Shakespeare in a Changing Climate

Living through the Little Ice Age, Shakespeare knew all about what he called “rough weather”. From the forest of Arden to the storms of King Lear and The Tempest, the elements play a major role in several of his plays. And he inherited a series of ancient beliefs about the relationship between climate and national character, geographic origin and human behaviour. How, then, does Shakespeare speak to our own age of climate crisis? The chapter begins with the sixteenth-century art of prognostication, comparing it to modern predictions of climate change, but noting that in Shakespeare’s time weather was specifically linked to both human health and suprahuman influence. It then discusses a speech by Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream that the Globe Theatre company branded as “Shakespeare’s Letter to the Earth”, before dwelling on classical and early modern beliefs about the nature of climate and the meaning of “meteorology”, with its associations between macrocosm and microcosm. A comparison is made to modern earth systems science. The latter part of the chapter is given over to close readings of “four weather plays”: As You Like It, King Lear, The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest.