How many main characters die in all Shakespeare's plays?

Answer 1

It depends what you mean by "main characters". In Hamlet, this could mean one person (Hamlet, the title role) or six (Hamlet, his mother, his uncle, his girlfriend Ophelia, her father and her brother).

If we restrict it to characters whose names are in the titles of the plays, the title character(s) in all of the tragedies die (Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, Coriolanus, Timon of Athens and Titus Andronicus). Hamlet and Macbeth die in swordfights; Othello, Romeo, Juliet, Antony, Cleopatra, and Timon commit suicide, Caesar and Coriolanus are murdered, Titus dies in a brawl and Lear dies of old age and a broken heart. That's twelve.

In the histories, most of the kings die to make way for the next king. King John is poisoned; Richard II is murdered; Henry IV (in Henry IV Part II) dies of a debilitating disease; Henry VI (In Henry VI Part III) is murdered; Richard III dies in battle screaming for a horse. That's five more.

OK, that's seventeen title characters in the twenty plays (the histories and tragedies) where people tend to die. Of course it's only the tip of the iceberg, since we have decided we will not count Brutus and Banquo and Hotspur and Tamora and the Duke of York and Edmund and Mercutio and Edward IV and so on and on and on.