The start of the Anthropocene Epoch was recently defined as 1610 and this coincides with the career of Shakespeare. Moreover, "Romeo and Juliet" contains a sequence of scenes that actually shows the birth of the Anthropocene Era!

1. Performing the Anthropocene in “Romeo and Juliet”
A recent famous article in Nature (March, 2015) entitled “Defining the Anthropocene”
proposes 1610 as the starting date of the Anthropocene Epoch, the era which marks “a
fundamental change in the relationship between humans and the Earth system”(Nature,
2015). William Shakespeare was 46 in 1610. We also know that by 1603, the end of the reign
of Queen Elizabeth I, coal (a fossil fuel) had become the number one fuel for England and
wood (driven by the sun) had become number two as populations in England’s cities boomed
and forests dwindled with economic growth driven primarily by coal. Recent advances in the
study of the relationship between art and energy, such as scholarship produced by the
Petrocultures Conference or the book by Barry Lord “Art and Energy: How Culture Changes”
recognize that not only living standards and technology but also art and culture are affected
by energy inputs into a society. My paper on “Juliet is the Sun: the Secret Anti-Coal Play in
“Romeo and Juliet”” addresses the cultural aspect of energy transitioning and I posit that
Shakespeare’s eyes were wide open as he noticed the Anthropocene Epoch (still nameless back
then) advancing on his city, London, in the form of black coal smoke that blocked the sky. I
propose that the first line of “Romeo and Juliet”: “Gregory, on my word, we’ll not carry
coals”(I.1.i) represents a monumental and heroic cultural human effort to express resistance
against the encroaching invader, fossil fuels, the substance that even now seeks to take our
planet slowly away from us. And I point out a mysterious and formal structure within “Romeo
and Juliet” which is comprised of the scenes where the lovers are together and can be read as
an allegory.
In the first scene, the lovers use religious language to express nature worship, man’s
earliest cultural relationship with the sun. The balcony scene reveals a religious separation
from Juliet as Christianity removed direct nature worship from Western culture. Romeo then
leaves Juliet as the late 1500s and early 1600s heralded a booming era of heady coal-driven
growth in London and then beyond. The Anthropocene Epoch ends (which we are seeing now),
in a slow economic collapse process which features Romeo return to Juliet, who is comatose
but not dead (the sun is still shining but the sun economy is no longer functioning much as
much of it has been buried under cement or asphalt). The key is the line “Juliet is the sun”
which reveals, in a most shining way, the real identity of Juliet, the “star” of our solar system.