Change can be gradual or precipitous, barely noticeable, or overwhelming. Most often, as with so many things, change lies somewhere between the two extremes.
The title line is spoken by Demetrius in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, when he awakens under the spell of the “love in idleness” flower. Although he had been pursuing Hermia at this point in the play, when he wakes with the love juice in his eyes, he sees Helena and loves her instantly.
DEMETRIUS, (waking up)
MND 3.2.140-7
O Helen, goddess, nymph, perfect, divine!
To what, my love, shall I compare thine eyne?
Crystal is muddy. O, how ripe in show
Thy lips, those kissing cherries, tempting grow!
That pure congealèd white, high Taurus’ snow,
Fanned with the eastern wind, turns to a crow
When thou hold’st up thy hand. O, let me kiss
This princess of pure white, this seal of bliss!
His love is so shockingly sudden to him that initially, as if in the aftermath of a particularly loud thunderclap, he can only define his attraction through opposition, describing how Helena’s physical attributes turn qualities like crystal and snow into their opposites when considered in comparison with her. Demetrius’ eastern wind fans the snow of the Taurus Mountains, but it might also be read as a harbinger of change to the snow, as much as Helena’s raising of her own pale hand, by contrast, demolishes the snow’s whiteness.
Culturally, the wind has long been associated with change. Former United Kingdom Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s famous speech to the Parliament of South Africa in 1960 clarified the U.K.’s changing policy to no longer block the movements towards independence of African territories that had been colonies of the British Empire. He said in part that “The wind of change is blowing through this continent. Whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact.”*
The idea of wind as an agent of change may be a very old one, and certainly predates the dissolution of the British Empire. It may stem from the birth of oceanic navigation (which may have been in its infancy around 800,000 years ago), but the concept may be even older than that as well. Human culture is replete with this idea. Here is the opening clip from the motion picture Saving Mr. Banks, about Walt Disney’s quest for the rights to the P. L. Travers series of Mary Poppins books:
Colin Farrell’s opening voice over for Saving Mr. Banks does a nice job of deliberately echoing the original moment in Disney’s Mary Poppins film:
Of course, in keeping with this blog’s focus, the question becomes whether or not Shakespeare used the idea of winds of change. The answer is yes, he did, and he did so in several instances in a number of different ways.
In the early Henry VI plays (parts 1, 2, and 3) Shakespeare made ample use of a character who represents the historical Earl of Warwick. Warwick Castle stands near to Shakespeare’s home town of Stratford upon Avon, lying some 8 miles to the northeast of Stratford in the town of Warwick.**
Back in the days when power was more often decided by use of arms than by politicians or referendums, two different branches of a single family contended for the English crown. The Lancasters, represented by a red rose, and the Yorks, represented by a white rose, struggled to dominate the monarchy in what has become known, not surprisingly, as the War of the Roses. During this struggle, Richard Neville, the 16th Earl of Warwick, became the most powerful noble of his age, and also known as Warwick the Kingmaker, partly because of the military forces he could muster, and partly because he was a strategically effective commander and administrator.
In Henry VI part 3, an argument over whether Warwick’s allegiance will abide with the Yorkist or the Lancastrian side, Warwick threatens that, if the Yorkist King Edward IV will not acknowledge him properly, then Warwick will support the Lancastrian King Henry VI with the powers at his disposal. King Edward answers him:
Sail how thou canst, have wind and tide thy friend,
3 Henry VI 5.1.54-8
This hand, fast wound about thy coal-black hair,
Shall, whiles thy head is warm and new cut off,
Write in the dust this sentence with thy blood:
“Wind-changing Warwick now can change no more.”
In this instance, Shakespeare’s ‘wind changing’ carries a double sense. King Edward implies not only that Warwick can change the wind with his power, but also that Warwick himself changes with the wind, and that his allegiance is changeable and unreliable.
More oracular winds also appears in Shakespeare. In Henry IV part 1, King Henry IV and his son, Prince Hal (who later becomes Henry V), find themselves pitted against rebel forces near Shrewsbury. Facing the coming battle, King Henry and Hal have the following exchange:
KING
1 Henry IV 5.1.1-9
How bloodily the sun begins to peer
Above yon bulky hill. The day looks pale
At his distemp’rature.
PRINCE The southern wind
Doth play the trumpet to his purposes,
And by his hollow whistling in the leaves
Foretells a tempest and a blust’ring day.
KING
Then with the losers let it sympathize,
For nothing can seem foul to those that win.
Again, there is a dual sense here, with the wind presaging both rougher weather and the coming battle which, in a sense, merge into one future–a future replete with blood and conflict. The day presents itself arrayed for battle, with King Henry’s bloody sun and bulky hill led on by Prince Hal’s trumpeting wind. The scene also marks an initial farewell between Hal and Falstaff, and one that foreshadows Prince Hal’s later repudiation of Sir John after the former becomes king at the end of 2 Henry IV:
FALSTAFF Hal, if thou see me down in the battle and
1 Henry IV 5.2.122-42
bestride me, so; ’tis a point of friendship.
PRINCE Nothing but a colossus can do thee that friendship.
Say thy prayers, and farewell.
FALSTAFF I would ’twere bedtime, Hal, and all well.
PRINCE Why, thou owest God a death. (He exits.)
FALSTAFF ’Tis not due yet. I would be loath to pay Him
before His day. What need I be so forward with
Him that calls not on me? Well, ’tis no matter.
Honor pricks me on. Yea, but how if honor prick me
off when I come on? How then? Can honor set to a
leg? No. Or an arm? No. Or take away the grief of a
wound? No. Honor hath no skill in surgery, then?
No. What is honor? A word. What is in that word
“honor”? What is that “honor”? Air. A trim reckoning.
Who hath it? He that died o’ Wednesday. Doth
he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. ’Tis insensible,
then? Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the
living? No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it. Therefore,
I’ll none of it. Honor is a mere scutcheon. And
so ends my catechism.
(He exits.)
And here is the rift, of course, between Hal and Falstaff. For all his revelry, Hal has a deep and abiding understanding of honour. To Falstaff, it is only a word. Only ‘air’. This is not the moving wind of change. Falstaff’s honor is mere rhetorical paint, dead air that hangs still and empty in the realm of human experience. There is no life, no animation to Falstaff’s honour. His air is synonymous with emptiness. It is not the vacancy that looks expectantly after Cleopatra’s recent presence. Rather, it is a blank, a vacuum in human conception.
Yet, even Falstaff’s empty honour, his inversion of wind, brings change, just as the examples above tend to do. Demetrius’ renewed love for Helena, King Edward’s doomsaying against Warwick, Prince Hal’s winds of war that trumpet against rebellion led against his father–all of these bring about significant changes that precipitate the resolution of their respective plays. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Henry VI part 3, and Henry IV part 1 would not be the same without these pivotal moments.
The winds of change may bring so much, sometimes even a sense of vague forboding in the face of igniting passion:
Here, the sandstorm outside the vehicle again reflects a complicated array of changing circumstances, including the growing tensions that will lead to the Second World War, and the growing passion and emotional confusion of the various characters in the face of enormous changes in their worlds.
The changing wind in drama and literature is such a trope that there are far too many examples to list. Still, it can be enlightening to think about such different examples as Inherit the Wind, the 1955 play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee that used a dramtization of the Scopes ‘monkey’ trial (a trial over the legality of teaching evolution in schools in the conservative Christian southern United States in 1925) to parallel McCarthyism. There is The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, the 1908 children’s book celebrating life and nature that has been adapted to stage and film many times.
As the final words of this blog post are being typed, the wind is literally howling around outside as the first big winter storm of the season has reached the place where the ghost currently tries to rest. Big winds. Not far from the ocean. One wonders what changes, if any, this wind might bring. One can only hope, whatever changes may be on the way, that they will be kind and good, and the ghost wishes the same to every one of you as well.
*A copy of Macmillan’s speech may be read here: http://www.africanrhetoric.org/pdf/J%20%20%20Macmillan%20-%20%20the%20wind%20of%20change.pdf
**The original Warwick Castle was built by William the Conqueror in 1068, and was rebuilt in stone in the 12th century. The formidable castle was later fortified again, and it was used as a stronghold and then a country house until Tussaud’s (the famous waxwork tourist attraction company) bought it in 1978, to run it as a tourist site. The impressive castle remains a major tourist attraction in the Midlands today, and is well worth a visit as an intact example of mostly 14th century castle architecture.