How’s the weather? Hot enough for ‘ya? How about this weather? There’s no topic of conversation more universal than the weather. Here in Washington, DC, we’ve had a scorching summer—our hottest on record according to the Washington Post. July 14 – 17, the city experienced four days in a row with temperatures over 100° F. With so many miserably hot days, we quickly ran out of ways to say, “It’s too darn hot.” So, we turned to Shakespeare. Thankfully, the Bard’s plays offer lots of literary and sophisticated ways to take your weather-related small talk to the next level. Here are some great lines from the Bard about the weather.
It’s too hot
Essential Shakespeare quotes for summertime.
There is so hot a summer in my bosom
That all my bowels crumble up to dust.
– King John, 5.7.32
King John says this after he’s been poisoned and is dying, but you can also use it if your AC breaks down. John’s next line are equally excellent and must be among Shakespeare’s most evocative:
I am a scribbled form drawn with a pen
Upon a parchment, and against this fire
Do I shrink up.
– King John, 5.7.34
For when you’re stuck in traffic in July:
For now, these hot days, is the mad blood stirring.
– Romeo and Juliet, 3.1.4
When it’s so hot you can’t think straight:
The day is hot, and the weather, and the wars, and the King, and the dukes.
– Henry V, 3.2.109
The Folger Shakespeare
Read The Folger Shakespeare editions of Shakespeare’s plays online for free!
It’s raining
Rain, whether it’s drizzling or torrential, is a frequent topic of conversation, so it’s good to have a few lines from Shakespeare in your back pocket. In Macbeth, an order of rain comes with a side of murder:
BANQUO It will be rain tonight.
FIRST MURDERER Let it come down!
[The three Murderers attack.]
– Macbeth, 3.3.23
Shakespeare often uses rain as a metaphor for tears or crying:
LYSANDER
How now, my love? Why is your cheek so pale?
How chance the roses there do fade so fast?
HERMIA
Belike for want of rain, which I could well
Beteem them from the tempest of my eyes.
– A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1.1.130
You foolish shepherd, wherefore do you follow her,
Like foggy south puffing with wind and rain?
– As You Like It, 3.5.54
Dissolve, thick cloud, and rain, that I may say
The gods themselves do weep!
– Antony and Cleopatra, 5.2.354
Here’s one for when it’s raining but you still need to spill the tea:
Stand thee close, then, under this penthouse, for it drizzles rain, and I will, like a true drunkard, utter all to thee.
– Much Ado About Nothing, 3.3.102
Weather x Insults
You can talk about the weather and be mean at the same time.
Your mistresses dare never come in rain,
For fear their colors should be washed away.
– Love’s Labor’s Lost, 4.3.290
You are not worth the dust which the rude wind
Blows in your face.
– King Lear, 4.2.39
Thunderstorms and Tempests
No one does storms quite like Shakespeare.
Another storm brewing; I hear it sing i’ th’ wind. Yond same black cloud, yond huge one, looks like a foul bombard that would shed his liquor. If it should thunder as it did before, I know not where to hide my head. Yond same cloud cannot choose but fall by pailfuls.
– The Tempest, 2.2.18
Why now, blow wind, swell billow, and swim bark!
The storm is up, and all is on the hazard.
– Julius Caesar, 5.1.72
I am not to say it is a sea, for it is now the sky; betwixt the firmament and it, you cannot thrust a bodkin’s point… I would you did but see how it chafes, how it rages, how it takes up the shore. But that’s not to the point. O, the most piteous cry of the poor souls! Sometimes to see ’em, and not to see ’em. Now the ship boring the moon with her mainmast, and anon swallowed with yeast and froth, as you’d thrust a cork into a hogshead.
– The Winter’s Tale, 3.3.89
The brine and cloudy billow kiss the moon…
– Pericles, 3.1.39
And, of all of Shakespeare’s plays, no one does thunderstorms quite like King Lear:
Blow winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drenched our steeples, ⟨drowned⟩ the cocks.
You sulph’rous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers of oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head.
– King Lear, 3.2.1
O nuncle, court holy water in a dry house is better than this rainwater out o’ door. Good nuncle, in.
– King Lear, 3.2.12
Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! Spout, rain!
– King Lear, 3.2.16
Since I was man,
Such sheets of fire, such bursts of horrid thunder,
Such groans of roaring wind and rain I never
Remember to have heard.
– King Lear, 3.2.47
Snow, Ice, and Cold
This quote from Measure for Measure is our new favorite way to say “It’s cold”:
It is certain that when he makes water, his urine is congealed ice…
– Measure for Measure, 3.2.110
Cold snow melts with the sun’s hot beams.
– Henry VI, Part 2, 3.1.224
HAMLET: The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold.
HORATIO: It is ⟨a⟩ nipping and an eager air.
– Hamlet, 1.4.1
Sometimes, raw winter weather is a good chance to curl up inside and swap stories… if you have any stories to swap:
What should we speak of
When we are old as you? When we shall hear
The rain and wind beat dark December, how
In this our pinching cave shall we discourse
The freezing hours away? We have seen nothing.
– Cymbeline, 3.3.39
As You Like It says that though the winter cold may bite, it’s not as biting as the backstabbing and ingratitude of humanity:
Are not these woods
More free from peril than the envious court?
Here feel we not the penalty of Adam,
The seasons’ difference, as the icy fang
And churlish chiding of the winter’s wind,
Which when it bites and blows upon my body
Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and say
‘This is no flattery. These are counselors
That feelingly persuade me what I am.’
– As You Like It, 2.1.3
Blow, blow, thou winter wind.
Thou art not so unkind
As man’s ingratitude.
– As You Like It, 2.7.182
Weird Weather
In Shakespeare’s plays, the weather sometimes reflects conflict and confusion in a play’s political or social world. In Julius Caesar, a strange storm is a bad omen:
I have seen tempests when the scolding winds
Have rived the knotty oaks, and I have seen
Th’ ambitious ocean swell and rage and foam
To be exalted with the threat’ning clouds;
But never till tonight, never till now,
Did I go through a tempest dropping fire.
Either there is a civil strife in heaven,
Or else the world, too saucy with the gods,
Incenses them to send destruction.
– Julius Caesar, 1.3.5
In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, unseasonable weather is the result of a conflict between Titania and Oberon, queen and king of the fairies. Meanwhile, in Love’s Labor’s Lost, Berowne offers a tribute to the predictable patterns of the seasons.
The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts
Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose,
And on old Hiems’ thin and icy crown
An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds
Is, as in mockery, set. The spring, the summer,
The childing autumn, angry winter, change
Their wonted liveries, and the mazèd world
By their increase now knows not which is which.
– A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 2.1.110
That is hot ice and wondrous strange snow!
– A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 5.1.63
At Christmas I no more desire a rose
Than wish a snow in May’s new-fangled shows,
But like of each thing that in season grows.
– Love’s Labor’s Lost, 1.1.109
Nice Weather
It’s not all “rough winds” and “hurricanoes.” There are nice days in Shakespeare too.
The moon shines bright. In such a night as this,
When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees
And they did make no noise, in such a night
Troilus, methinks, mounted the Trojan walls
And sighed his soul toward the Grecian tents
Where Cressid lay that night.
– The Merchant of Venice, 5.1.1
The ship is in her trim; the merry wind
Blows fair from land.
– A Comedy of Errors, 4.1.92
My lovely Aaron, wherefore look’st thou sad,
When everything doth make a gleeful boast?
The birds chant melody on every bush,
The snakes lies rollèd in the cheerful sun,
The green leaves quiver with the cooling wind
And make a checkered shadow on the ground.
– Titus Andronicus, 3.3.10
Finally, we can’t forget Sonnet 18, perhaps the English language’s most famous poem about the weather:
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed.
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall Death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st.
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Sonnet 18 (“Shall I compare the to a summer’s day…”) in first printed edition of Shakespeare’s sonnets, from 1609.
What’s your favorite Shakespeare quotation about the weather? Which lines did we miss? Tell us in the comments!
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