கொரோனா காலத் தனிமைப்படுத்தலும் மனித உறவுகளும் - வில்லியம் ஷேக்ஸ்பியரின் ‘ரோமியோ–ஜூலியட்’ நாடகத்தை முன்வைத்து

Quarantine during the COVID-19 Pandemic and Human Relationships- A Study with Reference to William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic constituted not merely a global public health crisis but also a significant socio-cultural disruption that transformed everyday life and human relationships. Measures such as lockdowns, quarantine, social distancing, and travel restrictions, implemented to contain the spread of the disease, profoundly altered patterns of social interaction and interpersonal relationships. Physical separation from family and loved ones, restricted mobility, prolonged waiting, and disruptions in communication emerged as significant dimensions of human experience during the pandemic.

Against this contemporary backdrop, the present study offers a rereading of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet through the lens of pandemic isolation and human relationships. In the concluding episodes of the play, the outbreak of plague creates social and spatial restrictions that prevent Friar John from delivering Friar Laurence’s message to Romeo. This interruption in communication initiates a chain of misunderstandings that ultimately contributes to the tragic deaths of the lovers. Thus, disease in the play functions not merely as a medical condition but also as a social force that restricts mobility, disrupts communication, and profoundly affects human relationships.

The study examines the experiences of isolation, separation, waiting, communicative disruption, love, and human connectedness in Romeo and Juliet in relation to the lived experiences of quarantine during the COVID-19 pandemic. Employing a comparative rereading of pandemic experience and Shakespearean tragedy, the study demonstrates how a contemporary experience of global crisis can generate new interpretive possibilities for a canonical literary text. The article argues that the pandemic context enables a deeper understanding of the play’s representation of isolation, failed communication, emotional separation, and the vulnerability of human relationships during periods of social crisis.