TITANIA         Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,

As in revenge have sucked up from the sea

Contagious fogs, which, falling in the land,

Hath every pelting river made so proud

That they have overborne their continents.

The ox hath therefore stretched his yoke in vain,

The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn

Hath rotted ere his youth attained a beard.

The fold stands empty in the drowned field,

And crows are fatted with the murrain flock.         (2.1.88-97)

It gets worse: there they are on the beach, not dancing to the music of the wind, but rather squabbling instead, and therefore the winds, piping to us in vain—all that music, ignored and wasted—as in revenge have sucked up from the sea contagious fogs, not just sea mists, a bit of haar, but something toxic, malevolent, diseased, which, falling in the land, in blinding, soaking curtains, hath every pelting river made so proud that they have overborne their continents. The sea has come ashore in the form of fog, far more than it should, and so the rivers, even the smallest, most insignificant ones, have taken umbrage and flooded. A kind of riot or rebellion, even. Water, water everywhere, falling from the sky, rising from the rivers.

And it’s causing chaos. The ox hath therefore stretched his yoke in vain—all the labour of ploughing, of sowing, has been for nothing—the ploughman lost his sweat, his labour’s been in vain too, and the green corn hath rotted ere his youth attain a beard. The grain hasn’t ripened, hasn’t developed its beard—it’s been beaten down, rotten in the fields, pounded into the mud by the rain, the rain. (The youth also seems, in another sense, a counterpart to the ploughman, a labourer who’s lost everything before he’s even had the chance to reach maturity.) The fold stands empty in the drowned field—no sheep either, no grass, no fodder—and crows are fatted with the murrain flock. Because the sheep have sickened and died, as well as starved. It’s GRIM. And now the people are starving too, is the implication, which doesn’t even need to be made explicit in the context of the terrible weather and bad harvests and food-price riots of the mid 1590s. This is a radical speech, perhaps a bit safer because it’s being spoken by a fairy, and a woman.