SHAKESPEARE’S SWEET AND NOT-SO-SWEET NOTHINGS: HENOSES AND/OR KENOSES?
SHAKESPEARE’S SWEET AND NOT-SO-SWEET NOTHINGS: HENOSES AND/OR KENOSES?

Summary/Abstract: This paper will attempt to show how, through an ambiguity of the association of Eros and Thanatos, as either the negative terrible fatality of sex or the positive orgasmic eroticism of death, Shakespeare seems to be deconstructing the usual Neoplatonic dichotomy of pure spirit and prime matter. Both the erotic ascent to henosis and the carnal descent to prime matter lead, ultimately, to nothingness and death. Death is inescapably the end of all desire in both meanings of the phrase: either as the inevitable end of all carnal desire or the desired end itself.

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