Discuss The Difficulties Of Poor Living Conditions In Elizabethan England
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Elizabethan England: a time period of misery, and difficulties. This era is named after Queen Elizabeth I, and extended from the 1500’s to the 1600’s. Life in Elizabethan England was difficult because of The Plague, poor living conditions, poor health and lack of medicine, and the relationship between parents and their children, which led to the popularity of theater. One of the major difficulties for people in Elizabethan England was The Plague. In the article, “The Black Death”, James Cross Giblin writes about how the disease spread, and the terror it caused. The disease spread from rats, and the fleas they carried. It affected people, and they would die in a matter of day. The Black Plague was so brutal it killed one-third to one-half of Europe’s population, and death rates reached two-thirds in major cities. The symptoms of The Plague were fever, swollen glands, bleeding under the skin, and death (Fishman). An example of The Plague in Romeo and Juliet is when Friar John was quarantined by plague searchers (Shakespeare).…show more content… Ninety percent of the population was uneducated, and poor. Their houses were wooden with thatched roofs, no electricity, and little furniture. People used chamber pots as toilets, and they gathered water from the community wells to use for bathing, and other necessities. People did not use soap because it was not common, so instead they used perfume, which was more common. As a form of transportation people walked or rode horses, and to communicate they sent letters by messenger (Fishman). An example of the difficulty of communicating across long distances is when Romeo and Juliet could not communicate easily, so Romeo never receives the letter from Friar Lawrence