“Just a reminder that when Shakespeare was quarantined because of the plague, he wrote King Lear.” This tidbit, shared in a viral tweet from country music star Rosanne Cash, has become something of a popular meme floating around the interwebs over the past week of collective quarantine. It’s one of those cute factoids that is ready-made to go viral, something just too good to be fact-checked.
But, partially from boredom and partially because I’m a pedant, I fact-checked it anyway. And it turns out it’s true! Potentially. Well, it’s definitely possible.
The bubonic plague was rampant in early 17th-century Europe. During major outbreaks, certain businesses and mass gatherings were naturally banned by state authorities, not unlike the coronavirus circumstances we find ourselves in. Indeed, according to The Globe Guide to Shakespeare author Andrew Dickson, between 1603 and 1613, the Globe theater and other playhouses in London “were shut for an astonishing total of 78 months — more than 60% of the time.”
It was during these years that Shakespeare wrote most of his plays, including the aforementioned King Lear. The first recorded performance of Lear took place on Boxing Day 1606 (Dec. 26 for us Yanks), in front of King James I. And a major outbreak of plague had hit London earlier that summer, closing the Globe and other theaters. Thus, it is entirely possible that The Bard spent his time shuttered offstage composing one of his greatest works. And not just Lear: Macbeth was first performed that same year (or the following), and the King’s Men first debuted Antony and Cleopatra in 1607 (though some scholars argue it could have been written several years earlier).
The pandemic affected Shakespeare personally. A shareholder in two theaters, including the Globe, and a company of players, playhouse closures had serious financial and professional repercussions. At least a dozen of Shakespeare’s parish neighbors died from plague in 1606, including his landlady, Marie Mountjoy.
Little wonder, then, that sickness pervades King Lear — in the words of the dolorous monarch, like “plagues that hang in this pendulous air.” And like Lear, the stench of death is shot through “The Scottish Play,” with language that would be all the more real to a plague-weary audience. “The dead man’s knell / Is there scarce asked for who, and good men’s lives / Expire before the flowers in their caps / Dying or ere they sicken.”
It’s no surprise that in the face of Black Death, Shakespeare turned to tragedy. But years earlier, a younger Shakespeare weathered a prior outbreak by turning to poetry. With playhouses closed in the summer of 1592, he composed both Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece “from quarantine,” if you will.
As for us, well, we have Twitter.
