Shakespeare and the Closure of Theatres
A one-day international online conference on 22 April 2021
The English Research Institute at De Montfort University in Leicester, England, is running a one-day international conference to reflect on closure of theatres in Shakespeare's time and our own.
It is well known that the theatres of Shakespeare's time repeatedly had to close as part of sensible precautions against the spread of the most serious communicable disease of the day: the plague. To stop the disease spreading, early moderns had to practise social distancing; without it a playgoer might bring home from the theatre more than just new ideas and ways of speaking.