Since it was believed that it was impossible to become infected during the act of worship, church services were not included in the ban, though the infected were not permitted to attend. When those deaths surpassed thirty, they banned assemblies, feasts, archery contests, and other forms of mass gathering. Collecting data from parish registers, they carefully tracked weekly plague-related deaths. Civic officials, realizing that crowds heightened contagion, took measures to institute what we now call social distancing. It was early recognized that the rate of infection was far higher in densely populated cities than in the country those with the means to do so escaped to rural retreats, though they often brought infection with them. Pressed firmly enough against the nose, perhaps these functioned as a kind of mask. In the streets, people walked about sniffing oranges stuffed with cloves. The smoke of dried rosemary, frankincense, or bay leaves burning in a chafing dish was thought to help clear the air of infection, and, if those ingredients were not readily available, physicians recommended burning old shoes. Innumerable preventive measures were proposed, most of which were useless-or, in the case of the killing of dogs and cats, worse than useless, since the disease was in fact spread by rat-borne fleas. Death, often in great agony, would almost inevitably follow. 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.

Helmet novel by shakespeare