Containment attempts, quarantine orders, and dubious treatments. Causes and Physical Consequences of Plague The Plague is an infection caused by the bacillus Yersinia pestis , though … Kathryn Harkup's new book explores death in Shakespeare's plays and world. Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 154. Shakespeare was entwined with the plague from his very beginning, as an outbreak killed a quarter of Stratford-upon-Avon's population in the year of his birth. The famous game of chesse-play. First: we don't all have the luxury to write like Shakespeare. This occurred three times during Shakespeare's life in 1593, 1603 and 1608. They probably read poetry, too, thanks to an amazing 16th-century technological gadget called books, the market and demand for which, it seems to me, may well have been increased by the lack of and desire for them during the plague isolation of 1592-3.Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, … Death by plague was excruciating to suffer and ghastly to see. While many of us … 1640.Folger Shakespeare Library. All three times many fellow actors and acquaintances of Shakrespeare died. I also describe the effect plague had on Shakespeare’s working life and where references to plague manifested in some of his poems and plays. Between 1348 and the early years of the 18 th century, successive waves of the plague rolled across Europe, killing millions of people and affecting every aspect of life. STC 21774. The so-called "good Quarto" of "Hamlet," which most of us are taught in high school, first appeared in 1604, another year of plague closures that marked a major leap forward in Shakespeare's style. 3. Arthur Saul. Plague, pox and pandemic are frequently referenced in Shakespeare’s work. Adapting Shakespeare’s play for the musical West Side Story, the playwright Arthur Laurents thought that a plague was too implausible a contrivance to bring about tragedy. By Paul Yachnin | - Shakespeare lived his life in plague-time. He was born in April 1564, a few months before an outbreak of bubonic plague swept across England and killed a quarter of the people in his hometown. The line provides one of William Shakespeare’s few tangential references to the plague in his plays — in spite of the fact that those surges began in … What was a plague outbreak like in Shakespeare's day, and how did this affect the way he wrote about the plague in his plays? The Black Plague also affected Shakespeare financially. The recurrence of the plague throughout the 16th and 17th centuries had a massive impact not only on the Bard's life and work but also the history of drama in this country. Despite the plague’s enormous toll on early modern English life, Shakespeare’s plays … December 13, 2020 An article by Vanessa Thorpe in the Guardian examines how repeated outbreaks of the plague might have affected the way William Shakespeare wrote some of his plays, including how he crafted their endings. Every time there was an outbreak, the theaters where Shakespeare acted and his plays were performed closed. What else do we learn when looking at Shakespeare's plague poems and plays today?