Public Hanging

The speech is from Anthony Burgess' short novel, "Nothing Like the Sun."  The art of the hangman was to hang his victim until almost dead, and then to extract his heart so efficiently that his victim's last conscious thought was the sight of his own traitorous heart.

For the many years that I trotted my show to high schools, it was always the most popular piece. I even staged it with a group of university, acting students once. It is so gruesome and real, so full of life and death, that it always works.

Many people believe that this actual triple-execution,
the result of jealousies, lies and political machinations,
inspired Shakespeare, just one year later, to produce
The Merchant of Venice.

This painting is of military executions. While it is not as bloody as the public executions, it depicts a horrifying, grim procedure in hanging so many, in such an orderly fashion, from one tree.

In Elizabethan times there were about 200 crimes for which one could be executed.