The Adventures of Oliver Twist, Or, the Parish Boy's Progress

Worse, these coincided with calamitous, starving harvests in 1555 and 1556. It was a literally dreadful age. Plague, however, remained the darkest scourge. Just under three months after WilliamБЂ™s birth, the burials section of the parish register of Holy Trinity Church in Stratford bears the ominous words Hic incepit pestis (Here begins plague), beside the name of a boy named Oliver Gunne. The outbreak of 1564 was a vicious one. At least two hundred people died in Stratford, about ten times the normal rate. Even in nonplague years 16 percent of infants perished in England; in this year nearly two-thirds did. (One neighbor of the ShakespeareБЂ™s lost four children.) In a sense William ShakespeareБЂ™s greatest achievement in life wasnБЂ™t writing Hamlet or the sonnets but just surviving his first year. We donБЂ™t know quite when he was born. Much ingenuity has been expended on deducing from one or two certainties and some slender probabilities the date on which he came into the world. By tradition it is agreed to be April 23, Saint GeorgeБЂ™s Day ...»