“NO PEN, NO INK…”
Disease epidemics have been the inspiration for many a writer and his work. Boccaccio wrote his Decameron at the time of the Black Death in 1348. A recent article in the Guardian newspaper asked whether Shakespeare wrote King Lear in the lockdown of 1606. Even Joyce may have been inspired to write his first play (now lost, presumed destroyed by the author), A Brilliant Career, by the Dublin bubonic plague scare of 1900, according to Frank McNally in a recent article in the Irish Times.