31 search results for coal in Shakespeare investigated for common themes

1. Poetic Underground Resistance to an
Unstoppable Energy Transition: the
31 search results for “coal” in all of
Shakespeare’s works
“A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives forever”
―John F. Kennedy
Today it is commonplace to be conversant with fossil-fuel-related concepts such as “climate
change”, “carbon footprint”, and “non-renewable resources”. Furthermore, we may think that our
dependence on fossil fuels is, like these concepts, a relatively recent phenomenon that occurred with the
rise of the “automobile age” in the post-war era. For those with a longer view of history, the British
Industrial Revolution, which is usually dated to around 1800 is often seen as the ‘beginning’ of
dependence on fossil fuels. In any case, most people certainly don’t associate Shakespeare’s lifetime
(1564-1616) with fossil fuels.
However, the first country in the world to actually transition from an economy based primarily on
solar energy (i.e. wood) to an economy based primarily on fossil fuels was Britain and it had completed
this transition by 1603 (Freese, 30)1, the last year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I; Shakespeare was 39
years old, still a relatively young man. The fossil fuel in question was coal, a resource which was
plentiful in the northern part of Britain. J.U. Nef, in The Rise of the British Coal Industry, calls the
second half of the sixteenth century “an industrial revolution” (Weiman, 164) and historical data
confirm that this period was indeed an early industrial revolution:
coal mining alone developed so rapidly that deliveries to London increased
more than three-fold between 1580 and 1591(1580:11,000 tons);
1591-2:35,000 tons). Shipments of coal from Newcastle grew from 33,000 tons
in 1563-4 to 163,000 tons in 1597-98. On the eve of the Civil War, Britain was
mining three times as much coal as the rest of Europe put together. (Weiman,
164)
Despite coal becoming more and more ubiquitous and economically necessary as London’s
population doubled between 1550 and 1600 (reaching 200,000) (Freese, 33), coal suffered from a bad
image (much as fossil fuels still have a negative image today) because of its thick polluting smoke, and
1 “Before the end of Queen Elizabeth’s reign in 1603 coalhad replaced wood as the primary fuel in
England.” (Freese 33)

2. in 1578 Queen Elizabeth herself found herself “’greatly grieved and annoyed with the taste and smoke
of sea-coles’”, arising from nearby breweries using coal to make beer. (Freese, 24) In 1603, the year
before Shakespeare wrote Measure for Measure and Othello, coal pollution in London was so
horrendous that a man named “Hugh Platt, the son of a wealthy London brewer, tried to help the city out
with a book titled A new cheape, and delicate Fire of Cole-balles, wherein Seacole is by mixture of other
combustible bodies both sweetened and multiplied.(Freese 34) In Cole-balles:
He noted that coal smoke was already damaging the buildings and plants of
London and he does not treat the problem as a particularly new one. His
patented technique…involved making briquettes of coal and soil, which he
thought, inexplicably, would make the smoke less problematic. (Freese 34)
That Platt doesn’t view the problem of coal smoke as new is “in line with the fact that the use of
coal had been increasing, among the poor at east, for some time. It would seem that the acceptance of
the fuel by the nobility merely followed a change that was well underway in the bulk of the population. ”
(Brimblecombe 31) In Shakespeare’s era, therefore, coal was largely a fuel for the steadily rising
numbers of people who could not afford wood:
The rich in London tried to avoid using coal, still despised for its smoke, as
long as they could. It was said in 1630 that thirty years earlier ‘the nice dames
of London would not come into any house or room where sea coals were
burned, nor willingly at of the meat that was either sod or roasted with sea coal
fire’. Within a few years, though, the nice dames and nice gents had succumbed.
By the second decade of the 1600s, coal was widely used in the homes of the
rich as well as of the poor. (Freese, 33)2
However, despite the ever increasing dependence on coal during Shakespeare’s London (to the point
that it had superseded wood as the number one fuel for the nation by the time he was 39 years old), and
despite widespread public dislike of its smoke, his works are not commonly associated with coal or
industrialization. After all, in his plays, some famous settings such as the Scottish heath or the forest of
Arden are obviously places in nature where coal mining and industry would have no place. Other
settings, such as Verona, Venice, Illyria, and Elsinore are presented as spaces which are the preserves of
wealthy elites, whose fanciful concerns, however tragic or comical, never include worrying about the
offensive smell and taste of coal smoke or the high price of wood. Moreover, he just doesn’t seem to
address coal overtly in his plays.
Yet it would be a huge error to assume that just because Shakespeare doesn’t overtly address coal in
his works that therefore he doesn’t address it at all. He may be addressing it covertly, for one. But why
would he do such a thing?
2 “the nice dames….” quotation is from A History of Coal Mining in Great Britain. 1882, by Robert
Galloway.

3. There is a link between cultural values and energy sources, hinted at above by the fact that “fine
dames” would not enter houses which were heated by coal in 1600, but accepted coal fires in their own
houses widely by 1630. This implies that an artist who openly ‘fights’ a new powerful energy source
would get nowhere fast since “a qualitative estimate of the cultural values that must be adopted or
abandoned is seldom articulated as such” when “societies are formulating strategies as they consider
their options for energy sources” (Lord, 5). This aspect of a society to not to ‘articulate’ or comment on
the passing of cultural values that must fall by the wayside as useful new energy sources are embraced
(out of desperation) is hinted at again in the remark that “The history of energy is the secret history of
industrialization” (Rolf Sieferle quoted in Lord, 5, my emphasis). Yet energy transitions profoundly
impact culture and may have had a deep impact on Shakespeare too, possibly sending his true
allegiances underground. Barry Lord, in Art & Energy: How Culture Changes, notes that “the effects of
energy transition on aesthetic culture is…diverse. While in some cases, it may directly affect the content
of the works of art or design, changes in our energy sources also bring with them cultural values that
must be prioritized and others suppressed”. (Lord, 6) Instead of suppression, Shakespeare may have
opted for camouflage, which appears like suppression.
The possibility exists that Shakespeare recognized that the new cultural and social values linked to
the energy transition from the sun to coal occurring during his lifetime were to be one day supplanted by
other ones as coal, a mined, non-renewable fuel source, would be one day supplanted by the more
durable and long-lasting sun. Thus, though he doesn’t mention an energy transition directly, Michael
Bristol points to the way that Shakespeare’s works “articulate values more durable than those which
circulate in current markets”:
Shakespeare’s authority is linked to the capacity of his works to
represent the complexity of social time and value in successor cultures
of early modern England. One of the crucial features of these successor
cultures is the way that individuals and institutions must constantly
adapt to the exigencies of a market economy. Our extended dialogue
with Shakespeare’s works has been one of the important ways to
articulate values more durable than those which circulate in current
markets. (Bristol, xii) (emphasis mine)
Coal may have been one of the main reasons for the birth of market economy in the first place. In
the background is the notion that though, certainly, energy is an industry, “it is not an industry like all
the others” (Lord, 1):
Energy is fundamental because it is the industry that produces
the capacity for all other industries to do their work. That is why the
cultural values that come with each source of energy affect all of us,

4. wherever we are and whatever we do. Without energy, neither our
industries nor our cultures can continue” (Lord, 2).
With its special and fundamental place in society, then, energy can be expected to be a sort of
powerful ‘king’ which can command silence even from its enemies, or as Lord puts it “the values that
accompany our adoption of alternate energy sources become inherent in our cultures, usually without
acknowledgement or debate” (Lord, 5). But the Elizabethan popular theater, a threshold or liminal place
on the edge of the city was a bohemian space of subversion, where addressing a forbidden issue could
be done if it was disguised somewhat. And theater was the perfect place for disguises.
But this paper is not about the real possibility that Shakespeare addressed coal covertly. Instead, in
this paper, my intention is to examine the 31 instances3 in Shakespeare’s works where the word “coal”
is used overtly. We know that Shakespeare was living and working in London during a time of coal
smoke pollution, in an era when people such as Hugh Platt were trying and failing to mitigate the
pollution from coal smoke even as coal production and consumption both boomed. Then, as indeed now,
it was a controversial fuel and looking at places where it occurs within Shakespeare’s works may bring
us some historical perspective on his feelings or associations with the issue of coal. Thirty-one instances
is not an insignificant amount. (“Shoe” also appears 31 times; “deer” appears 40 times; “sky” appears 60
times, to give some reference points. Opensourceshakespeare.com was used for all text searches.) The
related word “collier” is used three times in his works and I will discuss these instances too.
In Shakespeare’s works, coal is usually, but not always, presented as a figurative image, not as a
concrete object available to the characters to use or burn for heat. A study of these images is highly
instructive as they show a prevailing tendency on the part of Shakespeare to use coal as metaphor for
burning hatred, lust, enmity, wars and death; the vast majority of the instances have extremely negative
connotations or denotations.
The 31 SearchResults for“coal”
Starting off with Act IV of Coriolanus (1607-8), Menenius’ speech in scene vi is extremely
interesting:
Menenius: Here come the clusters
And is Aufidius with him? You are they
That made the air unwholesome, when you cast
Your stinking greasy caps in hooting at
Coriolanus’ exile. Now he’s coming,
3 I’m only leaving out three that are in Titus Andronicus since scholars think that
Shakespeare didn’t write Titus Andronicus by himself.

5. And not a hair upon a soldier’s head
Which will not prove a whip. As many coxcombs
As you threw caps will tumble down,
And pay you for your voices. ‘Tis no matter;
If he could burn us all into one coal, we have deserv’d it. (IV.vi.128-38)
Menenius is addressing a “troop of Citizens” in the above speech. Notably, seven lines before the
word “coal” there is a reference to “unwholesome air” and even an accusation: “You are they that made
the air unwholesome…” The action that brought about this ‘unwholesome air’ is a group action to
release something smelly and greasy (in a way similar therefore to coal smoke and soot) into the air. The
whole mood is sour, accusatory and even conveys the impression of self-hatred.
Also earlier in Coriolanus, we see another use of the word ‘coal’; this time Coriolanus is addressing
a group of “mutinous citizens”:
Caius Martius: He that will give good words to thee will flatter beneath abhorring.
What would you have, you curs, that like neither peace nor war? The one affrights
you,
The other makes you proud. He that trusts to you,
Where he should find you lions, finds you hares;
Where foxes, geese. You are no surer, no
Than is the coal of fire upon the ice… (I.i.167-173)
This speech is haughty, negative, and disdainful. The use of the word “coal” is an anachronism.
Therefore, it could be expected to ‘stick out’ a bit in performance. The coal here gives a sense of
vulnerability and weakness.
In Act 5 of the same play, Menenius addresses Sicinius and Brutus with these sarcastic, caustic
lines, which are also an accusation:
Menenius: Why so; you have made good work!
A pair of tribunes that have wrack’d for Rome
To make coals cheap! A noble memory! (V.i.15-7)
Here, “to make coals cheap” is a metaphor for “appease the crowd”, since Brutus and Sicinius have
worked against Coriolanus on behalf of the plebeians. These lines are bitter, harsh and full of
recriminations.
Moving on to Act Five from 2 King Henry VI (1591):
Young Clifford: Shame and confusion! All is on the rout,

6. Fear frames disorder, and disorder wounds
Where it should guard. O war, thou son of hell
Whom angry heavens do make their minister,
Throw in the frozen bosoms of our part
Hot coals of vengeance! (V.iii.31-36)
Young Clifford will, a few lines later, spot the body of his dead father and vow revenge on the House of
York. The mood of the whole speech is one of enormous rage. The coal is burning hot, reflecting the
speaker’s hatred.
The same play has another instance of the word “coal” in Act II when Simpcox is exposed for
falsely claiming that his congenital blindness has been miraculously healed at St. Albans.
Duke of Gloucester: Why, that's well said. What colour is my gown of?
Simpcox: Black, forsooth: coal-black as jet.
Henry VI: Why, then, thou know'st what colour jet is of? (II.i.109-11)
His knowledge of “jet” belies his claim to have been born blind (and later his lies are exposed beyond a
doubt), so the word “forsooth” that comes before “coal-black” is a bit ironic as the man is a liar.
Next, let’s look at King John (1594-6):
Lewis: …..Your breath first kindled the dead coal of wars
Between this chastis’d kingdom and myself,
And brought in matter that should feed this fire;
And now ‘tis far too huge to be blown out…(V.ii.78-86)
The mood here is sad, resigned, and also a bit ominous. ‘Coal’ is placed near the words ‘dead’ and wars’,
for a particularly heavy, negative effect.
King John has one more instance:
Arthur: No, in good sooth; the fire is dead with grief,
Being create for comfort, to be us’d
In undeserv’d extremes. See else yourself,
There is no malice in this burning coal;
The breath of heaven hath blown his spirit out,
And strewn repentant ashes on his head. (V.ii.105-110)
In this case, the coal is a real object, not a figurative one. The mood is one of danger since Arthur’s
life hangs in the balance throughout the scene. Phrases such as ‘dead with grief’, ‘blown his spirit out’

7. and ‘repentant ashes’ contribute to the somber tone.
Next, in Richard II (1595):
King Richard: ….
Tell thou the lamentable tale of me
And send the hearers weeping to their beds:
For why, the senseless brands will sympathize
The heavy accent of thy moving tongue
And in compassion weep the fire out;
And some will mourn in ashes, some coal-black,
For the deposing of a rightful king. (V.i.35-50)
The mood is sad and resigned. Words like “lamentable”, “griefs”, “woeful” and many others
contribute to the palpable sadness.
In a speech by Richard in 3 Henry VI (1590-1):
Richard: I cannot weep; for all my body's moisture
Scarce serves to quench my furnace-burning heart:
Nor can my tongue unload my heart's great burthen;
For selfsame wind that I should speak withal
Is kindling coals that fires all my breast,
And burns me up with flames that tears would quench.
To weep is to make less the depth of grief:
Tears then for babes; blows and revenge for me
Richard, I bear thy name; I'll venge thy death,
Or die renowned by attempting it. (II.i.79-88)
Once again, we see a mood of anger, with the speaker vowing revenge.
In the same play, another instance of the word “coal” occurs:
King Edward: Sail how thou canst, have wind and tide thy friend,
This hand wound around thy coal-black hair,
Shall, whiles they head is warm and new cut-off,
Write in the dust this sentence with thy blood:
“Wind-changing Warwick now can change no more!” (V.i.53-7)
This time, the mood is threatening and ominous with the image of the “new cut-off” head adding a
macabre touch.

8. In Henry VIII (1612-3), Queen Katherine first reproaches Cardinal Wolsey for moving against her at
the court: “for it is you/ Have blown this coal betwixt my lord and me―which God’s dew quench!”
(II.iv.78-80) then Wolsey uses the same expression to refute her accusation: “You charge me that I have
blown this coal. I do deny it.” (II.iv.93-4) Here the mood is contentious and argumentative.
The phrase ‘carry coals’ appears in Romeo and Juliet (1595-6) and Henry V (1599). In Romeo and
Juliet, the first line of the first scene of the first act is “Gregory, on my word, we won’t carry coals”. In
Henry V, the boy says "Nym and Bardolph are sworn brothers in filching, and in Calais they stole a
fire-shovel: I knew by that piece of service the men would carry coals" (III.ii.44-7) To ‘carry coals’
means ‘to put up with insults’, owing to the fact that carrying coals was low-status work. The boy has a
low opinion of Nym and Bardolph, and accuses them of “villainy”. Meanwhile, in Romeo and Juliet, the
first scene of the first act contains a tense fight.
In Henry V, Bardolph gets linked to coals again in Act III scene iv:
Fluellen: The perdition of the adversary hath been very great,
reasonable great. Marry, for my part, I think the Duke hath never lost a
man, but one that is to be executed for robbing a church, one Bardolph,
if you Mejesty know the man. His face is all bubukles, and whelks,
and knobs and flames ‘a fire, and his lips blow at his nose, and it is
like a coal of fire, sometimes plue and sometimes red, but his nose is
executed and his fire’s out. (III.vi.98-106)
Here, the word “coal” appears in a passage that conveys the sad news about Bardolph’s execution.
The only ‘festive comedy’ to contain the word “coal” is The Merchant of Venice (1596-7):
Jessica: I shall be sav’d by my husband, he hath made me a Christian!
Launcelot: Truly, the more to blame he; we were Christians enow before,
e’en as many as could well live one by another. This making of Christians
will raise the price of hogs. If we all grow to be pork eaters, we shall not
shortly have a rasher on the coals for money. (III.v.19-26)
Whereas Jessica’s lines imply a starry-eyed attitude towards her religious conversion, Launcelot, a
fool figure, undercuts her idealism with a joke about the price of pork going up in the face of mass
conversions. As this play is a comedy, his lines can just be taken lightly, but since fool figures are
licensed to tell the truth disguised as nonsense, we can also peer down more deeply into his material
concerns and see some heavier issues raised by the specter of fossil fuels: over-population, resource
shortages, and market disruptions and discontinuities, issues still with us as we are still very dependent
on fossil fuels.
In The Winter’s Tale (1610-1), coal is mentioned once:

9. Leontes: Stars, stars
And all eyes else dead coals! Fear thou no wife;
I’ll have no wife, Paulina.
Here the mood is somber and penitent. In light of the fact that the word “coal” appears in proximity
to topics of death, executions, funerals, mourning, a dead body, and so forth in other passages with the
word “coal”, is interesting that the word “dead” appears beside the word “coals”.
Troilus and Cressida (1601-2) is the only other Shakespearean comedy (besides The Merchant of
Venice and The Merry Wives of Windsor) in which the word “coals” appears. In this scene, Ulysses is
bitterly complaining about Achilles’ arrogant behavior:
Ulysses: O Agamemnon, let it not be so!
We'll consecrate the steps that Ajax makes
When they go from Achilles: shall the proud lord
That bastes his arrogance with his own seam
…….As amply titled as Achilles is,
By going to Achilles:
That were to enlard his fat-already pride
And add more coals to Cancer when he burns
….(II.iii.182-199)
Ulysses harshly criticizes Achilles and it’s interesting that the image of fat appears twice: “Shall the
proud lord that bastes his arrogance with his own seam” (seam=fat, lard) and “enlard his fat-already
pride”. The image of fat cooking (“bastes”) plus “more coals” being “added” makes a highly unpleasant
possible image of sputtering fat cooking and burning. The image of fat or lard is, in any case, viscerally
unpleasant. The whole mood is bitter and contemptuous, with Achilles’ behavior represented by Ulysses
as reprehensible.
Next, let’s look at The Rape of Lucrece (1593-4):
But some untimely thought did instigate
His all-too-timeless speed, if none of those:
His honour, his affairs, his friends, his state,
Neglected all, with swift intent he goes
To quench the coal which in his liver glows.
O rash false heat, wrapp'd in repentant cold,
Thy hasty spring still blasts, and ne'er grows old! (43-9)
The image of “the coal” glowing in Tarquin’s liver is truly horrifying, technically an image of a
disease but of course, it is meant to be taken metaphorically as a sign of a mental or a ‘mind-body’ issue,
which is making him systemically unable to choose a better way than raping Lucrece. Besides this

10. appalling image of a disease, there are many words with negative or bad connotations: “untimely”,
“neglected”, “rash”, “false”, “repentant”, and “hasty” and “blasts”. In addition, the coal’s “rash false
heat” is compared to a “hasty spring” that, though it “still blasts”, dismayingly, “never grows old”. This
is truly a horror scene featuring a hint or aspect of the undead, better known as a ‘zombie’.
The next instance features the word “coal-black” with coal modifying the color black:
'The crow may bathe his coal-black wings in mire,
And unperceived fly with the filth away;
But if the like the snow-white swan desire,
The stain upon his silver down will stay.
Poor grooms are sightless night, kings glorious day:
Gnats are unnoted wheresoe'er they fly,
But eagles gazed upon with every eye. (1009-1015)
Once again, there are many words in the stanza with negative connotations: “mire”, “filth”, “stain”,
“poor”, and “sightless”. By placing such negative words in the same stanza as the word “coal”, the word
coal becomes associated with these negative qualities.
The next example is particularly interesting because it partially echoes The Winter’s Tale:
A thousand lamentable objects there,
In scorn of nature, art gave lifeless life:
Many a dry drop seem'd a weeping tear,
Shed for the slaughter'd husband by the wife:
The red blood reek'd, to show the painter's strife;
And dying eyes gleam'd forth their ashy lights,
Like dying coals burnt out in tedious nights.
Again, the mood is very negative, with many words in proximity that have sad meanings:
“lamentable”, “lifeless”, “weeping”, “slaughter’d”, “reek’d”, “dying”, “burnt out”, “tedious”. The
images of corpses, suggested by the red blood and dying eyes, are truly ghastly.
Venus and Adonis (1592-3) has four instances of the word “coal”. The first one occurs in the sixth
stanza:
Over one arm the lusty courser's rein,
Under her other was the tender boy,
Who blush'd and pouted in a dull disdain,
With leaden appetite, unapt to toy;
She red and hot as coals of glowing fire,
He red for shame, but frosty in desire. (31-36)

11. The image of Venus violently kidnapping Adonis and taking him away on her horse is a selfish and
lustful act. “Dull disdain”, “leaden appetite”, “red for shame”, “frosty in desire” are all phrases that
appear in proximity to “coals” and each one carries its own very negative connotation.
The next stanza to contain “coal” appears about one-fourth of the way into the poem:
He sees her coming, and begins to glow,
Even as a dying coal revives with wind,
And with his bonnet hides his angry brow;
Looks on the dull earth with disturbed mind,
Taking no notice that she is so nigh,
For all askance he holds her in his eye. (337-342)
Here, Adonis only wants Venus to leave him alone. Once again, many words with sad meanings are
seen in this stanza: “dying”, “angry”, “dull”, “disturbed”, and “askance”.
The next stanza to contain “coal” appears eight stanzas later:
Thus she replies: 'Thy palfrey, as he should,
Welcomes the warm approach of sweet desire:
Affection is a coal that must be cool'd;
Else, suffer'd, it will set the heart on fire:
The sea hath bounds, but deep desire hath none;
Therefore no marvel though thy horse be gone. (385-390)
Venus is asking Adonis to behave more like an animal, only interested in copulation, and less like a
human being, with more complex emotions. Coal therefore could be seen to be associated with the ‘base’
and animalistic qualities of human beings. Furthermore, Venus’ warning to Adonis has the air of a veiled
threat.
The final stanza with the word “coal” occurs near the middle of the poem:
'Look, the world's comforter, with weary gait,
His day's hot task hath ended in the west;
The owl, night's herald, shrieks, 'Tis very late;'
The sheep are gone to fold, birds to their nest,
And coal-black clouds that shadow heaven's light
Do summon us to part and bid good night. (529-534)
The sun (“the world’s comforter”) sets and finally, as night sets in, the stage is set for the sexual
consummation of the coercive relationship between Venus and Adonis. Words like “weary”, “ended”,

12. “shrieks”, and “shadow” set a dire mood of resignation and gloom.
The next two instances are not just “coal”, but the hyphenated word “sea-coal”, which was another
word used for coal. Initially, the name was given “because the North Sea actually carved coal from
exposed outcrops and yielded it up onto the beaches with sand” (Freese, 21). However, by the 13th
century, these easily accessible sources were mostly exhausted, and underground extraction by mining
became necessary.4 By the time of Henry VIII, it was understood that the term “sea-coal” was due to the
fact that coal was shipped to London by sea.5 Freese makes the point that before 1600 “coal” was a
term generally applied to ‘charcoal’ (made from wood): “what we call ‘coal’ the English knew as
‘seacoal’, a surprising label for such a deeply terrestrial product, and one that stuck until the 1600s.”
(Freese 21) Since Shakespeare’s works date to the 1590s, as the transition in the name was beginning to
occur, and extend into the 1600s, it is pretty certain that Shakespeare intended mineral coal all the way
through in his works. The “unwholesome air” reference in Coriolanus is another clue that he intended
mineral coal since charcoal “is a smokeless fuel” (Brimblecombe, 27), and in addition, the line “If he
could burn us all into one coal, we have deserv’d it” points to mineral coal, which comes in countable
chunks, as opposed to ‘pieces’ of wood charcoal, which originate from logs.
More evidence for the fact that Shakespeare means mineral coal comes from Peter Brimblecombe6,
who explained: “I thought a little on the idea of whether Shakespeare is talking about coal or charcoal
and the more I think in some instances, such as the opening lines of Romeo and Juliet it seems likely to
be coal. To carry charcoal makes less sense than to carry coal and links with Newcastle.”
Mistress Quickly (arguably she is the same character) uses the term “sea-coal” in two plays, 2
Henry IV (1598) and The Merry Wives of Windsor (1597):
In 2 Henry IV, Mistress Quickly is filing a formal complaint against Falstaff for not marrying her
though he has promised to do so:
Mistress Quickly: Marry, if thou wert an honest man, thyself and the too. Thou didst
swear to me upon a parcel-gilt goblet, my Dolphin chamber, at the round table, by a
sea-coal fire, Wednesday in Wheeson week, when the Prince broke thy head for liking
his father to singing-man of Windsor—thou didst swear me then, as I was washing thy
wound, to marry me and make me lady thy wife. Canst thou deny it? Did not goodwife
Keech, butcher's wife, come in then and call me gossip Quickly? coming in to borrow a
4 Britannica 2004: Coal mining: ancient use of outcropping coal, from Wikipedia, coal
5 Cantril, T. C. (1914). Coal Mining. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
pp. 3–10. OCLC 156716838. Quoted in Wikipedia “coal”
6 Private email correspondence dated May 9, 2017. “I thought a little on the idea of
whether Shakespeare is talking about coal or charcoal and the more I think in some
instances, such as the opening lines of Romeo and Juliet it seems likely to be coal. To
carry charcoal makes less sense than to carry coal and links with Newcastle.”

13. mess of vinegar, telling us she had a good prawns, whereby thou didst desire to eat
some, whereby I told thee they were ill for green wound? And didst thou not, when she
was gone down stairs, desire me to be no more so familiarity such poor people, saying
that ere long they should call me madam? And didst thou not kiss me, and bid me fetch
thee thirty shillings? I put thee now to thy book-oath. Deny it, if thou canst.
(II.1.85-103)
The mood is accusatory and sour as Mistress Quickly has given Falstaff 30 shillings and he has
promised to marry her but he has not kept his promise. Other flagrant lies of Falstaff are exposed in the
passage.
In The Merry Wives of Windsor, Mistress Quickly asks her servant, John Rugby, to go to the window
and see if Doctor Caius is coming. Mistress Quickly promises him a posset (a drink) as a reward if
Simple (a servant to Slender, who wants to marry Ann Page and who will shortly be hiding in Mistress
Quickly’s closet) is not found by Caius (who also wants to marry Ann Page):
Mistress Quickly: Go; and we'll have a posset for't soon at night, in
faith, at the latter end of a sea-coal fire. (Exit Rugby.) An honest, willing, kind fellow as
ever servant shall come in house withal ; and I warrant you, no tell-tale nor no
breed-bate. His worst fault is, that he is given to prayer; he is something peevish that
way; but no body but has his fault―but let that pass. Peter Simple, you say your name
is? (I.iv.8-16)
In this case a deception is taking place as Simple is being hidden by Mistress Quickly. In the
passage which contains the word “sea-coal” there is an overall mood of regret as Rugby is deemed to
have the fault of being “given to prayer”.
Finally, the last instance of “coal” occurs in Pericles (1607-8):
Gower: Now sleep y-slaked hath the rout;
No din but snores the house about,
Made louder by the o'er-fed breast
Of this most pompous marriage-feast.
The cat, with eyne of burning coal,
Now crouches fore the mouse's hole;
… (III. Prologue, 1-6)
The word “coal” is found in the line “The cat, with eyne of burning coal, /Now crouches fore the
mouse's hole”, which is rather a threatening, fearful image.
Almost all of the 31 instances of the word “coal” are negative: threatening, disgusting, horrifying,
bloody, violent, and so forth. It is possible that Shakespeare did not approve of mineral coal replacing

14. the sun (i.e. wood fuel) as Britain’s primary fuel. He did not approve of the smell of the smoke released
from burning mineral coal and he did not approve of its health effects or its pollution.
The coal-related word “colliers” is also worth examining. A collier was a coal miner or deliverer of
coal (though it could have also been a person making charcoal). There are three instances of the word
“colliers”. The first one occurs in Love’s Labor Lost (1594-5), and importantly, it appears near the word
“chimney” (part of “chimney-sweepers”). It is worth noting that chimneys only became necessary in
London with coal burning:
Even in modest English homes, chimneys had become common by the
md-1500s. Some lamented this development, because they credited the wood
smoke that had filled homes in earlier years with both hardening the timbers
and protecting the health of the inhabitants. Nonetheless, chimney construction
and use spread, enabling people to switch from wood to coal when wood
became scarce. The fireplaces and chimneys had to be made much narrower for
coal fires than they had been for wood fires to provide the proper draw of air
(an architectural change that would promote the employment of very young
children as chimney sweeps). The widespread use of chimneys…forced the
energy in the coal to part ways from the attendant pollution―the warmth was
channeled into the house and the smoke was sent away to be suffered by the
world at large. (Freese, 33-4)
Making a connection to Shakespeare in his passage on the increase in the number of chimneys,
Brimblecombe similarly notes that:
The domestic acceptance of the fossil fuel (coal) is also reflected in the
increase in the number of chimneys in the city. Harrison, one of the
contributors to Hollinshed’s Chronicles, which Shakespeare drew upon so
heavily for his plays, wrote as a marginal note that the number of chimneys had
increased greatly since his youth (mid-sixteenth century). In those times, he
wrote, smoke indoors had been regarded as hardening the timbers of the house
and as a disinfectant to ward off disease. (Brimblecombe 35)
Shakespeare’s works include the word “chimney” a total of 12 times and because chimneys were
only used for coal burning, it is therefore extremely likely that mentions of colliers or coals in his works
are also related, like chimneys, to mineral coal rather than charcoal. In the passage below, the word
‘chimney-sweepers’ (they were only necessary once coal started to be burned) appears in proximity to
“colliers”, making it very likely that Shakespeare had “coal-miners” in mind:

15. Dumaine: To look like her are chimney-sweepers black.
Longaville: And since her time are colliers counted bright.
King: And Ethiops of their sweet complexion crack.
Dumaine: Dark needs no candles now for dark is light.
The result of the comparison is that coal dust and coal soot both become images intentionally
flashed into the consciousness of the audience.
The second instance of “collier” occurs in Romeo and Juliet:
Sampson: Gregory, on my word, we’ll not carry coals.
Gregory: No, for then we should be colliers.
Sampson: I mean, and we be in choler, we’ll draw. (I.i.1-3)
The association, through a pun, of “colliers” with “choler” (anger) makes the mood of the two men
appear irritable and ready for a fight.
The last instance of the word “collier” occurs in Twelfth Night (1601):
Sir Toby: Ay, biddy, come with me. What, man, ‘tis not for gravity to play at
cherry-pit with Satan. Hang him, foul collier! (III.iv.115-7)
In this interesting scene, Sir Toby is pretending to conduct an exorcism on Malvolio. The footnotes
in The Riverside Shakespeare explain the phrase “foul collier” like this: “foul coal-miner. Devils were
always represented as coal-black, and they worked in a hell-pit” (Evans, 428). This explanation, coupled
with the fact that the scene is a mock exorcism, ensure that the word “collier” is meant to be imbued
with negative associations.
Conclusion
Shakespeare watched the energy transition, from the sun to coal, occurring in Britain from the city
where this transition was most intense, London. It is likely that he understood that total dependence on
the fuel was to be a foregone conclusion and yet he decided to mount his own creative poetic
underground resistance. Therefore, he imbued the lines in proximity to the words “coal” and “collier”
with negative associations and a dark mood. Every time the word “coal” was heard on stage, there was
bound to be a character crying out in anger or in misery, and this could create a little ‘blot’ surrounding
the word ‘coal’. The inevitable energy transition, from solar energy to fossil fuels, that gathered steam
and then swept all other countries subsequently into the same heap, couldn’t be materially prevented,
but it could be artistically resisted.

16. References
Brimblecombe, Peter. The Big Smoke. (New York: Methuen & Co.) 1987.
Bristol, Michael. Big-Time Shakespeare. (Oxon: Routledge) 1996.
Freese, Barbara. Coal: A Human History. (New York: Penguin) 2003.
Lord, Barry. Art & Energy: How Culture Changes. (Washington, D.C.: American Alliance of Museums)
2014.
Weimann, Robert. Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition in the Theater. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U.
Press) 1978.