Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky

Memory tells me that in my childhood every winter was snowy, in particular Christmas.

This is of course nonsense. Rose-tinted – or holly-framed – nostalgia.

But as we are currently enduring increasingly bitter ‘cold snaps,’ I can’t help hearing Shakespeare pipe up across the centuries to give voice to our shivering 21st century existence.

To me, Winter in Shakespeare is a White Walker, an Abominable Snowman, a jaw-snapping beast of blood-chilling ice, a character whom Shakespeare likes to unleash with language such as “barren winter…wrathful nipping cold,” “freeze,” “bitter,” “bite” and “sting.”

As this Winter creature stalks and prowls around the action, he reveals the sorrows and violence of the human condition.

“What freezings I have felt, what dark days seen,

What old December's bareness everywhere!” Sonnet 97

When you’re far from your loved one, this is the sonnet for you. Wallow in the agonising pangs of being apart, the cold, dark days matching the hideous ache in your heart and soul.

“And, thou away, the very birds are mute:

Or, if they sing, 'tis with so dull a cheer,

That leaves look pale, dreading the winter's near.”

I picture a robin mournfully intoning some dirge to the trees, whose leaves turn pale as they realise they are about to die.

This is us, longing for our absent lover, moping about listening to The Smiths and wrapped up in a duvet.

Absence is pain and all things wintry; being with the beloved is all summer and youth and pleasure.

The crooner Amiens (As You Like It) bursts into song at various moments, singing of the harshness of winter that threatens - “blow, blow, thou winter wind.”

The banished Duke Senior has made a jolly kind of Arcadia of his exile, living like Robin Hood with his followers in the Forest of Arden. Another song by his friend Amiens conjures a romantic idyll of the forest – “Under the greenwood tree who loves to lie with me” – where there are no enemies except “winter and rough weather.”

The only threat to the various characters who escape to Arden and find sanctuary, sustenance and love, the song tells us, is the fierceness of the winter season.

And yet, however terrible is the ferocity of Winter, yet it still is not as vicious, Amiens sings, as mankind.

“Blow, blow, thou winter wind,

Thou art not so unkind

As man’s ingratitude…

Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,

That dost not bite so nigh

As benefits forgot:

Though thou the waters warp,

Thy sting is not so sharp

As friend remembered not.”

As You Like It 2.7.

Human beings are horrid, Amiens croons, full of ingratitude, selfishness, unkindness and hurt and cause far more terrible pain than the worst of Winter’s freezing breath. (Question: is Morrissey the natural heir to Amiens?)

And we can’t escape this doom.

Shakespeare’s icy beast is inevitable. The seasons will turn, summer will fade, youth will age, flowers – and we - will die:

“Time leads Summer on

To hideous Winter and confounds him there;

Sap check'd with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,

Beauty o'ersnow'd and bareness every where…”

Sonnet 5

This is “the gloomy shade of death,” (Henry VI (i) 5.4.) - Winter the death-bringer.

As frost and ice cast a chill over the land, leaves fall and roots wither. It is unsurprising that this haunting song is often spoken at funerals:

“Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,

Nor the furious winter’s rages;

Thou thy worldly task hast done,

Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages:

Golden lads and girls all must,

As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.”

Cymbeline 4.2.

A sombre reflection of what awaits us all: small wonder that in another late play, little Mamillius (whose days are almost up) replies to his mother’s request for a story:

“A sad tale's best for winter: I have one

Of sprites and goblins.

The Winter’s Tale 2.1.

How depressing is this Winter Monster?

But this is my friend, Will Shakespeare.

He has more to offer.

Winter is bleak but stunning, cruel but beautiful, yet not without humanity.

And not without hope.

The seasons turn again and the bone-chilling creature will slope away, the earth will warm and new shoots will spring up, new leaves will unfurl.

“…When well-apparell'd April on the heel

Of limping winter treads, even such delight

Among fresh female buds shall you this night.”

Romeo & Juliet 1.2.

Back in the Forest of Arden, the banished Duke Senior welcomes the extremes of the seasons, for nature is honest (unlike the treacherous Court) and has much to teach of the “good in everything.”

“…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…”

As You Like It 2.1.

As Amiens challenges the Winter to “Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky” for it can never be as bitter as man’s ingratitude and selfishness, even after this somewhat negative view of the world, he finishes with “…heigh-ho, the holly! This life is most jolly.”

Winter is vicious, mankind is worse, yet the Arden folk still find life joyful.

I like the holly image here – its dark green leaves and red berries things of beauty, evergreen and hung for winter celebration – yet sharp and wounding. Nice metaphor: life is most jolly, until you get a sharp spike from a holly prickle in your flesh.

Ferocious as Shakespeare’s Abominable Snow Creature may be, it has its place within the year and is the natural path from youth to age, but also gives promise of better things to come.

The vicious argument between the King and Queen of the Fairies, Oberon and Titania, reveals what happens when Nature is all upset and back-to-front.

It’s also, my eco-aware friends, a warning to those who would allow global warming to continue mucking up our seasons.

Because of their falling out:

"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 mazed world,

By their increase, now knows not which is which.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream 2.1.

Shakespeare champions the proper order of the seasons and the power of the natural world. When it is thrown into disarray, there is chaos, contagion and disease.

Not only that, but humankind finds in Winter a solidarity, a contented celebration of the turning year, knowing that Spring and re-birth will come.

Titania laments the loss of the cosiness of the season:

“The human mortals want their winter cheer:

No night is now with hymn or carol blest.”

A Midsummer Night’s Dream 2.1.

Over the festive season I had a conversation with a friend who chided Shakespeare for being a bit of a Scrooge because ‘he doesn’t write about Christmas.’ Obviously, my hackles rose. But only a bit. There are a couple of mentions in the plays, notably:

“At Christmas I no more desire a rose

Than wish a snow in May’s new-fangled mirth.”

Love’s Labours Lost 1.1.

This quote, I suggest, supports Shakespeare’s championing of the seasons and that the natural order guides mankind.

As for Christmas, well, it just wasn’t the twinkly-lights-and-tinsel-fest that currently seems to run from Halloween onwards.

Christmas as we know it only really started in the Victorian age, brought to us courtesy of Prince Albert and Charles Dickens.

Shakespeare’s Christmas would have followed the twelve days, December 25th to January 6th, with homes hung with evergreens, folks playing games, church-going and wassailing (sharing a bowl of hot cider).

I reckon Shakespeare’s sense of the warm home and community burning bright with the frosty world outside is a stronger image for him than hijacking what was, after all, a religious festival.

Love’s Labours Lost closes with a song whose last verses conjure exactly the Winter scene in which I think Shakespeare revels. Dick, Tom and Joan are traditional names of humble folk and they are engaged in honest labour around the home, Dick blowing on his cold hands, Tom bringing in wood for the fire and Joan presumably stirring some warming pottage or stew.

The milk is frozen, the blood nipped, the nose red and raw, but still the owls hoot “a merry note.” This is the cosiness of the season, the Forest of Arden’s blessing of Nature, sitting by the hearth and telling ghost stories, bringing evergreens inside, knowing that Spring will come.

Celebrate with me, then, the snow-beast that is Shakespeare’s Winter, in all its icy, deathly chill, seeking out good friends and family to gather round the fire and know that warmer days are coming.

And though we don’t really know who she is, let’s raise a cup of hot cider to greasy Joan.

“When icicles hang by the wall,

And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,

And Tom bears logs into the hall,

And milk comes frozen home in pail,

When blood is nipp’d, and ways be foul,

Then nightly sings the staring owl,

To-whit! To-who!—a merry note,

While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

… And Marian’s nose looks red and raw,

When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,

Then nightly sings the staring owl,

‘Tu-whit, tu-whoo!’—a merry note,

While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.”

Love’s Labours Lost 5.2.