As England slides into its third national lockdown, this one slated to last until the middle of February,

but my personal projection, stipulating that this lockdown will last perhaps until Easter or some sort of modification of it,

Shakespeare's sonnets provide me some comfort.

In fact, it's the knowledge that these sonnets were most likely born out of the

Elizabethan lockdown, Elizabethan quarantine. This is when we think Shakespeare started writing

the sonnets. He'd written a few plays. He'd started off writing the Henry cycle, followed by

Richard III, and his play is, apart from Richard the 3rd, which I Richard III, and his plays, apart from Richard

the third, which I like it, and we did a whole podcast on it, his early plays weren't that

good. They were most likely collaborations. They were his training ground for the masterpieces

that would come in perhaps a decade or so time. Now, he got a few of those plays out and then everything

shuts down because of plague. The theatres definitely shut down. In fact, when he was writing

Titus Adronicus, I think he only performed it or got to perform it two or three times. One

would have been in the Rose Theatre and then another one would have been in a tavern or an

inn or something and then complete shutdown. Shakespeare was quite lucky because he had a patron called, and I'm going to butcher

the pronunciation here, Henry Rutherzerzerli, the third Earl of Southampton. Let's just call him

Southampton. And this guy, a young lad, I think he would have been in his early 20s when Shakespeare was writing,

and when Shakespeare was writing poetry, he would have been around, probably around my age, so pushing 30, well, late 20s, let's be real,

and he would have, he gave him some money, I think we have, we have evidence that he gave him about £1,000,

which would have been a lot of money at that time. He kept Shakespeare comfortable enough for Shakespeare to write a couple of long narrative poems, really good ones. One called Venus and Adonis, and another one called the Rape of Lucrease. But he likely also funded the sonnets. This stipulation that it was actually for somebody else, because the dedication. if it's Southampton, the initials the dedication would have to be inverted in order for it to be him. So it could be somebody else. Either way, Shakespeare was writing poetry because the playhouses were closed because of plague. He needed to make money. And so we can get into this whole thing. Was Shakespeare a playwright? Was he a straight a straight poet actually became a playwright? No, I think he loved the theatre until actually he abandoned

it with a few years to go before he eventually died. He did love the theatre. He liked poetry as

well, but he was very much a poet playwright. He could never have just simply wrote poetry. However,

he did. He started writing the sonnets and we think it was because it was

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