This isn’t the first time theatres have closed, but the coronavirus lockdown may have the farthest-reaching effects

Walk down Shaftesbury Avenue – if it is within range of your government-permitted “single daily act of exercise” – and you will find the central strip of London theatreland, the UK’s equivalent of Broadway, empty except for permitted exercisers and police patrols. The theatre doors are bolted and chained, with notices declaring them closed until further notice due to the Covid-19 restrictions on socialisation.

By most historical counts, this is the eighth time across six centuries that London playhouses have been wholly or partially closed for reasons other than days of rest or holy observance – the various causes have been illness, moralism and terrorism. In Elizabethan and Jacobean times, there was also an annual Lenten suspension of two weeks, with Shakespeare’s actor friend, Richard Burbage, once fined for breaching this rule.