Two of the most famous names from History are William Shakespeare and Issac Newton and both men have something in common, they both did their best work while self-isolating during a pandemic.
All of William Shakespeare 52 years on the planet were a constant fight against the plague, his town of Stratford-upon-Avon was hit exceptionally hard in the 1560's when he was a child and appears in several of his works but it was during a particularly harsh plague year between 1605 and 1606 when Shakespeare churned out King Lear, Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra.
The reason Shakespeare was quite so productive during this year is put down to it being so darned dangerous to go outside and as Whatsapp and Candy Crush were still several hundreds of years in the future, he decided to grab his quill and write instead.
Isaac Newton is one of the most important figures in history, discovering gravity and ushering in the Age of Enlightenment but it was the plague once again which swept through England in the 1660's which meant Cambridge University was closed and students told to return home until for quarantine and wait out the pandemic and come back in 12 months if they survived.
It was while at home kicking his heels that Newton began conducting a series of experiments regarding the laws of motion and gravity which he was mulling over while sat under an apple tree one day...and the rest is history.
I'm not saying that while we are all self-isolating we should be writing classic literature or conducting experiments which will change science as we know it but someone somewhere might just be doing that.
Not me, i got a box set of 97 episodes of Quantum Leap to watch but everyone else can knock themselves out while they are at home.
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