![]() ![]() A feeling of extreme weakness or exhaustion would give way to diarrhea, vomiting, bleeding from the mouth, nose, or rectum, and telltale buboes, or swollen lymph nodes, in the groin or armpit. Victims would awaken with fever and chills. It generally appeared on the scene with little or no warning, and it was terrifyingly contagious. But, after an interval of a few years, in cities and towns throughout the realm, the plague would return. With the help of strict quarantines and a change in the weather, the epidemic would slowly wane, as it did in Stratford, and life would resume its normal course. By good fortune, it spared the life of the infant William Shakespeare and his family. On that occasion, the epidemic took the lives of around a fifth of the town’s population. ![]() On April 26, 1564, in the parish register of Holy Trinity Church, in Stratford-upon-Avon, the vicar, John Bretchgirdle, recorded the baptism of one “ Gulielmus filius Johannes Shakspere.” A few months later, in the same register, the vicar noted the death of Oliver Gunne, an apprentice weaver, and in the margins next to that entry scribbled the words “ hic incipit pestis” (here begins the plague). ![]() Shakespeare lived his entire life in the shadow of bubonic plague. ![]()
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