UW THEATRE AND PERFORMANCE
Death Rituals & Mourning
A Look at How Grief Shaped Twelfth Night or What You Will
"And water once a day her chamber round
With eye-offending brine—all this to season
A brother’s dead love, which she would keep fresh
And lasting in her sad remembrance"
Jade Yuan
An examination of how mourning traditions, religious beliefs during the Elizabethan era, and Shakespeare’s experience with grief are presented in Twelfth Night, or What You Will.
Death, grief, and mourning- the trifecta of sorrow that we are all too familiar with when it comes to Shakespeare’s later plays. Whether we are examining Othello (1604), King Lear (1605), MacBeth (1606), Coriolanus (1608), or even Pericles (1608), Shakespeare’s work, post-1600 is often imbued with dark reflections on human existence, and Twelfth Night or What You Will is no exception.
In order to fully understand Twelfth Night, or What You Will, it is important to first examine the context in which the play was written. At the time Shakespeare was commissioned to write this play, he had been grieving the death of his father, who had passed shortly before in 1601, and his son only a few years before that. Though we cannot fully understand the mind of a man who has long been dead, as we read through the play, we can see certain parallels between the process of grieving (death rituals) and certain aspects of Shakespeare’s life (such as Olivia losing her twin brother at the start of the play, mirroring the death of Shakespeare’s son Hamnet, whose twin sister was Judith).
We see this demonstrated through Olivia’s intense (and excessive) process of grieving; explained in the quote below, where Duke Orsino’s attendant Valentine breaks the news to the Duke that, instead of mourning the customary few months, Olivia has intended to mourn for seven years.
“ So please my lord, I might not be admitted,
But from her handmaid do return this answer:
The element itself, till seven years’ heat,
Shall not behold her face at ample view,
But like a cloistress she will veilèd walk,
And water once a day her chamber round
With eye-offending brine—all this to season
A brother’s dead love, which she would keep fresh
And lasting in her sad remembrance”(Shakespeare, 1.1.25–33).
Furthermore, the influence of the Christian church was heavily present during this time, with many other grieving rituals stemming from Christian faith. From the custom of putting a penny under the tongue of a deceased person, as a toll to St. Peter, or linen strips folded and draped like a cross over the coffin, the importance of these rituals and a good burial in the Elizabethan era cannot be overstated, especially since death was so common. Mourners would take whatever measures they could afford to ensure the departed would reach heaven. This meant the more money you had, the grander the funeral (and the more you could ensure your loved one made it to the pearly gates).
With all that has been said and pondered, there is still a beauty in not just how Shakespeare approached death, but in how many in the Elizabethan era did. To them, it was not the end, and for many it meant having the hope that their loved ones were in a better place. Thus, I will leave you with a quote featuring that hope and sentiment from Feste to Olivia:
FOOL: Good madonna, why mourn’st thou?
OLIVIA: Good Fool, for my brother’s death.
FOOL: I think his soul is in hell, Madonna.
OLIVIA: I know his soul is in heaven, Fool.
FOOL: The more fool, Madonna, to mourn for your brother’s soul, being in
heaven. Take away the fool, gentlemen (Shakespeare, 1.5.68–75).
Yet still, death during the time of Shakespeare was rampant, with the life expectancy ranging around 20 to 35 years (with the upper-class being the exception) and, unlike nowadays, funerals, grief, and mourning were a much larger spectacle, with the expectation for mourners to spend months, and even up to a year, in a dedicated grieving period. During this time, mourners would wear all black (even the soles of their shoes!), and it was customary for women to wear mourning veils to show their grief and withdrawal from public life. Primarily, a veil was a way of communicating that while a woman was grieving, she would not be open to the advances of any new suitors.
“Funerals and Mourning.” Life in Elizabethan England: A Compendium of Common Knowledge. March 10, 2010. https://elizabethan.org/compendium/83.html.
Lanigan, Dennis T. “Viola and Olivia by Walter Deverell.” The Victorian Web. Last modified April 23, 2025. https://www.victorianweb.org/painting/deverell/drawings/1.html.
Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. “Hamnet Shakespeare.” Accessed October 14, 2026. https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/shakespedia/william-shakespeare/willi am-shakespeares-family/hamnet-shakespeare/.
Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. “How Did Shakespeare Die?” Episode 9 of Let’s Talk Shakespeare.
Podcast, narrated by Jennifer Reid. Accessed October 14, 2026. https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/podcasts/lets-talk-shakespeare/how-di d-shakespeare-die/.
Shakespeare, William. Twelfth Night. Edited by Barbara Mowat and Paul Werstine. Folger Shakespeare Library. Last modified July 31, 2015. https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/twelfth-night/read/.
Thorpe, Vanessa. “Alas, Poor Hamnet: Spotlight Falls on Shakespeare’s Tragic Only Son.” The Guardian, February 22, 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2020/feb/22/alas-poor-hamnet-shakespeare-tragic-son-fi nally-steps-into-the-spotlight.