As someone who is still wearing her winter woollies at almost the end of May, I have never poured such endorsement upon that old adage. As I write this however, the sunshine pours in the window and I believe we may be seeing the beginning of summer, at last. Whatever, it is interesting to note that summer hasn’t always been the red-hot demon that we have come to experience it as, this past number of years. For example, consider this extract from Titania’s speech to Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream:
Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,
As in revenge, have suck'd up from the sea
Contagious fogs; which falling in the land
Have every pelting river made so proud
That they have overborne their continents:
The ox hath therefore stretch'd his yoke in vain,
The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn
Hath rotted ere his youth attain'd a beard;
The fold stands empty in the drowned field,
And crows are fatted with the murrion flock;
The nine men's morris is fill'd up with mud,
And the quaint mazes in the wanton green
For lack of tread are undistinguishable:
The human mortals want their winter here;
No night is now with hymn or carol blest:
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:
But do read this speech from Act 2, Scene 1 of the play. Experts believe that Shakespeare and his peers may have been experiencing the rougher end of the Little Ice Age, a period of cooler weather that covered Europe from about the mid-1300’s to the mid-1800’s. It was that time when, in winter, bonfires were lit upon the frozen Thames and skating parties abounded. Great fun, I am sure, but this inclemency extended to cooler, wetter summers. But the sun is still shining and I intend to make my first salad of the season. And my winter jackets, etc, may find their way to the back of the wardrobe, after all.
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