bard’s preoccupation with the process of law and how justice was administered, not just the final sentencing.
Some of the crimes may seem exaggerated and melodramatic to modern audiences, but they were not so far from reality in Shakespeare’s day. Some would not be considered crimes at all today, and the punishments were certainly very different. Corporal (physical) and capital (death) punishments are no longer a feature of the British justice system, but 400 years ago both would have been a common sight. The playwright would have been familiar with corporal punishment even before he arrived in London: Stratford had whipping posts, pillories and stocks. His move to the metropolis, however, would have introduced him to a far greater number and severity of punishments.
By including executions in their plays Shakespeare and his contemporaries may have been simply reflecting the reality of life and death around them, but few playwrights were brave enough to depict the death itself onstage. Guilty parties are generally sentenced, then led offstage to their execution; then brief reports of their death might be given after the event, or severed heads are brought out and displayed to the audience. Staging such horrors would have been dangerous for the actors and, even with the best special effects, would not live up to the reality of capital punishment that would have been so familiar to the audience. There was also the possibility that seeing a popular figure executed onstage could provoke the already rowdy audience into more dangerous behaviour. Keeping the moment of death out of sight might have been a simple precaution for crowd control.
One notable exception is a play by Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy, which includes an onstage hanging. The play is credited as the original revenge tragedy and was hugely influential.2 It was also enormously popular with audiences and was frequently staged, leading to much modern-day speculation as to how the hanging could be achieved without killing off a string of Elizabethan actors.
Shakespeare doesn’t quite match Kyd’s brutality. He has no executions carried out onstage, and any that are seen in modern productions are there because of an artistic decision, not because they are included in the text of the play. And, unlike other deaths in his plays, there is very little description or discussion of executions. This probably isn’t due to any squeamishness on his part, but because his audiences didn’t need the process described to them; they already knew what executions looked like.
The death penalty was not a straightforward sentence in the sixteenth century and there were many variations in methods of execution. The manner of state-sanctioned death was chosen based on the crime as well as the social status of the condemned. Shakespeare’s often simple, even bland statements about capital punishment disguise an elaborate system of state execution that modern audiences are often unaware of, and this chapter fills in the background to something that Shakespeare and his audiences almost took for granted.
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Punishments for crimes in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England were severe and usually carried out in public, as it was thought it would deter others from committing the same crimes. The severity of the punishment was meant to match that of the crime. However, there were many discrepancies and loopholes that could see vicious criminals escaping with relatively minor sentences and the innocent suffering miserable deaths in prison.
Crimes in Shakespeare’s era could be broadly classified into two types: misdemeanours and felonies. For misdemeanours, the punishment could be imprisonment, flogging, a fine, forfeiture of goods, or a combination of all four. Felonies were more serious, and therefore deserving of more severe punishment. The consequences of being convicted of a felony were, in those days, the loss of all possessions to the Crown, and death.
Crimes that were considered felonies ranged from treason – the most despicable of all – to theft of anything worth more than a shilling (twelve old pence).3 The list of possible felonies was a long one and consequently execution was a common occurrence. In Shakespeare’s lifetime upwards of 1,000 hangings took place every year in England and Wales. All surviving evidence suggests that the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras had significantly higher levels of executions than later periods.
The number of executions may have been terrifyingly high but around three-quarters of those charged with a felony escaped the death penalty. One explanation for this apparent anomaly is that there was no close scrutiny of cases before they got to the courts and many would have been dismissed at this stage. There were also no guidelines for sentencing, as there are today, and judges had considerable freedom over the fate of the felons convicted in their courts.
Another important part of justice was mercy, a concept explored in detail in The Merchant of Venice. This play, which could almost be considered a courtroom drama, has Shylock loan Bassanio a large sum of money on the condition that the debt will be repaid in full in three months’ time. If he can’t pay, Antonio, who has stood as Bassanio’s guarantor, must forfeit a pound of his flesh. When he fails to come up with the money Shylock takes Antonio to court to argue his case. The judge finds the agreement legal and there appears to be no way to prevent Shylock from taking his dues, even though Antonio is expected to die in the process. Portia, disguised as a lawyer, intervenes and advocates for mercy:
The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
’Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The thronèd monarch better than his crown.
His scepter shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptered sway.
It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings;
It is an attribute to God Himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice.
Portia’s eloquent pleas fall on deaf ears, Shylock is determined to get his way, and she must resort to an obscure legal clause to save Antonio. Despite her fine words, Portia shows precious little mercy when it comes to her treatment of Shylock and he in turn faces the death penalty unless he converts to Christianity.
In court other factors would also be taken into account. A pardon might be given if there were mitigating circumstances, such as if a death during a fight was thought to be as a result of misadventure or committed in self-defence. At the end of Romeo and Juliet many people are dead because of the actions of others. Prince Escalus declares that ‘Some shall be pardon’d, and some punished’. As the dispenser of justice in the play it is his decision to make, but he doesn’t elaborate on who will benefit from his power to pardon.4
Even if a felon was found guilty and received no pardon, there were still ways of escaping the death penalty. The accused could claim ‘benefit of clergy’ (see Chapter 1), a potential legal loophole that had arisen as one of the consequences of the conflicts between church and state in the eleventh to thirteenth centuries. The clergy obtained the right to be tried for certain types of felony in their own ecclesiastical courts, which did not have the death sentence, rather than the royal courts.
To prove himself a clergyman, all a man had to do was take a psalter that was handed to him and, in the presence of the bishop’s representative, stumble his way through the ‘neck verse’ – so called because it could save someone’s neck rather than in reference to the contents of the passage – proving he could read.5 The bishop’s representative would then acknowledge the claim. The standard of literacy demanded was not high and it offered a degree of compassion, given the harsh alternatives. The felon would still lose all his property, and might be jailed for up to a year, but at least he escaped with his life. He was also branded on the fleshy part of the thumb to prevent him from enjoying the same privilege twice.
The assumption that only those educated in the Church could read had been false for centuries, and it was grossly unfair that a man’s sentence depended on his ability to read.6 Shakespeare made a point of satirising the situation in Henry VI Part II. The fourth act of the play centres around a rebellion against King Henry’s government led by Jack Cade.
Cade and his followers marched on London and fought a pitched battle on London Bridge. They successfully entered the City and Cade declared himself mayor. He then set up tribunals to determine the guilt or innocence of those accused of corruption. Although Shakespeare is largely faithful to the history, he borrowed some details from another earlier rebellion – the Peasants’ Revolt7 – to highlight the excesses of the rebels and how they threatened to overturn the everyday order of things. According to Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland, one of Shakespeare’s main sources for his history plays, in the earlier revolt ‘it was dangerous among them to be known for one that was learned, and more dangerous, if any men were found with a pen and inkhorn at his side: for such seldom or never escaped from them with his life.’
Shakespeare condenses this into the treatment of one of his characters and advances it 170-odd years to be part of Cade’s unofficial tribunals. The man in question has been found with a book in his pocket – evidence that he can read. The clerk admits, ‘I have been so well brought up that I can write my name.’ Cade sees being literate as evidence that he must be ‘a villain and a traitor’, and issues orders to ‘hang him with his pen and inkhorn about his neck’.
Some crimes were not clergyable, particularly the more serious crimes such as treason, murder with malice aforethought and rape. Over the years more crimes were added to the list but the number of non-clergyable crimes was still small. In the sixteenth century only sodomy, bestiary, witchcraft, picking pockets and horse-theft were non-clergyable.
Another way to avoid the death penalty was ‘benefit of the womb’. Pregnant women would have the day of execution delayed until after the birth of their child. Nearly half of all women convicted of a felony claimed they were pregnant, 38 per cent of them successfully. It is possible that after the birth, when the time came to be hanged, the woman was given a full pardon and escaped death. In Shakespeare’s Henry VI Part I, Joan of Arc claims to be pregnant when she is sentenced to be burned for witchcraft by the English and her execution is consequently delayed. When no baby appears after nine months the execution is rescheduled.
Benefit of the womb is an important plot device in The Winter’s Tale. Hermione, imprisoned by her husband who thinks she is pregnant by another man, delivers her baby girl in jail. Paulina offers to take the child, ‘If she dares trust me with her little babe, / I’ll show’t the king and undertake to be / Her advocate to the loud’st’ in an effort to get Hermione released. But the jailer refuses to let the child leave the prison. Paulina protests, ‘This child was prisoner to the womb and / By law and process of great nature thence / Freed and enfranchised’ – the baby was innocent of the crime committed by the mother and therefore did not deserve the same punishment.8
But if the crime was exempt from benefit of clergy or the womb, and there were no mitigating circumstances, then death was the usual punishment. The sentence would have been read out by the judge, ‘Though shalt first return to the place from whence thou camest [prison], from thence thou shalt go to the place of execution, there thou shalt hang till thou be dead …’ There was little time to try to gain a reprieve, although this was often granted. The ability to make such an appeal depended heavily on how wealthy the felon was and how much influence they wielded. A pauper stood little chance. Shakespeare’s observations in Measure for Measure, where one convict has escaped the death sentence for nine years because ‘His friends still wrought reprieves for him’, are entirely plausible.
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The process of law could also be very unpleasant, even life-threatening. Someone accused of a crime in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was carted off to prison to await trial and, back then, courts did not sit continuously. Quarter sessions, so called because they sat four times a year, settled the less serious infringements of the law. Cases of serious crime, such as murder and rape, were referred to the Assizes, courts that travelled around the country on a circuit. The accused would have to wait until the court was in session and as a result could sometimes spend months in prison before their case was even heard.
However, once justice arrived, it operated quickly. Trials were short and judgments enacted promptly. The sight of Shakespeare’s characters being removed from the stage to go to their execution immediately after sentencing is not so far from the reality of Elizabethan justice. If the accused were found not guilty they would be released immediately. Those that received a pardon, however, would be returned to prison until that pardon was issued, sometimes several months later.
Unlike today, imprisonment itself was not a form of punishment for serious crime. Those convicted of misdemeanours and those in debt could find themselves imprisoned until their sentence had been completed or their debt paid. But given the general conditions of prisons at the time, it was anything but a light sentence. The characters imprisoned in Shakespeare’s plays are under no illusions as to the seriousness of their situation. In Twelfth Night, Malvolio, tricked into appearing mad, is locked up as revenge for his strict and overbearing ways. But the joke goes too far. He is kept in darkness and ‘notoriously abused’. In The Two Noble Kinsmen, Arcite and Palamon are on the losing side after a battle. Captured and imprisoned, they despair at the loss of their liberty. They will never see their friends again or enjoy the comforts of their former life. Outside it might be summer but in prison ‘dead cold winter must inhabit here still’. It is clearly no picnic but Arcite and Palamon’s high social status means they are actually very well treated in prison – they eat well and have clean and comfortable accommodation (at least by Elizabethan standards). Not everyone was so lucky.
Elizabethan prisons were far from conducive to preserving the lives of their inmates. Conditions were appalling: crowded and filthy. The buildings themselves were often in a poor state of repair, sometimes so bad that escape was a realistic, and no doubt desirable, option. There was no exercise available for prisoners and only the most basic food rations were supplied. Meals could be supplemented by friends and relatives when they visited the inmates, and wealthier prisoners could pay extra to purchase food through the prison bars from sellers who congregated outside the walls. Even in times of plenty, those without means went hungry, and in times of dearth, very hungry.
Malnutrition, unsanitary living conditions and lack of exercise could severely debilitate a prisoner, leaving them particularly vulnerable to infections. The chances of dying of ‘jail fever’, a form of dysentery, were high. It was so virulent at times that in one famous incident in 1577, when sick prisoners were brought for trial in Oxford, they infected both jurors and judges, several of whom died. Surviving reports from the King’s Bench show that between 1558 and 1625, a total of 1,292 prisoners died in the jails of the Home Counties alone. Some of these may not have been convicted of anything and were merely waiting for their opportunity to defend themselves in court, or for a pardon to be issued.
In Measure for Measure Ragozine, ‘a most notorious pirate’, suffers the fate of many inmates and dies in prison ‘of a cruel fever’. His death is unremarkable for the time and scarcely commented on. What excites more interest is his facial similarity with Claudio, the hero of the play. Claudio has been sentenced to death, unjustly in the eyes of most people, and to save him from imminent execution Ragozine’s head is cut off and sent to the authorities so they will believe Claudio’s beheading has taken place. It’s not clear at what stage of the judicial process Ragozine dies. But, if he really was a pirate as notorious as claimed, it was unlikely he would have lived long. Whether justice was better served by his death in prison or hanging at the end of rope at low-water mark is debatable.
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The swiftness of executions might seem surprising as there was a lot to organise within such a short time frame. But because it was a relatively regular event, particularly in the capital, much of the infrastructure for execution was already in place. In more rural areas, where executions were less common, things might be delayed while everything was arranged. In 1655 the execution of one Captain Hunt was delayed while a scaffold was built and an axe procured of the correct length (11 inches was specified), by which time the prisoner had escaped.
But with regular repetition a pattern of events was soon established; the process of conviction, sentencing and execution followed a general, well-established format. Until as late as 1868 the majority of executions were conducted in public. They took place on high platforms in front of big crowds with sermons, speeches and a dramatic finale – it was very theatrical. In the normal run of events thousands of ‘sorrowful spectators’ gathered at the site of execution and it would not be unusual for individuals in the crowd to see people they knew on the scaffold. It was a socially diverse group that attended these events, just like the theatre. Noblemen might be in the crowd along with apprentices and pickpockets, though there may have been some slight segregation based on an individual’s ability to pay for a better viewpoint.
When the crowd had gathered, there was a procession from the prison where the convicted had been held to the place of execution. This was followed by a sermon, read by a priest, and immediately after, a speech was often made by the prisoner, just moments before they were launched into eternity. The condemned was expected to make a ‘good end’, meaning to show courage at the gallows, and appear penitent and contrite. Given the extraordinary stress of the situation it is impressive that the majority of condemned felons did just that. When many might have been expected to take the opportunity to hurl abuse at those about to take their life and the injustice of the world, they often admitted to their crimes, along with past sinfulness, and exhorted others to learn from their example. The speech was usually credited with being absolutely truthful. These individuals were shortly to meet their maker, who would pass the ultimate judgment on them. This was the time for complete honesty.
In Shakespeare’s Henry VIII, the Duke of Buckingham is found guilty of treason and sent to be beheaded. He makes the traditional impassioned speech, still proclaiming his innocence but full of forgiveness of his accusers, before he is led offstage to his fate. Buckingham’s speech may seem lengthy (58 lines in two sections), and an excuse for the Bard to show off his eloquence, but this was not unusual. One observer complained that a felon had kept him, and everyone else, standing in the rain for half an hour while slowly talking through a lifetime of crime.
After beheadings the head would have been held up and shown to the crowd and, particularly if it was the execution of a popular or revered figure, handkerchiefs were dipped in the spilled blood as a keepsake.9 When a prisoner was hanged the body would be left suspended for up to an hour to ensure death. Family members or friends would pull on the feet of their loved ones in an effort to shorten their suffering by hastening death. Signs of a swollen, blackened face and hands were looked for to be certain of death before the executed was cut down. Accounts of the death would be written in broadsheets and sung about in ballads for the benefit of those who could not be there to witness it in person.
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While the punishment for any felony was always death, different crimes demanded different deaths. Up until the mid-sixteenth century punishments were carefully chosen to give a foretaste of what awaited guilty individuals in hell. By Shakespeare’s day, boiling poisoners in cauldrons of water or lead and drowning witches was slowly falling out of favour, but there was still plenty of gruesome variety available. In general, the more severe the crime, the more the convicted could expect to suffer. But it didn’t always work out that way.
The most despicable crimes were those committed against the king or queen’s person. Plotting the overthrow or death of the sovereign was high treason, punishable by the most extreme form of execution available at the time. In England this was hanging, drawing and quartering, a form of punishment that had been introduced in the thirteenth century and was only finally abandoned in 1817.
First, the convicted was hanged by the neck, but cut down before they were dead and were still able to watch as their entrails and heart were drawn out of their abdomen and burnt on a fire in front of them. The shock of pain and blood loss most likely killed them during disembowelling, or at least left them unconscious. Any life still clinging to the body would have been snuffed out shortly after the heart was removed. The head was then cut off and the body cut into quarters – literally hacked to pieces. The executioners, often butchers by profession, and those in the crowd who got too close, were left splattered in the guilty man’s blood. The head and other sections of the body were stuck on spikes for public display to demonstrate the power of the Crown and act as a warning to anyone else thinking of plotting against their sovereign. Sometimes, if the treason was not considered so great, the condemned person was left to hang until they were dead before the rest of the process was carried out – a considerable mercy.
Only two of Shakespeare’s characters suffer this gruesome form of execution.10 The first is in Henry IV Part I. In the play the King’s forces are facing the opposing army of Hotspur. In an effort to avoid battle and bring peace, Henry sends ‘grace, / Pardon and terms of love’ via his messengers Sir Richard Vernon and Thomas Percy, the first Earl of Worcester. But Vernon and Worcester deliberately withhold the information, which leads to a battle and results in many casualties on both sides. Henry is victorious and Hotspur is killed. After the battle Worcester and Vernon are captured and their actions deemed traitorous. They acted against their King and the consequence was thousands of unnecessary deaths. Both are found guilty of treason and both are sentenced to be executed – ‘Bear Worcester to the death and Vernon too’. However, Shakespeare makes no mention of how they are to meet their deaths.
There was no need to go into details; contemporary audiences knew perfectly well what happened to traitors. Audiences would also have understood the different social ranks of the two condemned men. Vernon is from a well-to-do family but Worcester is a nobleman. The play is based on real historical events, so it is easy enough to find out what would have happened to the characters once they left the stage. The real-life Sir Richard Vernon was hanged, drawn and quartered. But because of his noble birth, the real-life Earl of Worcester was beheaded – a much swifter end.
The other example of the ultimate punishment for the ultimate crime comes from Henry VI Part II. Eleanor, Duchess of Gloucester and wife to Duke Humphrey the Lord Protector, wants to know when the King will die so that her husband will take the Crown and she will become Queen. To find out the answers she employs a witch and a necromancer and persuades several of her staff to summon a spirit to tell her what the future holds. Those involved are Roger Bolingbroke, Eleanor’s personal clerk, John Hume, Eleanor’s personal chaplain, Thomas Southwell, another man of the cloth and Margaret Jourdain, also known as the Witch of Eye.11 Eleanor, Bolingbroke, Hume and Southwell are all indicted for sorcery, felony and treason. Jourdain is tried as a witch.
The real-life plot took place in 1441 and Shakespeare followed the history fairly closely. The playwright compresses a series of trials into one moment where all the accused are found guilty and sentenced:
You four, from hence to prison back again; From thence unto the place of execution: The witch in Smithfield shall be burn’d to ashes, And you three shall be strangled on the gallows. You, madam, for you are more nobly born, Despoiled of your honour in your life, Shall, after three days’ open penance done, Live in your country here in banishment, With Sir John Stanley, in the Isle of Man.
Eleanor gets off lightly, as she did in real life due to her high social status, with penance and perpetual imprisonment. Hume, contrary to what Shakespeare says, was pardoned as he had really only played a supporting role in events. Southwell died in the Tower before his sentence could be carried out. But Bolingbroke, considered to have played a more significant role, was hanged, drawn and quartered and his head displayed on London Bridge. Jourdain suffered the usual fate for witches at the time, burning.
Women in the sixteenth century, as today, made up only a small percentage of those convicted of crime. Then, as now, women were unlikely to be indicted for violent crimes and more daring thefts. If any were convicted of murder it was most likely that the victim was a friend or family member, and the setting was likely to be domestic rather than a street brawl. However, some crimes were particularly associated with women – for example, infanticide and witchcraft.12 In the period between 1550 and 1750, 219 people were convicted of witchcraft in Essex but only 23 were men.13 King James had a notable obsession with witchcraft and witches were prosecuted at a particularly alarming rate during his reign.
Burning was also used as punishment against religious heretics. For example, Joan of Arc, depicted in Henry VI Part I, was famously burned to death at the Vieux-Marché in Rouen. The play does not depict the burning itself (far too risky in a wooden building), but it is reported by other characters. As an act of mercy they say Joan’s death is to be hastened by adding barrels of burning pitch to the pyre.
The experience of death by burning could differ enormously depending on many variables. Sometimes the condemned died relatively quickly; on other occasions their agonised screams could be heard for a long time as their bodies were slowly consumed by the flames.
Damage to the body by heat depends not only on the temperature but also on how long the tissues are exposed to this heat. Above 42°C (108°F) human cells start to self-destruct. As cells die, particularly brain cells, control of critical functions is lost. The minimum temperature that can cause damage to skin is 44°C (111°F) but it requires at least five hours of exposure at this temperature for a burn to appear. At 60°C (140°F) only three seconds of exposure will produce a burn.
Human bodies are well adapted to maintain a fairly constant core temperature. Veins near the surface of the skin dilate to increase blood flow and radiate heat. Sweating cools the skin as moisture evaporates and layers of fat act as insulation to buffer sudden changes in external temperature. Using these basic systems, the body can survive for a few minutes at temperatures over 90°C (194°F). In extreme conditions, the changes occur too quickly or the heat is too intense for the body to manage.
In fires, the temperature is obviously high, but it might not be the heat specifically that causes death. The inhalation of toxic gases – carbon monoxide, and to a lesser extent cyanide – can poison the body by disrupting the oxygen cycle. In slow-smouldering fires, carbon monoxide content in the smoke tends to be very high.
In intense fires the production of carbon dioxide (a non-toxic gas) can displace the oxygen in the air, causing asphyxiation. Also in very intense fires there may be thermal damage (burning) from hot gases entering the air passages and lungs. The high temperatures of the flames cause the skin to shrink and split, exposing the underlying fat, which may burn. Pressure inside the skull can build as the contents are heated, resulting in skull fractures.
Women’s bodies tend to burn faster than men’s because of the difference in fat content. But all human bodies take a long time to burn and high temperatures to reduce them to ashes. In real life, Joan of Arc’s burnt body was shown to the crowd to prove she had not escaped the flames. The remains were then burned again, twice, before her ashes were scattered in the Seine.
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All forms of execution in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were exceptionally brutal and likely to cause considerable suffering. Even beheading, the punishment for traitorous nobility, seen as a considerable mercy compared to hanging, drawing and quartering, was not the swift, pain-free experience many thought it was.
Beheading was carried out by axe blows to the back of the head. The neck contains strong muscles, the spinal cord, protected by bone, and the trachea, ringed by strong cartilage; all will give considerable resistance to the blade of an axe. It required a skilled, strong man and a sharp blade to make it through the neck in one blow. Horrific tales of multiple blows being needed were all too common.
In the politically turbulent times depicted in Shakespeare’s histories, there were many beheadings of nobles who dared to cross their king. A large number of characters have their last stage appearance as a disembodied head. Seven plays require the use of prop heads and three of them are used in Henry VI Part II, two of which, belonging to Lord Saye and Sir James Cromer, are separated from their bodies by the order of Jack Cade, whom we met earlier.14 The two heads are stuck on poles and made to kiss for the entertainment of the crowd. Shakespeare and his fellow playwrights were not unusually bloodthirsty for the time they were writing in. Numerous fake heads would have been stacked in the props cupboard of every Elizabethan and Jacobean acting company.
It may be no surprise that it is lack of oxygen that causes death in decapitation, but it comes via two mechanisms – severing of the nerve signals to and from the brain, and rapid blood loss. Cutting the spinal cord means that signals from the brain are disconnected from the muscles in the chest that enable breathing. Oxygen can no longer be replenished and lack of oxygenated blood will quickly stop the heart.
The neck contains some of the largest blood vessels in the body and severing them results in major, rapid blood loss. If a third of the body’s blood volume is lost, death is attributed to acute blood loss or exsanguination. Rapid loss of oxygenated blood to the brain will quickly cause unconsciousness followed by brain death. Oxygen circulating in the brain from the victim’s last breath will quickly be used up. Higher functions, thought and conscious actions, will die first. The ‘lower’ parts of the brain, such as the medulla and brain stem, last a little longer as the body tries to survive as long as possible against oncoming death. These areas control basic functions such as breathing, but with no body connected to the brain any signals sent from the brain to the lungs will not reach their destination.
Experiments on rats show that reserves of oxygen mean they can maintain consciousness for around four seconds after decapitation. At best a separated human head might have 15 seconds before passing into unconsciousness. Between four and eight minutes later there would be complete, irreversible brain death.15 There are many reports of lips and eyelids continuing to move after heads have been separated from their bodies, and much of this will be reflexes or nerves firing, making their last gasps before death. The spectacle of faces grimacing, or apparently praying in the case of Mary, Queen of Scots, would have been unnerving for spectators. From 1606 comes the legendary, but almost certainly invented, story of Sir Everard Digby, executed for his part in the Gunpowder Plot.16 Digby was first beheaded and then his heart was cut out and held up before the crowd by the executioner, who exclaimed, ‘Here is the heart of a traitor.’ ‘Thou liest,’ came the clear response from the head.
The heads of the most notorious traitors were prominently displayed on pikes in several major cities. The system was simultaneously barbaric and bureaucratic. The heads of Lord Scrope and Sir Thomas Grey, executed for their plot against Henry V, had to travel through eight counties, from Southampton to York and Newcastle, before being stuck on spears above the cities’ gates. The King himself therefore had to write eight letters ordering the sheriffs to permit the passage of the heads through their county. Shakespeare dramatised Scrope and Grey’s plot and sentencing in Henry V but skipped over the tedious paperwork.
It was much easier to have the heads displayed closer to where they had been separated from their body. This meant that London, as a prominent site of execution, had an abundance of heads for public display. These were usually placed above the gate on the south side of London Bridge, the Great Stone Gate. In fact, the number of heads, and the high turnover, meant that a Keeper of the Heads was employed to prevent London Bridge becoming overwhelmed with traitorous body parts. Older heads were removed and sometimes returned to family members, but usually they were tossed over the side of the bridge into the Thames.
How long the head remained intact and recognisable depended on whether or not efforts were made to preserve it. Bacteria and birds would have made short work of anything placed on a spike fresh from the chopping block. Sometimes the head, and other body parts, might be preserved by salting, par-boiling or dipping in tar. Sometimes weather conditions helped and cold, dry winters would slow down bacterial activity that would normally cause rapid decomposition, while hot, dry summers would help to mummify the head to a certain extent. The head of Saint John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, executed in 1537, was displayed for two weeks above London Bridge in the middle of summer without any apparent signs of decay. The well-preserved head soon started drawing crowds and speculation that its incorrupt state was a sign of his innocence. The head was discreetly thrown into the river.
Two of the heads that were displayed on the Great Stone Gate in 1583 may have belonged to Shakespeare’s relatives, John Somerville and Edward Arden, who had been executed for a plot to kill the Queen. Another head, placed on the bridge in 1582, may have belonged to an acquaintance of the playwright from his childhood. Thomas Cottam, a Catholic priest, was one of the 200 Catholics to be executed during Elizabeth’s reign. Thomas was the brother of John Cottam, schoolmaster at the King’s New School in Stratford, who may have taught Shakespeare.17 However, by the time Shakespeare arrived in London the heads may well have been dumped in the river and at the very least would have been reduced to skulls.
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Hanging, drawing and quartering, decapitation and burning were the rare exceptions to the most common form of execution, simply hanging. Hanging was reserved for those not born to nobility who were convicted of any felony that wasn’t treason or poisoning. Elizabeth I’s reign (1558–1603) saw 6,160 people hanged at Tyburn alone.
In Shakespeare’s plays, the majority of executions are beheadings, because the playwright mostly depicted the lives of royals and nobles. But there is one particularly memorable hanging: that of Bardolph in Henry V. He is a recurring character who first appears in the Henry IV Part I as one of Falstaff’s group of thieves and pranksters that the young Prince Henry likes to spend time with. In Henry V he has been recruited into the King’s army as a foot soldier. When the troops are marching between Harfleur and Agincourt he succumbs to temptation and steals a ‘pax’ from a church.18 The theft is discovered and the pax returned, but Bardolph must be punished:
For he hath stolen a pax, and hanged must a’ be:
A damned death!
Let gallows gape for dog; let man go free
And let not hemp his wind-pipe suffocate:
But Exeter hath given the doom of death
For pax of little price.
Hanging would be the normal punishment for stealing such a small item but commanders often turned a blind eye to looting by troops marching through enemy territories. Someone who stole from a church, however, might be made an example of. The affair in Henry V shows the strict discipline the King expected of his army. Shakespeare made use of a real event, but attributes it to a fictional character, Bardolph, a friend of Henry’s from his wayward youth, to highlight his drastic change in behaviour once he assumes the throne. There is no indication in the text that the King gives a second thought to his former friend.
In real life the hanging would have been improvised using whatever rope and tree were available. But it wouldn’t have been very different to public executions carried out with full legal process in England’s capital. In the sixteenth century, and for a few centuries afterwards, there was no standard rope, knot or length of drop that was required for judicial hangings. In fact, there was no real science applied to the executions at all, sometimes resulting in farcical scenes.19
The approach to the gallows and the knowledge of impending death is likely to have brought about a very physical reaction in the condemned. As adrenaline rushed through their body there would be shaking, maybe even convulsions, paralysis and fainting, and they would have sweated profusely, making the job of the hangman more difficult. In the hot summer months, when sweating was exacerbated, if the knot was not tied properly, the condemned man could literally slip through the noose.
Before 1892 all hangings were carried out by the ‘short drop’ method. The condemned stood on a cart or a ladder to support them while the rope was tied around their neck. The cart or ladder was then removed and they were left suspended. The criminal dangled at the end of the rope until they died. How long this took varied. The condemned person’s own body weight and gravity slowly killed them, possibly with the help of friends and relatives hanging on their feet. Temperature, length of the rope, type and position of the knot could also make a big difference. For example, usually the knot was tied behind the ear, but it often slipped. Alternatively it could be tied in front of the voice box to prevent the condemned from crying out, but this prolonged death.
In extreme situations, such as the pain of being suspended by the neck, the brain can flood the body with chemicals that effectively shut it down in an effort to preserve life. Hanging bodies might stop twitching and jerking but they were not necessarily dead.
The cause of death in short-drop hangings might seem obvious: lack of oxygen reaching the lungs. In fact there are several factors that can contribute to the death. Compressing the windpipe is actually very difficult as it is protected by tough rings of cartilage. But air can still be prevented from entering the lungs by other means. The tightening of the rope around the neck causes upward displacement of the base of the tongue, which can block the entrance to the trachea.
It isn’t just air reaching the lungs that is a concern; changes in blood supply to the brain can also kill. Major veins in the neck, such as the jugular, are nearer to the surface than the arteries. Veins are also more easily compressed because they have lower blood pressure.20 Because of the extreme stress of the situation, the heart would be beating fast, pumping blood into the brain in an effort to preserve it. The blocked veins mean the blood cannot drain and becomes dammed up inside the head. Pressure can build up to enormous levels and the brain can effectively be pulped. Signs of what is going on in the interior of the skull can be clearly seen in the face as it darkens and swells with suffused blood. The eyes bulge and the tongue might protrude. From a contemporary medical point of view the criminal was still alive as the heart continued to beat, though, thankfully, they were probably unconscious owing to brain damage.
Although the majority of criminals expired on the scaffold, there is evidence from the nineteenth century that a considerable number did not. William Cliff’s records of dissections from 1830, carried out on hanged murderers, show that there were 10 out of 35 cases where the heart was still beating after the criminal had been cut down from the scaffold. Expertise in execution methods cannot have been any more sophisticated in Elizabethan England and so it can be assumed that not everyone in Shakespeare’s day died while they were hanging.
Certain signs would be looked for to ensure that dead bodies, rather than live ones, were cut down from the scaffold. These included blackening of the face and hands, cloudy corneas, lack of signs of breathing or sensibility. But not all hanged criminals displayed these classic signs. In some cases the heart clearly stopped beating long before enough pressure could build up in the head to produce these effects.
Pressure from the rope on the vagus nerve in the neck can result in the rapid onset of cardiac arrest. Stimulation of these nerve endings can trigger the ‘vagal reflex’, sometimes called ‘vagal inhibition’, ‘vasovagal shock’ or ‘reflex cardiac arrest’. Rapid cessation of the heart’s action means there is no time for the accumulation of blood in the head to produce the blackening and bulging of the facial features. However, this reflex effect is much more common in cases of manual strangulation than in hanging (see Chapter 5). Of course, death can be a result of several factors acting together to varying degrees.
In the final stages before death the automatic nervous system is activated and foul-smelling excrement is expelled. After death, a person left hanging for some time will have a much paler torso but the hands, legs and feet can be very dark, almost purple, because of gravity pulling the blood down and pooling in the extremities. Bardolph’s hanging body would have been a grisly, stinking warning to Henry V’s troops as they marched past it.
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If the sight of a hanging wasn’t macabre enough to scare the populace into good behaviour, still worse punishments were available. Hanging in chains, or gibbeting, was used for more serious felonies such as wilful murder committed with premeditated malice or during a notable robbery. The felon was hanged alive in chains near the scene of the crime, left there to starve and for his body to rot: ‘Upon the next tree shalt thou hang alive, / Till famine cling thee’ (Macbeth). If the judge felt lenient they might allow the condemned to be first strangled with a rope before his body was left on display. In the winter months cold weather may have hastened proceedings through exposure to the elements. The chains were constructed like cages to hold the remains in a standing position. The body might have been further bound together to prevent it from literally falling apart, or dipped in pitch or tar to preserve it for longer.
In Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare uses gibbeting to show the extremes the Egyptian Queen is prepared to go to rather than subject herself to Roman rule: ‘Rather make / My country’s high pyramids my gibbet / And hang me up in chains!’
In many cases of gibbeting the convicted starved to death or, more likely, died of dehydration after a few days. Dehydration means there is not enough water in the body to carry out normal metabolism. When a person is deprived of water, death can be expected within 10 days, or less if the ambient temperature is high. If there is water but no food, starvation will cause death. The time it takes to starve to death varies depending on the relative fitness and fatness of the victim but is likely to be between 50 and 60 days, as long as there is adequate water.
Starvation seems a particularly cruel way to die, but that has not stopped some people, both real and fictional, from using it as a form of execution. In 1300 Henry IV seized the crown from Richard II and had him imprisoned. As long as Richard remained alive there was a threat of rebellion against Henry and so he wished the deposed King dead.
In Shakespeare’s portrayal of the events in Richard II, Sir Piers Exton overhears King Henry ask ‘Have I no friend will rid me of this living fear?’ Exton interprets this as the King hoping someone will kill Richard on his behalf, so he and two murderers go to Pomfret Castle where Richard is being held, and attack him. Richard manages to kill two of his opponents in the fight but meets his death at the end of a poleaxe brought down on his head by Exton. Shakespeare’s version, based on accounts narrated in Holinshed’s Chronicles, may have been dramatic, but it was completely false.
Examination of Richard’s skull in the seventeenth century found no marks of a blow or wound. A contemporary French chronicler wrote that he was starved and left so hungry that ‘Richard used his teeth to tear strips of flesh from his arms and hands and devoured them.’ Others claimed he was put on a starvation diet and some say his starvation was self-inflicted. It is, however, generally believed that Richard II died by slow starvation at Pomfret Castle, whether at Henry’s orders or not is less clear.
Shakespeare did use execution by starvation, but for a fictional character, in the brutal and bloodthirsty Titus Andronicus. In the play Aaron, a conniving and manipulative individual involved in plotting several murders and a rape, is sentenced to be buried up to the chest and starved. Compression of the chest by the surrounding sand or soil may have been enough to kill him long before starvation intervened. The chest needs a few inches to expand for air to rush into the lungs. The weight of soil on the chest can kill rapidly as accidents on construction sites have proved. When the chest is held in a fixed position, the parts of the body left exposed above the soil are grossly discoloured by blood that has been pumped up from the heart through the arteries but is unable to return as easily because of the compressed veins, and there can be copious bleeding from the ears and nose. It is an exaggerated form of slow death from strangulation. There is no mention of what happens to Aaron after he is led offstage – we don’t know whether he dies a long drawn-out death from starvation or a rapid death from crushing.
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Crushing, or pressing, was also a form of execution in use in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Normally, the death penalty for felonies not only deprived families of loved ones, but forfeit of their possessions left wives and children destitute. There was one way of at least preserving property and possessions for those left behind. At trial, the accused could refuse to offer a plea. Without a plea the trial could not continue and no sentence could be given. The accused escaped the financial penalties of the law, but did not escape with their life. They were still penalised for their silence, by ‘la peine forte et dure’, the legal expression for being pressed to death with heavy weights. The victim was stretched upon the ground and a board placed on their chest on which weights were piled until they died.
A healthy person can breathe with 180kg (400lb) on their chest for two days before getting tired, a fact discovered in 1692 in colonial America when Giles Corey was accused of witchcraft. He was sentenced to be pressed to death with 400lb of stones placed on his chest. It took him two days to die, and apparently his last words were ‘More weight.’
In Elizabethan England, electing this manner of death was seen as courageous. The death was therefore hastened to minimise suffering. This was achieved by placing a sharp stone or a piece of wood under the person’s back that would crush the spine and stop nerve signals reaching the lungs. The punishment was more common than might be expected. Between 1603 and 1621 at least 41 men and three women were pressed to death in Middlesex alone.
Although Shakespeare had none of his characters punished in this way, he made several references to the practice. For example, in Richard II, the Queen says ‘Oh I am pressed to death through want of speaking.’
Shakespeare was relatively restrained when it came to executing his characters, especially onstage. But he used his knowledge of capital punishment, and played to his audience’s experience of the real thing, to maximum effect. Subtle references, asides, even scaffold humour, are far more effective than gruesome simulations or detailed descriptions of executions, which the audience would have been all too familiar with in any case.
NOTES
1 Spoiler: it all turns out all right in the end.
2 Many playwrights made use of the new theatrical genre of revenge tragedy, including Shakespeare: The Spanish Tragedy may have been one of the sources for Hamlet.
3 One shilling was the average daily wage of actors and skilled artisans.
4 Speculation over who in the play deserves to be pardoned has been a gift for exam writers.
5 Usually they were asked to read, in Latin, the first few lines of Psalm 51, which asks for forgiveness for past sins.
6 The ridiculous nature of the law was further highlighted by the fact that in 1624 benefit of clergy was extended to women, even though the idea of a female cleric would have been laughable at the time.
7 This popular uprising of 1381 was against the high taxation enforced by Richard II’s government.
8 Spoiler: the baby girl is banished but grows up, falls in love, is reunited with her family and everyone lives happily ever after.
9 The blood of executed criminals was also thought to have curative properties.
10 Jack Cade from Henry VI Part II died during his arrest but his body was later cut into quarters for public display.
11 There are several spellings of Margaret Jourdain’s name in the historical record including Margery Jourdemayne and Margery Jourdayn.
12 Lady Macbeth is an example of a Shakespearean character who may have been guilty of infanticide. The text is vague and has been a rich source of speculation over Lady Macbeth’s character and motives for her actions.
13 Witchcraft was also extremely regional as well as gendered. Essex seems to have had a particular problem with witches and has far more convictions than other parts of England.
14 Shakespeare has muddled the names. In real life it was Sir James Saye and William Cromer who were executed by Cade’s rebellion.
15 Medical opinion varies on this.
16 In 1605 a group of conspirators planned to blow up the Houses of Parliament when King James was visiting. The plot was foiled when one of the conspirators, Guy Fawkes, was discovered making final adjustments to the 36 barrels of gunpowder that had been placed underneath the building.
17 John Cottam resigned from his teaching post a month after his brother was arrested.
18 A pax, pyx or pix, a small lidded box used for carrying the consecrated host.
19 In the early 1550s a man was to be hanged but the rope broke under his weight. Another rope was fetched and a second attempt made, but the rope broke again. Rather than undergoing a third attempt, the man escaped with his life.
20 For comparison, the pressure needed to compress the jugular veins is 4–5 psi (pounds per square inch), 9–11 psi for the carotid arteries, and around 66 psi for the vertebral arteries.