1/9 What if some of Shakespeare's most famous works were prescient parables about climate change? A look at 'Hamlet', 'Macbeth", 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', and 'King Henry IV, Part 2' through the lens of anthropogenic global warming. First thread of four, this one on 'Hamlet'.

2/9 Hamlet is the heir to the Danish throne whose father, the King, has been murdered by Hamlet's uncle (the King's brother). Not content with fratricide, the uncle then marries the King's widow (Hamlet's mother) and usurps the throne.

3/9 The dramatic tension in 'Hamlet' stems from the hero's attempt to resolve this horrifying and unnatural situation, and the tragedy stems from Hamlet's fatal character flaw – he is a chronic ditherer, and delays taking action time and again until it is too late.

4/9 One of the key passages in the play, and one of the most famous speeches in all literature, is the "What a piece of work is a man!" speech, but the most interesting part of this speech for our purposes is not the part about man but the part about the firmament (atmosphere):

5/9 "It goes so heavily with my disposition that this most excellent canopy, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire,—why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours." (Hamlet: Act II, scene ii)

6/9 Hamlet sees the sky above him as "a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours" owing to the depression brought on by the unnatural murder of his father by his uncle and his mother's equally unnatural marriage to her husband's murderer.

7/9 And the tragedy consists in Hamlet's delay in restoring the natural order of things by deposing his uncle – in other words, his delay in dealing with the "foul and pestilent congregation of vapours" so as to restore the "majestical roof fretted with golden fire"

8/9 The result of Hamlet's delay and inaction – at least until it's too late – is that the death of his usurping uncle comes at the cost of his own life, that of his lover, his lover's brother, his lover's father, and his own mother. TLDR: Hamlet and all those closest to him die.

9/9 MORAL: If we want to avoid the tragedy of a climate catastrophe, we need to deal with our own "foul and pestilent congregation of vapours" – i.e. the record high levels of GHG concentrations in the atmosphere – before it is too late.