Brush up your Shakespeare

Use this time wisely, they say: get fit; learn a language; hell, learn two; pick up that instrument you stopped playing in high school.

William Shakespeare. Illustration by Sturt Krygsman.

Use this time wisely, they say: get fit; learn a language; hell, learn two; pick up that instrument you stopped playing in high school; plough through all those books piling up next to your bedside table. And then my favourite: write your masterpiece. It worked for Shakespeare, right? Well, maybe. The Bard supposedly penned his great tragedy, Antony and Cleopatra, in quarantine in the early 17th century during London’s outbreak of the bubonic plague. He wrote Macbeth and King Lear soon after, in the wake of the pandemic and against the backdrop of the tumultuous Gunpowder Plot in London. But Shakespeare’s connection with the plague was personal: he is thought to have lost his 11-year-old son, Hamnet, to the Black Death in 1596. Indeed, there is an argument to be made that Shakespeare’s tragic masterpieces are a case of life influencing art. There are obvious references to the plague in those works, certainly, but the bigger question all this raises is: where does _creative brilliance come from? Is it a universal truth that the greatest art is a by-product of pain and suffering? And should we all wallow in sorrow and begin beavering away on that manuscript, song, poem or performance we’ve had hidden away in the hippocampus for half a lifetime? Today, we cast our mind back to the Spanish flu and the effect it had on the arts. It did not result, as one might assume, in a creative boon for a world reeling from the devastation of World War I . The arts, like the rest of the world’s economy, took time to recover from a pandemic that wiped out between 20 million and 40 million people. So what lessons can we take from that experience? Certainly, artists are struggling but the solidarity in the community is real and astonishing. Cuts to arts budgets notwithstanding, there is a very real hope culture will come out of this better and stronger. But not everyone is convinced putting pressure on ourselves to get smarter, fitter and work harder is the best thing for the world right now. For many, hanging on is hard enough. Once all this is over, will the world be awash with artistic wonders crafted from cramped quarantine quarters around the world? Will our children’s children look back on the_ coronavirus and hail it as the great, albeit tragic, cultural catalyst of the 21st century? Maybe. Maybe not. Go easy on yourself. Soon is the winter of our discontent. So stay healthy. Wash your hands. Take care of your family. Support the arts where you can. Use your time wisely. And don’t fret about the masterpiece. It will come when it’s ready.