- All's Well That Ends Well
- Antony and Cleopatra
- As You Like It
- The Comedy of Errors
- Coriolanus
- Cymbeline
- Hamlet
- Henry IV, Part 1
- Henry IV, Part 2
- Henry V
- Henry VI, Part 1
- Henry VI, Part 2
- Henry VI, Part 3
- Henry VIII
- Julius Caesar
- King John
- King Lear
- Love's Labor's Lost
- A Lover's Complaint
- Macbeth
- Measure for Measure
- The Merchant of Venice
- The Merry Wives of Windsor
- A Midsummer Night's Dream
- Much Ado About Nothing
- Othello
- Pericles
- The Rape of Lucrece
- Richard II
- Richard III
- Romeo and Juliet
- Shakespeare's Sonnets
- The Taming of the Shrew
- The Tempest
- Timon of Athens
- Titus Andronicus
- Troilus and Cressida
- Twelfth Night
- The Two Gentlemen of Verona
- Venus and Adonis
- The Winter's Tale
As other characters argue throughout the play, Hecuba also makes the claim that the dead are luckier than the living; although dead, they no longer experience any suffering or sorrow. The living women are left to make sounds of “lamentation and sorrow,” shedding “tears on tears.” The dead, meanwhile, are left with no memory and no troubles. The plight of the living is then only amplified in contrast to the peaceful sleep of the dead—only women living in misery would wish for death.
Hecuba also uses language that unites Troy and its women when she remarks, “this city and your…