The Elizabethans were more stalwart than we are when it comes to fatal diseases. London was stricken with the bubonic plague repeatedly during Shakespeare’s time, specifically in 1563, 1578, 1582, 1592, and 1603. The first and the last of these each killed roughly one-fourth of London’s population.

And when the plague took a break, smallpox would be as likely to stalk the land, claiming no less a victim than Elizabeth herself when she was 29, leaving her with deep scars requiring that famous white makeup, and taking away with it her hair. Oh, and they didn’t have a cure for syphilis, which when uncured is a fatal disease.

Shakespeare naturally refers to these maladies in his plays, most famously in Romeo and Juliet, when Mercutio, mortally wounded because a love-besotted Romeo stepped between him and Tybalt during their duel, cries out:

“A plague on both your houses!”

But let’s get back to the pandemics. The bard gives us bleak but comic take on plagues in Measure for Measure, when Mistress Overdone, a madam in a house of ill repute, or in today’s parlance the business manager of a coven of sex workers, complains to the audience about the many headwinds her industry is experiencing (custom means revenue):

While the scene takes place in Vienna, the references are to life in Elizabethan era, and scholars have used this comment to try to date the play, or at least its first performance, reasoning that it would have had to have been staged when London was experiencing war, an epidemic involving fever, a crackdown involving hanging, and, of course, poverty. Many different years would qualify.

It’s a curious fact that in the face of this relentless series of highly fatal pandemics, London was able to fight off the Spanish Armada, elevate itself into a major maritime power, and still find time to create and celebrate some of the finest poetry and drama of the English language, extending beyond Shakespeare to encompass Spencer, Marlowe, Sidney, Ben Jonson, and Walter Raleigh, to name but a few.

It’s worth taking a moment to look at ourselves from  the bard’s eye view. We are facing a pandemic that we thought could take the lives of two million Americans, and we’re successfully reducing the death toll to around a tenth of that number. But even two million would be well below one percent of our nation, while the Elizabethans saw the equivalent of 80 million Americans die (1/4 of the U.S. population), twice, in the span of 40 years. And that’s just the record of one of their many maladies.

Time to count our blessings.

And as always, if you’d like to take a deeper but still quick and painless tour through one of Shakespeare’s plays, please leaf through the Two-Hour Tour titles to the right…

 

I write this blog because the classics, and Shakespeare chief among them, can keep us connected to the highest and best in Western culture, and because modern life can reveal richer meanings when it’s seen through a Shakespearean lens. Hope you enjoyed!