In the article The Influence of the Bubonic Plague found in the 1978 issue of Medical History,  Alan D. Dyer describes the harrowing role rats played in the spreading of the plague. Rats were the main carriers of the Bubonic plague and there was certainly a direct correlation between the migrations of the rat population and the spread of the plague. Rats did not travel cross-country and as a result the plague mostly showed up urban cities while most residents of the countryside survived the plague unscathed. However, the bustling economic role the cities played made it impossible to keep the plague contained. Ships traveling from one city port to another often carried with them the rats infected with the plague. It also became known as the plague of the poor, simply because the shabbily maintained houses of the lower class made it easier for rats to find a nesting place. It also didn’t hurt that the the rich had the money and resources to flee to the countryside while the poor were left to fend for themselves in the disease-ridden cities.

Later on in this blog, I’m going to delve more into the role of vermin as disease carriers and how this relates to the play (symbolically and otherwise).