“And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!” (Macbeth) Shakespeare frequently creates a metaphor around death. In this passage from Macbeth, he compares life to a “brief candle.” Though it might shine bright, it's only temporary.
In the first printed edition of Romeo and Juliet (the so-called "First Quarto" or "Bad Quarto", published in 1597), Mercutio called down syphilis (pox) instead of plague (plague). There are also well-founded doubts that in early editions, syphilis was indeed mentioned.
The Black Death, the biggest pandemic of our history, was caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis and lasted in Europe between the years 1346 and 1353.
The same holds true of the last words of Gaius Julius Caesar, a skilled general and the first dictator of the Roman Republic. Killed by a conspiracy of Senators who were upset over their lost power, Caesar is purported to have said upon being stabbed, ''Et tu, Brute?,'' or ''You too, Brutus?''
Parting is such sweet sorrow, That I shall say good night till it be morrow. My necessaries are embark'd: farewell. Adieu! I have too grieved a heart to take a tedious leave.
Sonnet 71 In this first of a series of four sonnets in which the poet addresses his own death and its effect on the beloved, he here urges the beloved to forget him once he is gone.
Another anti-Jewish story surrounded the origins of the Black Death in 1349. This bubonic plague devastated Europe in the fourteenth century, killing an estimated 25-50 million people. As medical knowledge in the medieval period was extremely limited, people offered religious explanations for the catastrophe .
According to scholars at the University of Paris, the Black Death is created on March 20, 1345, from what they call “a triple conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars in the 40th degree of Aquarius, occurring on the 20th of March 1345.″ The Black Death, also known as the Plague, swept across Europe, the Middle East and ...
However, within Romeo and Juliet, hallucinations and psychosis (known in Shakespearean times as “madness”) play a central role. Romeo, throughout the majority of the play, is in a psychotic episode and Juliet is a hallucination, a product of his illness.
Friar Lawrence gives her a potion that will make her appear as if dead the morning of the wedding. He assures her that when she awakes in the vault, Romeo will be there to take her away.
DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for, thou art not so, For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow, Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
Sonnet 73 is among his most famous, written as if it is a personal look-back on life-when, from the perspective of old age, the poet says that knowing one will soon die makes one love more strongly those things that he has loved and will leave behind.
