\paperw5085 \margr0\margl0\ATXph16380 \plain \fs20 \f1 \fs22 Around 1591, when he was about twenty-seven, Shakespeare left his young family in Stratford and moved to London to be
come an actor. The city had recently become the European capital for finance and trade, and over the previous sixty years its population had grown from around 50,000 to 220,000. Although, as the Venetian Ambassador recorded, there were ômany large pala
ces making a very fine showö, the city was also overcrowded with unsanitary tenements and unpaved streets that served as open sewers. Hardly surprisingly, outbursts of plague were frequent. Indeed, in 1592, one year after the young ShakespeareÆs arriva
l in the capital, all the London theatres were closed in an effort to contain the spread of the disease. During this two-year period he wrote his poems \i Venus and Adonis\i0 and the \i Rape of Lucrece\i0 , as well as some of the earlier sonnets, which
