Similarities Between Shakespeare And The Bubonic Plague

Shakespeare and the Bubonic Plague The bubonic plague, also known as the black death, was an epidemic that struck during the Elizabethan age and spread throughout Europe, killing millions. The plague started in the early 1300s in China, mainly affecting rodents, but it didn’t take long for it to be spread to humans (“Shakspeare and the Bubonic Plague”). It spread to Europe by Italian merchants, and it soon developed the nickname, the black death, due to the grotesque black spots that appeared on the body (“Shakespeare’s restless world”). The plague seemed to disappear during the winter due to the fact that the fleas that spread the disease couldn’t survive the winter. However, by early spring the disease came back and continued to spread and …show more content…
The bubonic plague, also known as black death, was a disease spread to humans from fleas that had been infected by rats. After only five years, 25 million people died from the bubonic plague (“The Middle Ages”). The bubonic plague had various noticeable symptoms like high fever, mental disorientation, vomiting, muscular pain, drowsiness, bleeding in the lungs, and painful swelling in Lymph Nodes (“Bubonic Plague”). During the Elizabethan era there wasn’t a cure that was guaranteed to work. One method used by many people who had contracted the disease was to make small incisions in their body to release blood in the hope that it would flush the system of the disease(The Black Death”). However this method didn’t always work, and most people with the bubonic plague died within a week. Although most people had the disease before experiencing any symptoms, they tried various methods to prevent catching the bubonic plague. People avoided each other on the streets and some refused to leave their houses in fear of catching the disease outside (“Shakespeare’s Restless …show more content…
Shakespeare was one of eight children,and of the eight children, died due to the bubonic plague (“Bubonic Plague”). His sisters, Joan, Anne,and Margaret, were lost to the plague as young children. Joan was the oldest child and the first daughter in Shakespeare’s family, but she died two months after her birth and shakespeare never got to meet her. Margaret was born four years after Joan, but unfortunately also contracted the black death and died only one year after her birth. In September of 1571, John and Mary Shakespeare had another daughter named Anne, but Anne was also lost to the plague, and died at age eight. This was hard for Shakespeare, only 15 at the time, had to not only cope with the loss of another sibling, but also financial problems in his family. Shakespeare also lost his only son, Hamnet Shakespeare, when Hamnet was eleven years old, most likely because of the bubonic plague (“Black Death”). All of these people lost to the plague who were very important to Shakespeare, may have led to his extreme and irrational fear of contracting the bubonic