'The Human Mortals Want Their Winter Cheer'

Nige notes that his part of England is enduring a “relentlessly soggy February.” So is Houston. No thunder storms but much Seattle-style saturation. I saw cars abandoned in flooded stretches of road on the way to work Monday morning. Everything drips. Like Nige, I noticed a butterfly last week during a brief sunny respite. It was a Monarch – a species reputed to occasionally have a nine-month lifespan -- flitting about the flowerless side of our house. That evening turned cold and rainy, and the butterfly’s survival seems uncertain. To his weather report, past and present, Nige appends a passage from Act II, Scene 1 of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Titania is speaking:

“The fold stands empty in the drownèd field,

And crows are fatted with the murrain flock.

The nine men’s morris is filled up with mud,

And the quaint mazes in the wanton green

For lack of tread are undistinguishable.”

In short, lots of rain has fallen. Shakespeare is less interested in precipitation than in its effects. “Murrain flock” means a dead herd. Murrain has a cluster of related meanings, including (according to the OED): “Any virulent infectious disease of cattle or other livestock, such as anthrax, rinderpest, or babesiosis (redwater fever).” Rotting livestock meant economic hardship and disease. The word came to be synonymous with plague and pestilence.

In previous readings, I lazily took “nine men’s morris” to be some variation on the traditional English morris dance. Rather, it’s a board game with two players, “each with a number (usually nine) of pebbles, wood or metal discs, pegs, or pins.” The OED cites Shakespeare’s use. The origin of morris is described as “uncertain” but my earlier assumption may not have been entirely wrong: “perhaps with reference to a supposed resemblance between the counters on the board and patterns made by Morris dancers.” Titiana’s subsequent lines are not quoted by Nige:

“The human mortals want their winter cheer;

No night is now with hymn or carol blessed.

Therefore the moon, the governess of floods,

Pale in her anger washes all the air

That rheumatic diseases do abound.”

“Governess of floods” refers to the tides on Earth caused by the moon’s gravitational pull. Titiana gives us a picture of post-Christmas winter in the northern latitudes, though unlikely to be taking place in Greece, the play’s nominal setting. Tis not the season to be jolly. When I lived in upstate New York, I could always expect a late-February thaw, lasting perhaps a day or two, followed by snow and freezing temperatures. If you were in the woods you could smell the earth for the first time since the previous spring. In Houston, catkins are falling from the oaks – an early sign of the season turning. Scholars tell us the rains in England were notably heavy in May, June and July 1594, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream was written in 1595-96.