Author : William Shakespeare,E. Thomalen
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 124 pages
File Size : 43,5 Mb
Release : 2021-02-09
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 9798706757076
Shakespeare in the Time of Plague by William Shakespeare,E. Thomalen Pdf
Shakespeare in the Time of Plague takes place in England mostly during a period of frequent episodes of bubonic plague, which greatly affected London for long stretches of time. No one was immune to the misery and death the plague produced, particularly in the poorer parishes of London. Daniel Defoe described the great plague in London of 1665 from survivor accounts, but much of the response to that plague was based upon laws and regulations laid down by King James I during the plague visitation of 1603-1609. It was, also, a time when Shakespeare wrote some of his greatest plays, including Hamlet, Macbeth and Lear. Losses animate the lead characters in those plays in complicated ways, e.g.: Hamlet loses his father and becomes obsessed with it, and cannot move on, until he finally is joined with his father in death. Macbeth's ambition leads him to destroy all those who have helped him and blinds him to his own fatal end. Lear rages on when his children abandon him. Shakespeare may have drawn upon responses he observed in reactions to the conditions of the plague around him.