Is There Pressure to be as Productive as Shakespeare During Self-Isolation and Social Distancing?

Much has been talked about during the current health crisis about remaining active during social distancing and self isolation. Many people are looking at this time as a way to focus on creative work, stating that Shakespeare wrote King Lear during the plague. Other people are saying that being creative may be too lofty of a goal during a time when people are trying to get used to this new normal.

The Guardian shared in an article: "The Bard supposedly took advantage of the Globe's lengthy closure to get on top of his writing in-tray - coming up with Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra to boot. If you weren't panicky enough about how little you've achieved recently, this is surely a way to feel worse. Why aren't you finally dusting off that novel or screenplay you've been itching to write? It's what the Bard would do, surely... Whether the plague was a good thing for Shakespeare personally is more doubtful... we know he worked intimately with actors, his most trusted collaborators, and may even have written his plays in the theatre building; as a busy actor-writer-manager used to doing 17 things at once, isolation wasn't his preferred mode, as far as we can tell.

The New York Times said, "Twitter has been taunting us: When he was in quarantine from the plague, William Shakespeare wrote "King Lear." He had an advantage, of sorts: Shakespeare's life was marked by plague. Just weeks after his baptism at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564, the register read, "Hic incepit pestis" (Here begins the plague). Mortality rates in the town were four times that of the previous, plague-free year. Shakespeare, the son of the town's glover, survived it and many further outbreaks. Much of his work was composed, if not in lockdown, then in the shadow of a highly infectious disease without a known cure.... Maybe our misery now, like Lear's, will help us to see the meaning in the lives of others. Maybe, like Shakespeare, we should focus not on statistics but on the wonderfully, weirdly, cussedly, irredeemably individual."

In The Atlantic's article delving into Shakespeare's productivity, they stated: In the first decade of King James I's reign, the plague meant that London theaters were likely closed more often than they were open, and Shakespeare's troupe, The King's Men, had to rely on royal gifts and provincial tours to replace their lost box office... One Elizabethan preacher proclaimed that because "the cause of plagues is sin" and "the cause of sin are plays," then "the cause of plagues are plays." Conversely, plagues may have caused plays. It's long been thought that Shakespeare turned to poetry when plague closed the theaters in 1593.

Literary Hub's article entitled 'So Shakespeare wrote King Lear during a plague. Well, good for him, say all the writers.' shared a compilation of tweets of writers thoughts on Shakespeare's productivity:

Let us know your thoughts on whether creative productivity is something people should be striving for during this time!