In the summer of 2022, we were cautiously returning to live performance following the lockdowns of the COVID-19 pandemic. It had been a tumultuous time, fraught with uncertainty as we navigated the rising death tolls left in the wake of the global pandemic. Stories of past plagues suddenly resonated, and as someone who regularly taught Shakespeare’s plays, I noticed how those works — Romeo and Juliet, for instance — suddenly gave my students pause to consider how the lives of these teenagers had been overshadowed by the spectre of plague. They could understand, maybe for the first time, how the social context of Shakespeare’s time played a specific role in the stories he told his audience.