| No systematic study has yet been done on the death phenomena in Shakespearean tragedy. Death, a constitutive part of dramatic climax, is evidently rich in meaning and plays a vital role in the overall scheme of dramaturgy. The dominant theory of tragedy, which has teleology and ethics as its philosophic basis, has so far failed to perceive that death is an intrinsic part of Shakespeare's tragic universe.On the strength of Heidegger's relevant thoughts, the paper maintains that without human awakening to its own finite being, the birth of tragedy would hardly be possible. Heidegger declared loudly that human existence is that of temporality and his-toricality, and death, as the surest proof of human finite being and the quintessence of temporality and historicality, finds itself placed at the heart of tragedy.Another consideration is that "existence" means "to come into being" and always entails action throughout, an understanding that resists the conventional assumption of death as a kind of single event; on the contrary, death is constantly present long before its final actualization. Centering on the death phenomena in Shakespearean tragedy, this paper endeavors to elucidate the symbiotic relation between the death awareness and the tragic spirit embedded in the tragedies. The paper believes that it is on the height of the human "ownmost possibility" that Shakespeare ventured deep into the realm of "Being". The present study advocates a similar turn from episte-mology to ontology for Shakespeare studies.Chapter one tries to establish the tie between tragedy and existence. As death concerns the heart of existence, it agrees with the transformation from God-oriented society to man-oriented society. Secondly, the paper makes it understood that "Dying is not an event; it is a phenomenon to be understood existentially". 1Death is essentially a human phenomenon, refuting the teleological and ethical understanding of it as a form of punishment. A change of perspective forms a major concern for the present paper.Chapter two tries to pinpoint the reason for the insufficient study of death phe-nomena, pointing out the comparative uniqueness of having so many titular characters ended in death in Shakespearean tragedies. Secondly, the paper, on the strength of the philosophies of Husserl and Heidegger, argues for a fresh understanding of death as an inalienable part of life, and thus proving that death in Shakespearean tragedies is an artistic representation of Being-Towards-Death. The paper then goes on to illuminate that Shakespeare's death awareness is what Heidegger believed to be the basic state-of-mind-angst, a product that resulted from the human awakening. The paper maps out the actual course of Being-Towards-Death as is exhibited in the tragedies, that is, to be its Being, resolution, authentic potentiality-for-Being and their interplay with angst.Chapter three demonstrates how Aristotelian, Hegelian and Bradleyan tragic conceptions have failed to catch the existential nature of tragedies, and, accordingly, have further obliterated the significance of death. Secondly, Shakespeare's distinctive use of Aristotelian teleology and his return to the time-honored tragic notion of "fate" are expounded at some length. Lastly, the attitude towards death and the way they meet their doom come to the foreground of this section and on the basis of this distinction, that is, death, violent or voluntary, the paper distinguishes two tragic spirits embedded in the character's death, the worldliness or the humanistic tragedies and the other-worldliness or the transcendental tragedies. The former category is represented by tragedies like Hamlet, Macbeth and King Lear, which takes northern countries as its setting, while the latter Romeo and Juliet, Othello and Antony and Cleopatra, which takes the Mediterranean as its setting.Chapter four proves that the recurring phenomena like madness, storm, and some supernatural entities are caused by the evaporation of existential meaning on the part of the protagonists...
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