Global Warming and the Globe Theater: Shakespeare in Climate Activism
By Nancy Lin
Screen capture from UC Merced – Shakespeare in Yosemite
On September 19th, 2020, Metronome—a monumental digital clock in Manhattan—was charged with a revolutionary mission: to display the ticking timebomb that is the point of no return for our climate. It was a work of art, but also a call to action highlighting the urgency of global warming and the necessity for immediate measures, aiming to capture the public’s eye and shake the public’s heart. The Climate Clock, as the project has been dubbed, highlighted the potential power of the humanities to work with climate science.
Climate change activism is all about persuasion. The science isn’t lacking. But how do you convince enough people of the significance of global warming in a manner which motivates a political push for change? One approach that has drawn the attention of researchers such as Adeline Johns-Putra is climatic fiction—or “cli-fi”—which approaches global warming through literature, specifically the genre of dystopian or post-apocalyptic fiction.
Climate change activists have found unexpected allies in artists, musicians, and writers – including writers who advocated via their compositions long before “environmental activism” as we know it came to exist. Today, one of the key artistic sites for green activism is the work of William Shakespeare. Shakespeare died in 1616. But climate change appears, in ways recognizable to both pre-modern and modern audiences, throughout his plays and poems, conveyed through bold imagery and gripping dialogue. For partly this reason, he has been a figurehead for several environmental campaigns, as in The Climate Coalition’s short film titled “A Simple Love Poem”—part of its #showthelove campaign.
Shakespeare’s famous Sonnet 18, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day,” harmonizes with images of crashing waves and swaying trees, which activate the poem’s descriptions of false permanence. The final couplet takes on a new meaning when addressed to the planet we live on: “So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, / So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.” Art meets environmentalism in the video’s final plea for viewer engagement: “What felt eternal is changing. But we can tackle climate change. If enough of us want to.”
Shakespeare gives climate activists what statistical data lacks—a writer’s touch and an artist’s gift for persuasion. In works from A Midsummer Night’s Dream to The Tempest to Coriolanus, he artfully blends dystopia and realism to suggest an impending threat not made distant or unreal by patently fictional applications. Shakespeare crafts a world of environmental catastrophes that are terrifying in scale yet still tangible, warning us of the very real consequences of inaction. This elevated relatability—this could actually happen in the near future—contributes a critical urgency to scientific understandings of climate change, registering with people in different, more affective ways, perhaps inspiring the apathetic into action.
Humans are emotional beings. We feel more profoundly than we think—are innately more receptive to story and emotion than to statistics. Quantitative analysis can lose an audience’s sense of comprehension and empathy. But Shakespeare’s stories situate ecological terrors in the context of our everyday lives.
Consider this 2019 project organized by Shakespeare’s Globe, “Shakespeare’s Letter to the Earth.” It layers visuals of pollution over Queen Titania’s speech from A Midsummer Night’s Dream about the disastrous environmental aftermath of her argument with King Oberon:
Therefore the moon, the governess of floods,
Pale in her anger, washes all the air,
That rheumatic diseases do abound.
And thorough this distemperature we see
The seasons alter.
We did this to the environment, Titania says of the disruptions to nature around her: “We are their parents and original.” When read in a book, these lines might sound a bit lofty and detached from reality. The speakers are fairies, after all. But as humans, we have also “altered the seasons” through severe deforestation, urbanization, and the release of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. When connections to the climate crisis are elevated visually, Titania’s speech becomes very real very quickly: “The plowman lost his sweat, and the green corn / Hath rotted ere his youth attained a beard / The fold stands empty in the drownèd field.”
But if Shakespeare can impact us through his depictions of loss, he can also open our eyes to the beauty we are desperately trying to save. For instance, UC Merced’s 2017 production of “Shakespeare in Yosemite” merged Shakespeare with John Muir, an activist and author whose writing helped save Yosemite National Park from privatization. Discussing why it was important for Shakespeare to be performed outdoors, the organization argued that “environment isn’t just decoration.” Producers Katherine Steele Brokaw and Paul Prescott explain that, by situating the works in the context of Yosemite’s ecological symbolism, the audience is able to appreciate the beauty surrounding them and better understand the need for its preservation. Shakespeare’s status as a well-known literary figure cultivates a nonpolarized eagerness to watch performances of his work. His “built-in” attractiveness makes the playwright’s work ideal for conveying new ideas and opening up novel perspectives to those who may not have otherwise considered listening to the viewpoints of, say, environmentalists and climate activists.
Shakespeare was no scientist. He did not have access to the research, technology, and widespread information pool granted to us today, and he obviously lived before the Industrial Revolution’s accelerated impact on climate change. But that lack of professional knowledge can actually make Shakespeare more important in modern environmental efforts. He was—like most members of his audiences today—a non-specialist in climate science. But he could render the personal effects of climate change, and it is understanding of those personal effects—not understanding of the technical data—that will persuade ordinary members of his audience to adopt more extraordinary measures for change.
Under the Wave off Kanagawa (Kanagawa oki nami ura), also known as The Great Wave — Katsushika Hokusai
From Katsushika Hokusai’s famous painting Under the Wave off Kanagawa, with its simultaneously beautiful and terrifying portrayal of nature, to Billie Eilish’s 2019 hit song, “All the Good Girls Go to Hell,” with its post-apocalyptic imagery and chilling lyrics, to the critical message of The Lorax enveloped in childhood nostalgia, climate change activism has long found harmony in art. Science may allow us to better understand the world we live in, but it is art that moves us to revel in its beauty.
April 22, the day of this essay’s publication, is Earth Day. This weekend, Shakespeare’s Globe (which, scholar Randall Martin reminds us, “began life in 1599 as a recycling project”) is cohosting an event called “Globe4Globe: Shakespeare and Climate Emergency” with UC Merced, producers of “Shakespeare and Yosemite.” Michelle Terry, Artistic director of the Globe, writes, “Shakespeare understood the devastating ecological effects of disrupting the delicate balance between nature and humankind. His work stands as both a warning and a beacon of hope during these important and vital times.” Indeed, Shakespeare’s plays will live on as tales of equal parts caution and inspiration — reminding us that the greatest enemy of the climate change movement is not pollution but passivity.
Nancy Lin is a first-year student at Harvard College, planning to concentrate in Mechanical Engineering. She is highly passionate about the potentials of green infrastructure, being an avid environmentalist. Ironically, she is also quite fond of paperback books.