By Sarah Danielzadeh
The moment the Covid-19 outbreak was declared a pandemic, I turned to Twitter for some comic relief. But instead, my entire feed was filled with tweets such as, “Now that you have so much free time on your hands, there is no excuse to not work out!” or “You can finally do everything you always say you don’t have time to do!” It felt as if everyone took this unsettling period of uncertainty and turned it into a productivity contest rather than a time to empathize with one another.
But, the most common tweet I noticed resurfacing was by writer and musician Rosanne Cash which read: “Just a reminder that when Shakespeare was quarantined because of the plague, he wrote King Lear.” Hundreds of variations of this tweet could be found across a plethora of social media platforms.
I found this particularly entertaining because I had just read King Lear in my course on English literature from the medieval period to 1650, with UC Santa Barbara professor Heather Blurton. Blurton sent our class an article from The Guardian about Shakespeare writing King Lear during his lockdown, which ended up being the only piece of news that didn’t further my panic about the global crisis.
The article discussed something that I had been desperately waiting to see in the comments section below the King Lear tweets. It was the idea that if you had actually read the play, you would know it was a story about going completely mad, to the point of one’s own demise.
While yes, it is incredible that Shakespeare wrote an entire play during a plague, it is important to recognize the theme of madness throughout King Lear, which could very well be a reflection of the instability many people, including Shakespeare himself, felt while stuck in their homes.
In that English 101 class, Professor Blurton introduced the theme of chaos in family dynamics that constantly appears in King Lear. While Lear is a father, he is also a political figure who surrenders his power to his evil daughters, sending himself, his family and his country into a state of madness and confusion. As Lear himself began to feel deranged, the hierarchical structure of his kingdom began to fall apart.
As I was writing a final essay about familial relationships in King Lear for this course, I came to realize that distrust within one’s family ultimately leads to instability. After his daughters disobey him, Lear begins to fear and hate everything around him and even blames a storm for the mistreatment he endures from his children.
Photo by Sarah Danielzadeh.
King Lear is full of moments of death and mania, and the tragedy compels readers to experience feelings of grief and despair. Most losses throughout the story seem unjust and the idea of an individual’s ‘life’ is portrayed as expendable. It is no coincidence that these feelings are the same ones many are forced to confront now, even after merely watching a few minutes of the morning news.
While King Lear may not have explicitly discussed life during a pandemic, the word “plague” can be found numerous times throughout the play. Lear himself describes the “plagues that hang in this pendulous air” and even refers to his own daughter, Goneril, as “a plague sore.”
It is apparent that Shakespeare pulled inspiration from the plague, but I still believe there is a greater message to be found here: It is okay to feel like you’re going crazy under the Covid-19 quarantine because so did King Lear.
It is only natural to feel as if you are losing some sanity while stuck indoors. Remember, it is okay to not be productive, let alone write an entire play. We are not living in the 17th century and our lives are probably not like Shakespeare’s. We may have more time on our hands, but that does not mean we should disregard our feelings of disorientation and lack of motivation. For most of us, our nation’s current situation is something that we have never had to deal with before and we are still learning how to cope.
With the constant pressure to be productive, we often feel like we are not “doing quarantine right.” But, it is this pressure that may be contributing to our growing restlessness. It is important to remember that during this period of utter chaos, we are learning to put our mental well-being first, above all else. Focus on yourself for now— you can write that play later.
Sarah Danielzadeh is a third-year English major at UC Santa Barbara. She wrote this piece for her Writing Program class, Journalism for Web and Social Media.