| This dissertation is a study and comparison of the concept, function and treatment of death in the tragedies of William Shakespeare and Eugene O'Neill. It will concentrate on three themes of the two playwrights: the death wish, the theme of love as death, and the emphasis on life-in-death in Shakespeare and death-in-life in O'Neill. Four tragedies by each playwright are selected for this study: Shakespeare's Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Antony and Cleopatra, and O'Neill's Strange Interlude, Mourning Becomes Electra, The Iceman Cometh, and Long Day's Journey into Night.; In several Shakespeare's tragedies, most of the characters, especially major ones, harbor the death wish. The theme of love as death runs through his tragedy. Physical death, which is common to the ending of Shakespeare's tragedy, carries spiritual values, such as tragic perceptions, spiritual sublimation, and a sense of a new beginning and new order.; In O'Neill's tragedy, the longing for death is also a consistent, recurring phenomenon. Both playwrights' characters cherish the death wish when life is beyond endurance, and both make use of the death wish to create, define, and highlight their characterization. In O'Neill's tragedy, the theme of love as death is also striking and consistent. However, while Shakespeare's characters die to achieve perception and nobility, O'Neill's characters, especially the protagonists, usually end up in the state of death-in-life.; Shakespeare conceives tragedy as a tale of suffering ending in death, followed by the Christian concept of regeneration. For O'Neill, however, God is dead and there is no life after death. The Elizabethan concept of life after death gives way to the modern obsession with the painful and futile search for meaning in life. In O'Neill's later tragedies, the destruction of the hero(es) takes the form of empty dreams and oblivious drunkenness, a slow process of suicide and death-in-life. |
