What We Owe the Dead

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GEORGE:
The Bills of Mortality—weekly printed tallies—turned death into public information, something people watched like weather. (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)

WILL:
And once death is printed, it becomes “real” in a new way.
But it also becomes… manageable.
A column of numbers fits neatly on a page.
A grave does not.

GEORGE:
That’s the paradox: a bill can keep the dead visible—
and it can also teach the city to normalize loss.

WILL:
Yes.
A repeated tragedy becomes background noise unless the heart fights it.

GEORGE:
And then there’s the other “memorial space” in your era: the theatre itself.

After major plague closures, theatres reopened—like after the 1603 outbreak, with reopening in April 1604.

WILL:
And the crowd that returned was not innocent.
They returned carrying private funerals.

GEORGE:
So the playhouse becomes a communal ritual of memory—without calling itself a memorial.

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