Death by Shakespeare

Shakespeare found dozens of different ways to kill off his characters, but how realistic are these deaths, and did Shakespeare have the knowledge to back them up?

This talk turns a scientific eye towards the Bard and the varied and creative ways his characters die. Was death by snakebite as serene as Shakespeare makes out? Can you really murder someone by pouring poison in their ear? Find out all this and more in a rollercoaster of Elizabethan carnage, poison, swordplay and bloodshed.

A talk presented by Windermere Science Festival for the start of British Science Week 2026

Kathryn Harkup is an internationally renown science communicator, a former chemist turned writer, her first book was the international best-seller “A is for Arsenic: The Poisons of Agatha Christie” and has written many titles, including “Death by Shakespeare Snakebites, Stabbings and Broken Hearts”