A surprising thing about Shakespeare...by Sheila Claydon

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A heroine whose problems are far distant from what the whole world is coping with today...but if you want a happy ending, this is the book to give you one while distracting you from real life!

I know we are all fed up with hearing about Covid19. After all, we are living with it, so we know how it is affecting our lives and the lives of our loved ones, so thinking about something different would be a good thing...except.  Because we are going to have to live with it for a long time to come, maybe now is the time to get a few things into perspective, literary wise.

Did you know, for example, how much of William Shakespeare's writing is peppered with references to the bubonic plague, which was the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries equivalent of what we are living with today. A disease which started with animals (rats and fleas in this case) and which had no known cure. Nor, in those far distant times, any hope of finding one.

Think of Romeo and Juliet, when Mercutio, mortally wounded in the feud between the Capulets and the Montagues, called out 'a plague on both your houses.'  Or when King Lear tells his daughter Goneril, 'Thou art a boil. A plague-sore, or embossed carbuncle.' Then, less malevolently, Olivia, in Twelfth Night, marvelling at the speed with which she has fallen in love, says, 'How now? Even so quickly may one catch the plague? 

There are many more such instances but the one that stands out the most is, again, in Romeo and Juliet, when the friar who was asked to deliver a crucial message to Romeo about the drug that will make it look as if Juliet has died when, in fact, she will only be sleeping, fails to carry out his task. In those far off days, friars had to travel in pairs. Unfortunately the friar's travelling companion was visiting the sick when he went to look for him. This meant that the public-health officers (the searchers of the town), suspecting them both of having been exposed to the plague, put them in quarantine by nailing the doors of the house shut! By the time the quarantine ended it was too late...'I could not send it - here it is again - Nor get a messenger to bring it to thee, so fearful were they of infection.'

It wasn't the plague that did for Romeo and Juliet but the dreadful social disruption it brought, which led to Romeo thinking she was dead, and so committing suicide, only to be copied by Juliet when she heard of his death.

In the year Shakespeare was born the plague killed a fifth of the townspeople of Stratford on Avon while sparing the Shakespeare family, and the fear of plague was something he had to live with throughout his life as it waxed and waned, disappearing for a while and then reappearing without any warning. History tells of the innumerable preventive measures that were used, most of which were useless (Fake News at its best!)

• Although bubonic plague was caused by the fleas on rats, dogs and cats were killed. Possibly the fleas transferred to them although this is not clear.
• Dried rosemary, frankincense, or bay leaves were burned in a dish as it was believed that the smoke would clear infection from the air.
• If there were no herbs available the doctors' favoured replacement was to burn old shoes!
• In the streets people pressed oranges stuffed with cloves against their noses, which was the closest they got to a medieval mask.

Even in the sixteenth century it was recognised  that the rate of infection was far higher in densely populated cities, so the wealthy people with country retreats would escape to their second homes, much as many people are doing today. In addition, civic officials took measures to introduce social distancing when they realised that crowds heightened contagion.  They also collected data from parish registers so they could track weekly plague-related deaths. When those deaths surpassed 30 they banned assemblies, feasts, sports and any other form of mass gatherings.

As it was considered impossible to become infected during the act of worship, churches were kept open, although anyone suspected of being ill was banned from entering. What was closed, time and time again, however, were theatres, which was economically devastating to Shakespeare, who was not only an actor and a playwright but also a shareholder. It is thought that during the severe outbreaks of bubonic plague that infected the country between 1606 and 1610, Shakespeare, frequently in lockdown, wrote and produced some of his greatest plays. During this time the London playhouses were unlikely to have been open for more than a total of nine months, but somehow he made what must have been a fearful and difficult time work for him.

The only time Shakespeare wrote directly about the plague was in Macbeth. Mostly he merely  referenced it in his writing as an accepted part of everyday life, something to be lived with, feared, but hopefully kept at bay by social distancing, quarantine, and the equivalent of using a mask.

The challenge to us twenty-first century writers is to copy him by putting our own quarantined, socially distanced selves to work, even though we can't hope to emulate his success. And while we are doing that, stay safe.

Plans are made to be broken..by Sheila Claydon

At the moment the world is on tenterhooks because of the Coronavirus. Of all my books this is the only one where an unexpected illness strikes. Why? Well probably because nobody likes to think about illness unless they have to.

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As Woody Allan once said:  If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans. Not that any of my plans were desperate or that important in the scheme of things, but I was due to be cruising around Japan at the end of March on the very ship that is now quarantined in the port at Yokohama as more and more members of its crew and passengers contract the Coronavirus. 

On top of that, the British citizens who were flown out of Wuhan, the centre of the epidemic, have been quarantined in hospital property only 12 miles away from where I live. 

And then, of course, there is my daughter-in-law, who is Chinese. She and my little Eurasian granddaughter spent the Chinese New Year in China with family and friends. My son, who had to work, stayed at home in Hong Kong, which was just as well as he has been their only contact with the outside world for the past 14 days. Although they were very far away from the epicentre of the Coronavirus they were still required to self-quarantine when they returned home,  and my daughter-in-law has only today been allowed to return to work.

My granddaughter is still at home because her school has been closed since Christmas and will not reopen until 4 March at the earliest. Also most of her friends have either left Hong Kong for a perceived safety with family elsewhere, or have not returned from the Christmas holidays they were celebrating somewhere else in the world, so with no school and few friends to play with, it is fortunate that she loves to draw, write, make things, help cook, and also do the homework she receives every week by email.

From a different perspective, however, some of what is happening is very interesting. My son, who works in change management in businesses in Hong Kong, is having to adapt his own work practice whilst also helping other people to cope with working from home. Culturally, home working is not the norm in Hong Kong and this, together with the very limited size of its family apartments, means that the forced confinement is having a deep psychological effect on many people.  Apartments in Hong Kong are on average the smallest in the world (484 sq ft). Many of these are homes to more than three people. As a comparison, the average one-bed flat size in Manhattan, New York, is 716 sq ft while in London it is 550 sq ft. Because I regularly help edit his various presentations and papers, it means I am able to be part of the whole thinking around the effects of Coronavirus on business around the world...not something I would have chosen given how it is affecting and frightening so many people, but interesting nevertheless.

So here I am, living in a coastal village in the North West of England, miles away from any major centre, in a place of clean beaches and fresh, unpolluted air, and yet, because of globalisation, I am still caught up in the world-wide effects of the Coronavirus. It is a strange, strange world.

Now all I have to do is to send the medical face masks I've managed to buy in the UK over to my family in Hong Kong because there the shops have sold out altogether, and without a mask nobody goes out! In usual circumstances China makes 20 million face masks a day and Chinese people use them regularly both as a protection against traffic pollution and when they have a cold or cough which they don't want to pass onto other people. Now, however, production has fallen and people are panic buying. Fortunately we still have plenty in the UK where wearing them is not the norm at all. Who is to say when that will change, however. In the meantime we can spare some where they are needed most.

In my son's words at the end of his recent advisory leaflet to Hong Kong employees working from home for the first time: until it's over and we can all relax, work well and stay healthy.