Was Shakespeare born after the plague?

Answer 1

Bubonic Plague and its later forms spread across Europe very quickly in the fourteenth century and killed a large percentage of the population. The disease returned every few years and killed more people, although fewer and fewer people died from it every time. It was nevertheless still a very serious business during the whole of Shakespeare's life and for some time afterwards. There was a notoriously bad outbreak in 1666, fifty years exactly after Shakespeare's death (which was not due to the plague, although the exact cause is unknown).

Answer 2

The plague was a disease, or a series of related diseases, which killed a lot of people over many centuries, starting in the 1300s and continuing into the 1700s. That's four hundred years. There were periodic outbreaks of the disease, which would last for a few months and then die down, only to surface again later in some other part of the country. So it makes no more sense to say "Was Shakespeare born during the plague?" than it would to say "Was Justin Bieber born during AIDS?"

As it happens, there was an outbreak of plague in Stratford at the time of Shakespeare's birth, but he didn't get the disease.

Answer 3

Absolutely. Shakespeare nearly died of it when he was a baby. Some of his siblings did die of it, apparently. Plague outbreaks also affected Shakespeare's career, since playhouses were closed in London to control the spread of infection. The closure due to the plague outbreak of 1593-4 was so prolonged that it put a number of playing companies out of business.

Answer 4

The plague. Specifically, bubonic plague, although by the sixteenth century it was mutating into its pneumonic form. Although plague outbreaks were common and they did cause a lot of deaths, it was not the horrific epidemic it had been in the fourteenth century when it was called the Black Death. It was sort of the AIDS of Shakespeare's day.

Answer 5

Bubonic plague hit Europe as an epidemic in the 1300s and continued to be a serious health problem for many centuries afterwards. Outbreaks of the disease would recur from time to time, some more serious than others. There was one in 1564 in Stratford, the year that Shakespeare was born. There was one in London in 1606, ten years before he died. None of the plague outbreaks in Shakespeare's day were anywhere near as serious as the Black Death of the 14th century or even of the plague outbreak in London in 1666, fifty years after Shakespeare's death.

Answer 6

Plague is the name of a disease, or rather a group of diseases. Shakespeare did not live in a plague any more than he lived in cancer or influenza or typhoid fever. At the time Shakespeare was around, plague (pneumonic rather than bubonic) became a problem from time to time. There was a nasty outbreak in Stratford when he was born which he survived. Both his sister Anne and his brother Edmund died of this disease: Anne in Stratford and Edmund in London.