A History of Epidemics in Britain, Volume 1 (of 2) / From A.D. 664 to the Extinction of Plague

by Charles Creighton

Annual Plague in London after 1603.

Before following the plague of 1603 into the provinces, it will be convenient to give the history of the infection in London for the next few years. There was little plague in 1604 and not much in 1605; but in 1606 the infection again became active, and continued at its endemic level for some five or six years. The following table, from the weekly bills of mortality, shows how regularly the infection came to a height in the autumn year after year, as if it had been a product of the soil[938]:

Table, from the Weekly Bills of Mortality (London), showing the
increase of Plague in Autumn, for five successive years.

		1606		1607		1608		1609		1610
Total deaths from plague in the year		2124		2352		2262		4240		1803
Weekly deaths in
July
		25		27		16		60		38
		33		33		26		57		45
		50		37		24		58		45
		46		51		50		91		40
		66		43
August
		67		77		45		100		47
		75		69		70		126		50
		85		76		79		101		73
		85		71		73		150		60
								177		99
Sept.
		116		105		123		141		96
		105		121		136		158		89
		92		114		107		210		86
		87		177		143		144		72
						147
Oct.
		141		150		103		154		63
		106		113		131		177		79
		117		110		124		131		59
		109		82		102		55		49
		101		68
Nov.
		68		66		109		84		58
		41		55		72		69		40
		78		46		69		67		22
		72		21		70		59		42
								51		39

In Dekker’s Seven Deadly Sins of London, published in 1606, he returns to the subject of the plague. He says that it still slays hundreds in a week, a statement which will be seen to be an exaggeration by reference to the Table. But, on another point, Dekker would have been correctly informed. The playhouses, he says, stand empty, with the doors locked and the flag taken down. The policy of forbidding plays during plague-time, or when the infection threatened to be active, was advocated by the Puritan clergy as early as 1577, and had been in force in the plague of 1563. “Plaies are banished for a time out of London,” says Harrison in 1572, “lest the resort unto them should ingender a plague, or rather disperse it being already begonne[939].” In a sermon preached at Paul’s Cross on Sunday, November 3, 1577, in the time of the plague, by T. W., on the text “Woe to that abominable, filthy and cruel city,” the preacher exclaims, “Behold the sumptuous theatre-houses, a continual monument of London’s prodigal folly! But I understand they are now forbidden because of the plague[940].” By the year 1581 the lord mayor had become a zealous supporter of the Puritan demands for the stopping of plays in the City and in the Liberties[941]. In July (?), 1603, James I. granted a licence to players for performances in the Curtain and Boar’s Head theatres, “as soon as the plague decreases to 30 deaths per week in London[942].” In the beginning of winter, 1607, on the subsidence of plague, the theatres were permitted to be opened, so that the “poor players,” might make a living; but as the plague revived in 1608, and became still more serious in 1609, it is tolerably certain that the theatres were shut during the whole summer and autumn of those years.

Those years, from 1606 to 1610, when the actor’s and dramatist’s profession was seriously hindered by the fear of plague, correspond to a blank period in the personal history of Shakespeare. It has been conjectured that he retired from London for a time, before his final retirement to Stratford-on-Avon. At all events his occupation, if not gone, was greatly interfered with in every one of the years from 1603 to 1610, excepting perhaps the years 1604 and 1605, which would hardly have come within the limit of 30 plague-deaths in a week. In 1604 his name is joined in a patent with that of Laurence Fletcher for the Globe theatre. Plays continued to be acted in the plague-years, before the court or in the houses of the nobility; but the applause of the pit and gallery would have been wanting. Macbeth, which is supposed, from its subject, to have been written to celebrate the accession of the king of Scots to the English crown was not put on the stage until 1610 or 1611. King Lear was given before the court at Christmas 1606. One of the quartos of Troilus and Cressida, published in 1609, with the author’s name, has a note to say that “this new piece had never been staled with the stage, never clapper-clawed by the palms of the vulgar;” but another edition of the same year (1609) omitting the preface, bears on the title that the piece had been played at the Globe theatre by the king’s servants, from which it is inferred that it had been acted in the interval between the two editions of 1609. After 1610, and continuously so until 1625, there was no plague in London to interfere with the business of actors and play-writers, just as the period from 1594 to 1603 was a clear interval. The earlier time of freedom was the great period of the drama in London. The disastrous plague of 1603 and the successive unhealthy summers and autumns until 1610 seriously interfered with it, and seriously interfered, also, with Shakespeare’s active share in the production of plays on the stage. Whatever writing he did after that would have been with a less certain prospect of representation, or, one may say, was not done under the same direct influence of playhouse atmosphere which inspired his earlier comedies and historical plays.