Photo by Claudio Testa on Unsplash
With the total lunar eclipse happening this weekend, we take a look at three of the ways Shakespeare used eclipses in his plays and poems:
1. An eclipse as an ill omen
“These late eclipses in the sun and moon
portend no good to us. Though the wisdom of
nature can reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds
itself scourged by the sequent effects.”
—Gloucester in King Lear (1.2.109-112)
2. The physical darkness of an eclipse as a metaphor for psychological darkness
“My wife, my wife! What wife? I have no wife.
O insupportable! O heavy hour!
Methinks it should be now a huge eclipse
Of sun and moon, and that th’ affrighted globe
Should yawn at alteration.”
—Othello in Othello (5.2.121-125)
3. An eclipse as that which mars beauty
“No more be grieved at that which thou hast done.
Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud;
Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,
And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.”
—Sonnet 35
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Comments
Not mentioned here: metaphorical darkness in that Scottish play can be filed under “Fair is foul and Foul is fair” –
Thou seest the heavens, as troubled with man’s act,
Threatens his bloody stage. By th’ clock ’tis day,
And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp.
Is ’t night’s predominance or the day’s shame
That darkness does the face of Earth entomb
When living light should kiss it? (2.4.5–10)
elizabeth clark — May 26, 2022