William Shakespeare has written many plays, sonnets, and mostly all of them include children. Some of them mercilessly die, and some simply pay for the mistakes of their parents, but why there is not always a happy end? Why children are supposed to die?
In early modern England the mortality of infant and children was very high due to many diseases such as plague, smallpox, nutritional deficiency, poor hygiene, infections, etc. This happened not only to poor families but also to wealthy one.
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Personally, I think that all these children’s deaths have inspired Shakespeare to write his plays, even though the causes of death are completely different most of them are ferociously killed. If in Shakespeare’s times most causes of infant mortality was linked to socio-economic problems, bad cultural conditions or pathological into which the child was born and raised, in Shakespeare’s plays children died as the result of the act of revenge, or because they were seen as an obstacle, as an act of sacrifice[footnoteRef:1] or because of the presence of human evil. [footnoteRef:2] The saddest thing is that in both Shakespeare’s plays and in real life the children were innocent. [1: Titus Andronicus wants to sacrifice Tamora’s sons on account of the death of his sons, and by doing this their death will have a sense “To this your son is mark’d, and die he must, / To appease their groaning shadows that are gone”, Shakespeare, William, The lamentable Tragedy of Titus Andronicus, Edited by H. Bellyse Baldon, London 1994, Act 1, Scene 1, 124-125, page 10] [2: Considering the murder of the little princes in Richard III or the murder of Macduff’s son in Macbeth, we deduce that the murderers were the perfect image of an evil and it was in their nature to kill. ]
Every single parent wants to protect their children, to give a better future and to rise them well. Unfortunately, some of the parents misuse their protection. I would like to give an example from the revenge tragedy Titus Andronicus related to a homicide which happened a few months ago in Italy (Ostia).
In Titus Andronicus we face many murders. Firstly, Titus decides to kill Tamora’s eldest son Alarbus “I give him you, the noblest that survives, / The eldest son of this distressed queen.”[footnoteRef:3], and later on in the play Lucius adds “See, lord and father, how we have perform’d Our roman Rites. Alarbus’ limbs are lopp’d, / And entrails feed the sacrificing fire,”[footnoteRef:4], then he kills his son Mutius “What! Villain boy; Barr’st me my way in Rome? [Stabs Mutius.”[footnoteRef:5] as he will not endure opposition especially by one of his sons. Once his madness and power cannot be blocked, he goes on with other murders, as the following lines demonstrates Titus kills Demetrius and Chiron (Tamora’s son) “For worse than Philomel you us’d my daughter, / And worse than Progne I will be reveng’d. / And now prepare your throats. / Lavinia, come, [He cuts their throats”[footnoteRef:6]. Throughout the play, Titus starts revenge to take his children revenge, and not only. Besides, through this volition he demonstrated the preciousness and value of his children. But if the children were so important for Titus then why does he kill Lavinia -which is from my point of view one of the most powerful character in the play? The following passage “Die, die, Lavinia, and thy shame with thee / And with thy shame thy father’s sorrow die! [Kills Lavinia”[footnoteRef:7] perfectly valorizes Titus’ parental authority. Nonetheless, by killing two of his sons, we understand his acting as a protection of the Andronicus family’s honor and that he should particularly protect his reputation. In the end, Titus kills Tamora after she unknowingly ate her sons, as these lines emphasizes “Eating the flesh that she herself hath bred. / ’Tis true, ‘Tis true; witness my knife’s sharp point. [Kills Tamora.”[footnoteRef:8] [3: Act I, Scene I, lines 102-103, page 9] [4: Act I, Scene I, lines 143-144, page 11] [5: Act I, Scene I, lines 290-291, page 18] [6: Act V, Scene II, lines 195-197, page 119] [7: Act V, Scene III, lines 46-47, page 122] [8: Act V, Scene III, lines 62-63, page 122]
Considerably, Titus is the character mostly related to the values of ancient Rome, in which fathers significantly had power of life and death over their children. The play’s revenge raises inevitable questions about the law. Here is presented a world in which people make their own laws.
Now, I would like to analyze the homicide which happened a few months ago in Ostia (Italy), which from my point of view can be compared to the Revenge Tragedy Titus Andronicus. What happened is, that one day a fifteen-year-old girl was walking on the street and two north African boys started to insult her. Afterwards, the girl came home, recounted the occurred to her father and asked him for help. At that point, her father went with an accomplice to the place where the two boys were and he stabbed both, because they harassed his daughter. One of them, 19-year-old died immediately from serious injury, and the second one died at the hospital after a delicate surgery.[footnoteRef:9] As Titus, the father of the girl is not a simply man: he is a person with a criminal record and besides he is the son of one of the affiliate from criminal organization in Ostia known as “Clan Spada”. [9: Mirko Polisano, Ostia, rissa per la figlia di un affiliato al clan Spada: ucciso un 19enne, Wednesday 29 of May 2019,
https://www.ilmattino.it/primopiano/cronaca/accoltellamento_ostia_stazione_arresti_ultime_notizie-4523703.html, [translated from Italian to English, personal translation], accessed on 18 of July 2019]
I would like to point out, that these murders, acts of revenge and madness still happen. Throughout the history the sense of paternity has never changed and personally I think that will never change. As we can see both Titus and the father of this girl wanted in some way to protect their children, but at the same time they destroyed the life of their own children. The power of emotions such as fury, anger and the fact that they could not control themselves led them to commit dreadful and unjustifiable things.
These acts of atrocious violence which Shakespeare included in his play were by many criticized, but what is the most terrible is that these horrible things still occur in present-day. Although we live in 21first century practically nothing changed. Nowadays we live in a very developed world, nevertheless sometimes it seems that human beings get even worse. In his play, Shakespeare highlighted the fact that we are all role-players and by presenting image of Revenge as a character’s technique rather than a reality outside the action, he emphasizes the fact that we are all humans and the revenge is tempting and seductive, because is not a divine will, but an effect of our loss, grief and suffering. What happened to the father of the girl is that he couldn’t accept the idea that someone permitted to address to his daughter offensive phrases, and he took revenge. He committed a terrible thing which transformed him in a monster.
The parents have a decisive role in the life of their children and many times take decisions instead of them. Now, I would like to focus on another problem which we are facing nowadays and linked to what Shakespeare has also written about: arranged marriage and forbidden love.
In Romeo and Juliet Shakespeare highlights the main theme which is Individual versus Society[footnoteRef:10] and Family. In the tragedy Paris tells Lord Capulet and Lady Capulet that he wants to marry his daughter “Commend me to your daughter”[footnoteRef:11]. As we can see from the following lines Lord Capulet agrees contributes to this “Sir Paris, I will make a desperate tender / Of my child’s love. I think she will [be] ruled / In all respects by me […]”[footnoteRef:12]. Lord Capulet sees Paris as a perfect husband for his daughter, and throughout the tragedy we see him as an authoritarian father. Moreover, he also represents the perfect image of a man who rules. Lord Capulet tries to force Juliet to marry Paris, and he shows her the consequences in case she will not agree as the following passages emphasizes: “But, an you will not wed, I’ll pardon you! / Graze where you will, you shall not house with me”[footnoteRef:13] and “An you be not, hang, beg, starve, die in the streets, […] Trust to ‘t; bethink you. I’ll not be forsworn.”[footnoteRef:14] This is a typical example of arranged marriage. Juliet should obey to her father and she is supposed to marry Paris because otherwise her father will not consider her anymore as a daughter. Considering this, it can be said that Juliet hasn’t the freedom of choice, and she cannot choose alone her husband, so she should keep her relationship with Romeo in secret. [10: Romeo and Juliet Themes, Literary Devices, https://literarydevices.net/romeo-and-juliet-themes/, accessed on 20 of July, 2019] [11: William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, Edited by Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine, Act III, Scene IV, lines 9-10, page 154] [12: Act III, Scene IV, lines 13-15, pages 154-155] [13: Act III, Scene V, lines 199-200, pages 169] [14: Act III, Scene V, lines 204-207, page 171]
Although Romeo and Juliet love each other very much, their families are arch enemies and their love automatically becomes “forbidden”. This conflict doesn’t allow them to be together and they have to face a tragical end.
Romeo and Juliet show the power of their love from the beginning and that nothing could change their minds. In this tragedy the sentiment of love is very strong, but unfortunately is followed by death. Suicide is the perfect solution, because if they cannot be together in the real life at least they will continue to love each other after they die, and no one will be able to impede them to be together.
According to an Italian website entitled “Just married, by force and not by love”[footnoteRef:15], many international organizations such as ActionAid and Trama di Terre started the initiative to fight against the arranged marriage. The arranged marriage: a common practice which many immigrants such as Pakistani, Maghrebi and Albanian have also maintained in Europe. During a press conference in Italy it was presented the project “If I marry someone then only for love”[footnoteRef:16] and the delegates has declared that they will not allow that someone in Italy will be forced to marry someone against its will. There are many cases, one occurred in Modena, Novi (Italy) where a wife was killed by her husband because she tried to defend her daughter, as she opposed to an imposed marriage. Another tragical case happened in 2006 in Carpi (Italy), where an Indian woman committed suicide, whereas in more than eight cases have been lost the traces of the victims. [15: Famiglia Cristiana, 29 of April 2012, http://www.famigliacristiana.it/articolo/per-forza-non-per-amore.aspx, accessed on 25 of July 2019, personal translation from Italian to english] [16: The original title is ”Se mi sposo è solo per amore”, Reuter Agency]
In Italy alone the practice of women and children being forced into marriage these days involves that many young women and children have to endure physical and psychological violence, segregation, rape, psychological imbalances, sequestration and forced repatriation in the countries of origin. Increasingly, the victims come to a tragical end.
This project aims to oppose the phenomenon of arranged marriages across the creation of a national and international network between professionals and organisations who works in this area in order to share the best practices, and to create new methodologies through formative training targeted at private and public operators.
This phenomenon not only happens in Italy but throughout the world and history, as National Center for Biotechnology Information states [footnoteRef:17] and frequently forced marriages lead to suicide: [17: Saxby Pridmore, Garry Walter, Suicide and Forced Marriage, 2013, The Malaysian Journal of Medical Sciences, March 2013: 47-51, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3743999/, accessed on 15 of July 2019]
Eight cases (two from ancient texts and six from the last hundred years) were located and are presented. Many reports, including one from Yakin Erturk, Special Rapporteur of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (13), make clear that forced marriage not infrequently leads to suicide, but do not provide individual examples (Walter, 2013).
Saxby Prior and Garry Walter discuss in their article the case of Mitu Molla and Soud Sheikh (They died in 2012), which from my point of view is similar with the Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet[footnoteRef:18]. In both tragedies the causes are “forbidden love” and “forced/arranged marriage”. The impossibility to be together and the fact that the couples couldn’t decide for themselves drove them into the act of suicide. The parental influence from Juliet’s family and Moll’s mother had negative consequences over their lives, because instead of consulting with them they just decide for them without thinking about their wishes and desires. [18: S. Pridmore, G. Walter: “Mitu Molla (16 years) and Soud Sheikh (17 years) lived in neighboring villages in Gopalganj district, Bangladesh. After their affair became public, Molla’s mother took her to a town 200k from her village and married her against her will, to a man twice her age. At this point, Sheikh was at high school in the capital Dhaka.
Two months later, when Molla went home to visit her parents, Sheikh left Dhaka and met her in her village. On Valentine’s Day, they tied their hands together and jumped to their deaths from a mobile phone tower. Sheikh had earlier telephoned his brother to say that they planned to die on Valentine’s Day “to stay together forever”]
As a final part of this essay I would like to analyze Ben Jonson’s poem “On my first son”[footnoteRef:19] in relation to the immigrant children which die every day, and in particular to the death of Alan Kurdi[footnoteRef:20]. [19: Agnieszka Romanowska, Power Point: Seminar 5, slide 49] [20: Death of Alan Kurdi, last updated July 20, 2019, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Alan_Kurdi, accessed on July 25, 2019 ]
In the opening lines of his poem, Ben Jonson highlights the source of his mourning: the death of his son, and the torment that he could see him growing up only for seven years as the following line underlines “Seven years tho’ wert lent to me, and I thee pay,”[footnoteRef:21]. When you lose a child, you lose a part of you, and this grief and sorrow will eat your insides up. Jonson through this poem tries to struggle against his sadness and to get used to his loss, and because when someone dies this is not under our control, he writes this poem thinking that somehow this will give him a relief. Personally, I think that the author in the line two “My sin was too much hope of thee, lov’d boy.”[footnoteRef:22], emphasizes the fact that he sinned, and the boy’s death might be as a sacrifice. He loved his son very much as we deduce from previous line, and he pays by suffering “and I thee pay”[footnoteRef:23]. [21: Ben Jonson, On my first son, line 3] [22: Ben Jonson, On my first son, line 2] [23: Ben Jonson, On my first son, line 3]
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