The King Lear Death Clock

Here it is, the final tragedy Shakespearean Death Clock! I started this series with Titus Andronicus, the play with the highest death toll, and am ending it on King Lear, the play with the second-highest death toll (admittedly only if you count the Fool and Kent).  

This one gave me a lot of trouble as far as formatting. There may not be more deaths than Titus, but they're all crammed together in the latter part of the play. Not much wiggle-room to be had. 

That's the end of the Shakespearean Death Clocks for the moment, I'm afraid. However, if you're the sick sort of person who enjoyed these, fear not! I promise I will, at some point in the future, tackle the history plays. Only the clocks are going to have to be a lot bigger...

The Troilus and Cressida Death Clock

It's the penultimate Shakespearean (tragedy) Death Clock! The classification of infamous "problem play" Troilus and Cressida as a tragedy is a bit shaky, but, even though its title characters don't die, I feel it's closer to a tragedy than a comedy. It certainly doesn't leave you rolling in the aisles. 

I'm not 100% sure I got all the deaths. The Trojan War is going on constantly in the background, so I might have missed some before the big bloodbath at the end. Let me know if I have!  Troilus and Cressida is a weird, weird play... 

Anyways, tune in next Tuesday for the final installment of the Shakespearean Death Clocks! ...at least until I start work on the history plays...

The Othello Death Clock

We're nearing the end of our Shakespearean Death Clock series... at least as far as the tragedies are concerned. Just a couple more to go...

As with Romeo and Juliet, not nearly as many people die in Othello as it feels like.  I'm starting to think that 5 to 6 deaths is the sweet spot for tragedy. Any less and it's not really that bad. Any more and it starts getting unintentionally amusing. 

The Timon of Athens Death Clock

I'm still on vacation this week at the Stratford Festival, so here's another low-body-count death clock from everybody's favorite Shakespeare play about misanthropy!

I don't know what exactly Timon dies of. It's not a broken heart. Overdose of bitterness? Toxic accumulation of spite? In any event, if my death clocks only counted onstage deaths, this would be the emptiest of all the tragedy death clocks.

It would be empty, basically.

If you want more Good Tickle Brain action this week, take a peek at my Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram, where I'm posting updates on my adventures in Stratford, Ontario. 

The Coriolanus Death Clock

I'm on vacation this week at the Stratford Festival, so this week's death clocks will be ones with lower body counts. Let's start with everybody's favorite blood-soaked warrior...

Given how much violence is talked about in Coriolanus, it's quite surprisingly to realize that only one named character actually dies. Of course, it happens to be the title character...

If you want more Good Tickle Brain action this week, take a peek at my Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram, where I'm posting updates on my adventures in Stratford, Ontario. 

The Antony & Cleopatra Death Clock

Like the wheels on the bus headed towards DEATH TOWN, the Shakespearean Death Clocks keep going 'round and 'round...

This was a particularly hard play to make a death clock for, as it has about a bazillion different scenes and at least a million different characters. I've tried to get them all, but if I've missed any, do let me know in the comments below. (EDIT: Thanks to Charmiander in the comments for pointing out that I had missed Alexas!) And now some notes:

  1. Fulvia is Antony's third wife. She doesn't make an appearance. She just dies.

  2. Pacorus makes an appearance onstage as a corpse. He apparently killed Marcus Crassus and Ventidius killed him in revenge. Don't ask me who any of those people are. I don't know and, as far as I can tell, they are all totally superfluous to the plot.

  3. This play might win the award for "Most Natural Deaths in a Tragedy". (I'm counting broken hearts as natural deaths. They're sad, yes, but nobody sticks a dagger in 'em or poisons them or anything.)

Next week I'll be at the Stratford Festival! I'll still be posting Death Clocks (as I still have a number of tragedies to get through) but they'll be ones with low body-counts, to give me some extra time off to enjoy my theatre binge. I'll be documenting my adventures on my various social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and my resurrected Instagram) so follow me there to see what I'm up to!