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Shakespeare & Beyond

Sonnets & Chill: What did Shakespeare’s audiences do when the theaters were closed?

One person reading a letter to another person with a dog
One person reading a letter to another person with a dog

One person reading a letter to another person with a dog

Speed reading Launce’s letter : [two gentlemen of Verona, act III, scene 1] [graphic] / J. Gilbert ; W. Thomas, sc. 19th century. Folger Shakespeare Library. ART File S528t7 no.10 (size XS)

All right, enough. We’ve all heard how super-productive William Shakespeare was when the plague shut down his theaters: He wrote his epic poems Venus and Adonis and Lucrece during the epidemic of 1592-1593, and “all of [his] Jacobean plays, from Measure For Measure through Coriolanus” during or not long after later outbreaks.

But surely the real question is: What did Shakespeare’s audiences do while the theaters were closed?

Comments

Finally someone mentioned the narrative poems!

Leonardo — May 5, 2020