The Plague

So I was talking about rot and disease in Hamlet and I started wondering about what sickness/death was like back in Elizabethan England. The plague was still around, after all—not the way it was during The Black Death, but there were outbreaks in England in as late as the sixteenth & seventeenth centuries. (However, from what I glean, exactly what the “plague” was is in debate, perhaps it was a number of things, etc.). Shakespeare was around the plague; it was a reality. At least twice during Shakespeare’s tenure as London’s the-shit playwright, outbreaks occurred, during which theaters were shut down for extended lengths of time; in 1593 something like 10,000 people died.

The plague. How fucking utterly grim. No cure, no one knew what caused it. Humours? Magic? Sin? “Miasma” (bad air)? The plague = oozing, fist-sized "buboes" that turned red, then black. Your house would be sealed. Death came in days. I really wonder what the average Elizabethan’s attitude towards death was, and how Shakespeare’s festering imagery played to those audiences. So much use of the word "rank." And "pestilent." Words rooted in the reality of the time.

...the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours (II.ii.302-304)

I used to work with a man who was HIV-positive. He had been since the eighties, but had never gotten sick. I remember him telling me about what his doctor had said--that there was a theory going around having to do with people who were descended from survivors of the Black Plague. Descendants may have inherited the same gene mutation that had allowed their ancestors to survive; this same mutation, the theory went, might have been what was allowing my co-worker to stay healthy.

The pics above = garb of the “plague doctor.” Robe, black-brimmed hat, gloves, long black overcoat; the beaked mask was filled with aromatic herbs/spices/stuff, presumably to camouflage the smell of sickness. Scary as hell. Not sure what century this garb was in use, though, given all the semi-facts loose on the web.

I think the engraving above is from an Italian broadside warning about the plague. (Note the children running away from the creepy doctor in the bottom left hand side).The photo above is from the Danish Museum of Science and Medicine.

Incidentally, I have a student who “freelances” as an assistant funeral director around Queens. I really can’t tell if he’s 25 or like…40. He told me that as an assistant funeral director, he specializes “in removal.”