From the balcony scene in “Romeo and Juliet” to the mystical forests of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” the moon is a recurring motif in Shakespeare’s poetry and plays.
Often used symbolically to represent various themes such as love, madness, and the passage of time, join us as we embark on a poetic journey through the bard’s eloquent musings, where each quote serves as a shimmering reflection of the moon’s eternal allure and the depths of human experience illuminated beneath its gentle glow.
The Good
“Sweet Moon, I thank thee for thy sunny beams;
I thank thee, Moon, for shining now so bright;
For, by thy gracious, golden, glittering gleams,
I trust to take of truest Thisby sight.”
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Act 5, Scene 1)
“Four days will quickly steep themselves in night;
Four nights will quickly dream away the time:
And then the moon – like to a silver bow
New-bent in heaven – shall behold the night
Of our solemnities.”
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Act 1, Scene 1)
“Let us be Diana’s foresters, gentlemen of the shade, minions of the moon, and let men say we be men of good government, being governed, as the sea is, by our noble and chaste mistress the moon, under whose countenance we steal.”
Henry IV (Part 1: Act 1 Scene 2)
“How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here will we sit and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.”
The Merchant of Venice (Act 5, Scene 1)
“The moon shines bright. In such a night as this,
When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees
And they did make no noise, in such a night
Troilus methinks mounted the Troyan walls
And sighed his soul toward the Grecian tents,
Where Cressid lay that night.”
The Merchant of Venice (Act 5, Scene 1)
“Lady, by yonder blessèd moon I vow, That tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops—”
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Act 2, Scene 1)
“Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour Draws on apace. Four happy days bring in Another moon. But oh, methinks how slow This old moon wanes! She lingers my desires, Like to a stepdame or a dowager Long withering out a young man’s revenue.”
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Act 1, Scene 1)
“As true as steel, as plantage to the moon,
As sun to day, at turtle to her mate,
As iron to adamant, as earth to centre.”
Troilus and Cressida (Act 3, Scene 2)
The Bad
“O, swear not by the moon, the fickle moon, the inconstant moon, that monthly changes in her circle orb, Lest that thy love prove likewise variable”
Romeo and Juliet (Act 2, Scene 2)
“It is the very error of the moon,
She comes more near the earth than she was wont,
And makes men mad.”
Othello (Act 5, Scene 2)
“The moon’s an arrant thief,
And her pale fire she snatches from the sun.”
Timon of Athens (Act 4, Scene 3)
“As the moon does, by wanting light to give:
But then renew I could not, like the moon;
There were no suns to borrow of.”
Timon of Athens (Act 4, scene 3)
“A good heart, Kate, is the sun and the moon— or rather the sun and not the moon, for it shines bright and never changes, but keeps his course truly.”
King Henry (Act 5, Scene 2)
“Then God be blessed, it is the blessed sun,
But sun it is not when you say it is not,
And the moon changes even as your mind.
What you will have it named, even that it is,
And so it shall be still for Katherine.”
The Taming of the Shrew (Act 4, Scene 5)
“All springs reduce their currents to mine eyes, That I, being governed by the watery moon, May send forth plenteous tears to drown the world.”
Richard III (Act 2, Scene 2)
“Swear his thought over
By each particular star in heaven and
By all their influences, you may as well
Forbid the sea for to obey the moon
As or by oath remove or counsel shake
The fabric of his folly, whose foundation
Is pil’d upon his faith and will continue
The standing of his body.”
Winter’s Tale (Act 1, Scene 2)
“Thou sayest well, and it holds well too, for the fortune of us that are the moon’s men doth ebb and flow like the sea, being governed, as the sea is, by the moon.”
Henry IV (Part 1: Act 1 Scene 2)
The Ugly
“We make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and stars, as if we were villains on necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers, by spherical predominance.”
King Lear (Act 1, Scene 2)
“The moon, the governess of floods,”
Pericles, Prince of Tyre (Act 1, Scene 1)
“O moon, why dost thou shine upon the cursed and loathed world?”
Titus Andronicus (Act 5, Scene 3)
“The man in the moon’s too slow”
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Act 5, Scene 1)
“The bay-trees in our country are all withered,
And meteors fright the fixèd stars of heaven.
The pale-faced moon looks bloody on the earth,
And lean-looked prophets whisper fearful change.”
Richard II (Act 2, Scene 4)
“But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun. Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon, Who is already sick and pale with grief, That thou, her maid, art far more fair than she.”
Romeo and Juliet (Act 2, Scene 2)