Even less known is the effect that the quarantine had on the bard’s writing of the play. According to The Guardian there were many plague years while Shakespeare was writing his plays, and historian James Shapiro points out that Lear was first acted in private for King James I in the middle of a plague outbreak in 1606 that closed London’s theatres. But the real story may be more complicated. Legend has it that Shakespeare wrote King Lear while in quarantine from the plague. Tana Wojczuk is the author of Lady Romeo: The Radical and Revolutionary Life of Charlotte Cushman, America’s First Celebrity, out now on Avid Reader Press.
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