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Of plagues and pandemics
FACULTY OPINION PIECE Issue no. 4 | 2020
FACULTY OPINION PIECE

BY DR. KOK SU MEI
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT

In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the young couple’s
journey to a happy ending is brutally disrupted by a
suspected outbreak of plague. Juliet has taken a potion
to make her appear dead for forty-two hours: just long
enough for her family to leave her in the tomb and for
Romeo to arrive and take her away. But the messenger
sent to tell Romeo of this plan is unexpectedly placed in
quarantine, when he and his companion are suspected
of having been in contact with an infected person. He
reports:

city-dwellers to steer clear of infected areas. Public
the searchers of the town
the searchers of the town
gatherings were banned and recreational spots, such
Suspecting that we were both in a house
Suspecting that we were both in a house
as theatres, were shut. The spread of the disease was
where the infectious pestilence did reign
where the infectious pestilence did reign
noticeably worse in densely-populated areas, and
Seal’d up the doors and would not let us forth.
Seal’d up the doors and would not let us forth.
authorities tried in vain to stem the tide of people
Never receiving the message, Romeo hears from his leaving the city, fearing that these brought the disease
servant that Juliet has died and kills himself at her with them to uninfected rural areas.
grave. She wakes up, finds his dead body beside her,
and takes her own life. And, as the messenger in Romeo and Juliet reminds us,
quarantine was the primary method for halting the
This is the only time in all of Shakespeare’s chain of infection. Once a person was suspected of
approximately forty plays that the plague has a direct having contracted the disease, members of their
impact on characters’ lives. Typically, scholars gloss
household and other persons who had been in
over it as the odd exception to the general rule that
physical proximity to them, were confined to their
Shakespeare never wrote about the multiple outbreaks
residence. Guards were posted outside these buildings
of plague which occurred in England in his lifetime.
to ensure that no one entered or exited. Whereas
However, encountering our own “infectious pestilence”
newspapers in December 2020 gleefully reported that
in the form of Covid-19, this brief moment merits
a William Shakespeare from Stratford is the second
lingering over for the glimpse it gives us into the social
person in Britain be vaccinated against the coronavirus,
effects of a disease.
the William Shakespeare behind Romeo and Juliet
never had the option of vaccination.
Months after Shakespeare was born, the bubonic
plague - named after the swollen lymph nodes or
As an academic working in the arts and humanities, this
“buboes” endured by patients - killed about a fifth of
has been a year of soul-searching. When the whole
the residents in his hometown of Stratford. Subsequent world is on pause till a vaccination is approved, what
outbreaks in 1592, 1603, 1604, and 1608, would
each
do my discoveries about sixteenth-century drama
kill a quarter of the population of London, the city
amount to? Why do I work into the night analysing
in
which Shakespeare carved out his career as a recordings of theatrical performances when others at
playwright. Accounts of these outbreaks sound oddly that very moment are channelling their energies into
familiar. Authorities provided regular updates on the tending the ill? But at the heart of these questions is
number of deaths and their locations, allowing wary more fundamental one, which is far from new. It

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