In an excerpt from the book 1606 by James Shapiro, published for the Guardian, the author theorizes that William Shakespeare's personal experiences of that titular plague year (a horrible breakout of bubonic plague killed his own landlady), and then the move to fully indoor theater come winter, influenced the content and tone of the playwright's work from that period on.
The creation of art — and creators' reaction to extreme external forces — has changed so little in 400-some years. The restrictions, the upending of the world (a world, in our case, completely unprepared for pandemic life, unlike the people of Shakespeare's time, for whom plague could be a yearly event) engender new ideas and new stories, innovations, and ingenuity.
