Shakespeare and the Coronavirus

This one is easy, because the plague was an ever-present threat to Shakespeare's London, and it shows up periodically in his plays. Now that the deadly coronavirus has emerged from Wuhan province in China, we can travel to fair Verona, where Romeo and Juliet's Friar Laurence found his entire plan to unite the Montagues and Capulets undone by the major infectious disease of his time.

First, let's have Frian Laurence explain his plot in his own words, and then we'll see how it was undone by the plague:

Friar Laurence: "...in my cell there would she kill herself.
Then gave I her, so tutor'd by my art,
A sleeping potion; which so took effect
As I intended, for it wrought on her
The form of death: meantime I writ to Romeo,
That he should hither come as this dire night,
To help to take her from her borrow'd grave,
Being the time the potion's force should cease.
But he which bore my letter, Friar John,
Was stay'd by accident, and yesternight
Return'd my letter back."

That was the plan, but Romeo and Juliet shifted from a comedy to a tragedy as a result of a postal service failure. Why exactly was that Friar John "staye'd by accident"? Here's the scene:

Friar Laurence: "This same should be the voice of Friar John.
Welcome from Mantua. What says Romeo?
Or if his mind be writ, give me his letter.

Friar John: "Going to find a barefoot brother out,
One of our order, to associate me,
Here in this city visiting the sick,
And finding him, the searchers of the town,
Suspecting that we both were in a house
Where the infectious pestilence did reign,                 
Sealed up the doors and would not let us forth,
So that my speed to Mantua there was stayed."

Friar Laurence: "Who bare my letter then to Romeo?"

Friar John: "I could not send it, — here it is again, —
Nor get a messenger to bring it thee,
So fearful were they of infection."

The rest, as they say, is history, or rather tragedy. Romeo, never learning that Juliet was in fact alive and only appeared dead as a result of a potion given to her by Friar Laurence, kills himself in her tomb.

It was a grim ending to a love that began with a sonnet that both lovers contributed to:

Romeo {taking Juliet’s hand}:
“If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.”

Juliet: “Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.”

Romeo: “Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?”

Juliet: “Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.”

Romeo: “O then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do.
They pray: grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.”

Juliet: “Saints do not move, though grant for prayers’ sake.”

Romeo: “Then move not while my prayer’s effect I take.”
{He kisses her.}

Calling her hand a holy shrine, Romeo says that if he profanes that shrine with his own “unworthy” hand, he stands ready to make amends with his lips, which he likens to two blushing pilgrims. He doesn’t explain why his lips (blushing pilgrims) have a higher status than his hands (unworthy).

Juliet responds with encouragement – saints, by which she means the images of saints venerated by pilgrims, have hands that pilgrims’ hands may touch. And because the actual pilgrims of that time who went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land would return with a palm leaf, Juliet puns on the word “palm” to say that the holding of hands, the touching of palms, is the kiss of holy palmers (another word for pilgrims).

Seeing that Juliet has accepted his offer to take her hand, Romeo makes a further offer. Don’t saints have lips, too? Juliet slaps him down; saints may use their lips only in prayer. Romeo naturally then casts Juliet as a saint, and asks if lips may do what hands do (that is, pray).

Juliet answers that saints do not “move,” and that’s true, since she’s referring to the venerated images of saints, who have long since shed their human form. What she really means is that they don’t take the initiative, although they will grant prayers. Romeo takes the hint, and kisses her. Here what they say after kissing:

Romeo: “Thus from my lips, by thine, my sin is purged.”

Juliet: “Then have my lips the sin that they have took.”

Romeo: “Sin from my lips? O trespass sweetly urged!
Give me my sin again.”{He kisses her again.}

Juliet: “You kiss by th’ book.”

Shakespeare completes his fusion of romance and religion by having Romeo say that his sins have been purged by kissing his Saint Juliet. Juliet answers logically, and with theological soundness, that in that case his sins have now fallen on her. Romeo accuses her of urging him on, sweetly of course, to a second trespass, required in order to reclaim his sin and re-purify her in her sainthood.

While “You kiss by th’ book” sounds to modern ears like a gentle or even ungentle criticism, as if to say, “you kiss in too formal a manner,” it was most likely a straightforward compliment. Scholars seem to agree that at the time, by the book simply meant “expertly.”