Melisseus

By Melisseus

Distemperature

Contagious fogs, which falling in the land 
Have every pelting river made so proud 
That they have overborne their continents. 
The ox hath therefore stretched his yoke in vain,
The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn
Hath rotted ere his youth attained a beard.

Shakespeare. Midsummer Night's Dream ii. 1

The speech goes on and on about the disturbed climate, the havoc it is wreaking on the land and the human diseases that go along with it. Only today did I learn that it was real. Shakespeare wrote the play after a period of years with unusually high rainfall, failed crops, widespread starvation and another wave of bubonic plague - probably the cause of his own son's death

From the same source, I learned about Thomas Derrick - one of Britain's most renowned hangmen. There are various tales about him, but he was a sailor convicted of rape during the brief English occupation of Cadiz, at about the same time the play was written. His sentence - either hanging or a flogging so severe it would probably have killed him - was commuted if he agreed to hang his fellow accused, and thereafter become public hangman. He became so proficient that the gallows mechanism he devised - a frame with ropes and pulleys - became known as a 'derrick', and the word survives in oilfields - the source of our own contagious fogs of greenhouse gas

Fun podcast facts while cutting up plums

Comments
Sign in or get an account to comment.