"Die to live"

various forms of empathetic wonder

pp. 41-52

in: Adam M. Cohen, Wonder in Shakespeare, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012

Abstract

Shakespeare employed the plot device of the raising of the undead or the apparently dead in his midcareer comedies as well as his late romances. As would be the case with the later plays, pseudoresurrection generated intense wonder among the stage characters and, by extension, the audience members. The raising of the apparently dead figures largely in Much Ado About Nothing. As in Romeo and Juliet, the apparent death in this play is a plot constructed by a well-meaning Friar to reunite star-crossed lovers. Ritual figures prominently in this pseudoresurrection plot, as the Friar instructs Leonato to adhere to all the "rites/That appertain unto a burial " (4.1.206–207). Fully cognizant of the fact that his plan is a 'strange course," (4.1.212), the Friar links pseudoresurrection rhetoric with eschatology in his simple directive to Hero: "Come, lady, die to live. This wedding day/Perhaps is but prolonged" (4.1.253-54). Because Christ was often figured as the bridegroom of the faithful Christian, this line linked the transvestite male actor playing Hero with the righteous Christian planning for his final reunion with Christ.