What Would Shakespeare Do?

The Bard on climate change

I might be the only person in the world who holds post-graduate degrees in BOTH sustainability development and also Shakespeare studies!

Decades ago, I had the chance to combine the two, while making a short film featuring a young Keira Knightley delivering a passage from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a haunting monologue known among scholars as the weather speech:

“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, Act 2, Scene 1)

In this speech, the fairy queen Titania laments the chaos unleashed upon the natural world. Her quarrel with Oberon, the fairy king, has thrown the cosmos into disarray. The natural cycles have collapsed: seasons bleed into each other, floods ravage the land, crops rot in the field, and disease spreads. The human world suffers because nature has lost its balance…an ecological warning wrapped in iambic pentameter.

This isn't just poetic fantasy. It's startlingly prescient. Titania’s lines read today like the opening chapter of the latest IPCC report. While she speaks of fairy feuds, the deeper truth Shakespeare captures is that when powerful forces lose harmony with each other and the world, it’s the innocent who suffer. Shakespeare, with a playwright’s intuition and a prophet’s vision, understood something about climate collapse long before we had the words ‘global warming’.

Could there be a more fitting allegory for our times? In my almost 30 years of work in sustainability, I’ve used my Shakespearean background as much as my sustainability knowledge. Perhaps in today’s turbulent times, we might all benefit from Shakespeare’s extraordinary insights into the human condition.

The ‘weather’ speech is a perfect example. Titania’s words encapsulate a central idea we grapple with today: that environmental collapse is often a consequence of human conflict, pride, and neglect. The bard may not have written about carbon footprints or atmospheric chemistry, but he instinctively recognised the interconnectedness of human actions and the natural world. What modern science confirms with data, Shakespeare revealed with drama.

Throughout his work, the Earth is not just a backdrop but a character in its own right: sensitive, reactive, and essential to human fate. In King Lear, the wild storm on the heath mirrors the madness of its ageing monarch and the chaos of his fractured kingdom. In The Tempest, nature is both magical and colonised, a source of wonder and exploitation, just as it is today. Shakespeare’s plays don’t just show nature, they remind us that we are part of it.

As we look for new language to motivate climate action, we might do well to return to Shakespeare.

A Climate Speech Worthy Of A King

One of Shakespeare’s most famous speeches, and one I’ll happily recite if we meet, comes from Henry V. It is a masterclass in leadership, resilience, and courage. Delivered just before the Battle of Agincourt, the Saint Crispin’s Day speech transforms a demoralised, outnumbered army into a band of heroes.

Henry’s troops are plagued by sickness, completely outnumbered and demoralised when he says:

“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother…”

(Henry V, Act 4, Scene 3)

This is Shakespeare weaponising words to lift hearts. Henry doesn’t sugarcoat the danger; he offers no guarantees of victory or survival. What he offers is meaning. He reframes fear into honour, desperation into unity and suffering into legacy. He tells his men that this will be the moment they’ll recount for the rest of their lives. That their names will be remembered when others are forgotten:

“And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.”

(Henry V, Act 4, Scene 3)

Now imagine we had a speech like this for the climate crisis, not a grim litany of emissions and tipping points, but a rallying cry for action. One not grounded in guilt or sacrifice, but in legacy and love.

Climate change is the defining challenge of our time. It deserves speeches that stir the soul. Shakespeare knew what it takes to rally beleaguered forces in the face of overwhelming odds, and win.

Shakespeare As Climate Muse

There are so many passages and quotes I turn to for hope, inspiration and insight in these difficult days:

• “What’s past is prologue.” (The Tempest, Act 2, Scene 1)

  History has led us to this moment, but it does not bind us. The story of our species is still being written.

• “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.” (Julius Caesar, Act 1, Scene 2)

  The crisis we face is not fate. We caused it, and so we can solve it!

• “Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast.” (Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 3)

  A timely reminder that while urgency is essential, recklessness helps no one. Solutions must be just, inclusive, and enduring.

• “One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.” (Troilus and Cressida, Act 3, Scene 3)

  In climate, there is no ‘them.’ There is only us, and the planet we share.

Shakespeare knew how to connect with something deeper than logic. He spoke to ambition, to shame, to love, to fear. He showed us who we are and who we could be. And perhaps that’s the most urgent need in climate communication today, both the data and the drama.

And there is one line from Shakespeare I return to almost daily. I quote this to myself before I make a speech, before I walk into a meeting, before I try to use everything I am to inspire change;

“All things be ready, if our minds be so.”
(Henry V, Act 4, Scene 3)

I would love to hear other quotes or passages folks turn to for solace and inspiration, please do share them in comments.

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