Episode 54: Rebecca Totaro Talks About Plague

Whether it’s Lear calling Goneril a plague-sore, or Mercutio cursing the families in Romeo and Juliet by saying “A plague on both your houses!” Shakespeare’s works testify to the fact that rampant plague was a very real, and very prevalent, part of Shakespeare's daily life. But what were the concerns about plague that Shakespeare was considering when he wrote these works that refer to the disease? For Shakespeare and his contemporaries, there was a real plague culture in England that impacted the entertainment industry including theater, literature, and even music. Here today to help us unpack what we can learn about plague for Shakespeare’s lifetime is an expert on this subject, Rebecca Totaro professor of literature and culture of early modern England at Florida Gulf Coast University and author of several books on plague including The Plague in Print.  joins us today to discuss her book, Plague in Print, a work that examines plague literature, and what surviving documents written about the experiences of living with plague can teach about the life of William Shakespeare.