Euthanasia, today it means to “allow” someone to die, either at the hands of someone else, or at his or her own hands. Actually, euthanasia is a Greek word meaning “good death” or “happy death”. Its intention surely was not suicide or assisted suicide. How has the meaning of...

Shakespeare’s comprehensive analysis of all aspects of death, physical, spiritual and philosophical is very much in keeping with the mood of the time. In Hamlet’s opening lines of his first soliloquy in Act I Scene 2 death is clearly on his mind. “O that this too too sullied flesh would me...