Mojo, The Bard, & Me

The spring, the summer,

The childing autumn, angry winter, change

Their wonted liveries; and the mazed world,

By their increase, now knows not which is which:

-Titania          

                       

A Midsummer Night’s Dream         Act II, Scene i, Line 112

Before we get started let me say one thing that occurred to me this morning whilst reading today’s Totally Random line. Isn’t it amazing that Will never once repeated a line of description verbatim throughout all of his pages of works? Or maybe he did? But I haven’t seen it yet. Let me know if you find one.

Now, on to the lines. Here’s how I read it:

The spring, the summer, the cool autumn and angry winter are changing their appearances and the confused world doesn’t know which season is which.

Okay, let’s look up a few words:

Childing- fertile, fruitful, teeming

Wonted- usual

Liveries- uniform (as in clothing)

Mazed- bewildered, confused, perplexed

Those are the four words that I wasn’t sure of, and in each case the modern definition is the same as the one out of my Shakespeare glossary. And it changes my interpretation, but only a little bit. Childing has nothing to do with chilly, it has to do with fruitful. The rest I got right. He’s talking about the autumn being fruitful, as in harvest time, not chilly. Actually, she’s talking. It’s Titania, Oberon’s wife. I’m not quite sure what the total, contextual gist of this is. As I’ve oft mentioned, Midsummer is not one of my favourite works.

Holy cow; it just occurred to me how prescient these lines are with today’s unpredictable weather what with climate change. To be clear, the context of these lines has nothing to do with today’s weather, but all the same, it’s a great quote to use in talking about climate change. Wow.

 This picture is outside the train station in Paris a few years ago on March 19. So I think it qualifies for an example of slightly unusual weather.