Happy birthday William Shakespeare, born #OTD in 1564! Despite being 456 years old, the Bard is still as relevant as ever because, like us, he too lived through an age of epidemics. #ShakespearesBirthday 
Outbreaks of plague hit London repeatedly during Shakespeare’s professional life from between 1592-1609. Whenever more than 30 deaths were reported in a week, the London authorities closed the playhouses. #ShakespearesBirthday
In 1605-6, London was in lockdown, and Shakespeare’s acting company, the King’s Men, had to leave London and take to the road as an itinerant troupe, performing in rural, plague-free towns. #ShakespearesBirthday
Without the distractions of the Capital it also proved to be one of Shakespeare’s most creative periods as a playwright. He wrote three of his most famous tragedies: King Lear, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra in that year. #ShakespearesBirthday
Shakespeare never wrote a play directly about the plague, but there are multiple references to infectious disease throughout his works. In King Lear, written during the 1606 outbreak, the viciousness of Lear’s curse on his daughter Goneril must have been especially powerful.
‘Romeo and Juliet’ has the most famous line about plague, in Mercutio’s dying curse: “A plague o' both your houses”. A line that signals the role of the plague in the tragedy that unfolds. #ShakespearesBirthday
When Juliet takes a sleeping draught to fake her own death, her priest sends a letter to Romeo which is never delivered as the messenger is quarantined in a town with suspected plague. Thus Romeo, believing that his Juliet is dead, kills himself over her seemingly lifeless body.
In 1602 Shakespeare's audiences were treated with a bit of light relief in the comedy Twelfth Night. When Olivia first meets Cesario (Viola), she is taken aback by her attraction for him and likens falling in love with catching the plague. #ShakespearesBirthday
