Winter Song. Charles West Cope (1811–1890). Source: Gallery of Shakespeare Illustrations. The painting illustrates, although not with any particular attention to all the details, the song in Act V, Scene ii of Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost:

WHEN icicles hang by the wall,
    And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
    And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipped, and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
        To-whoo;
To-whit, to-whoo, a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

When all aloud the wind doth blow,
    And coughing drowns the parson’s saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow,
    And Marian’s nose looks red and raw,
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
        To-whoo;
To-whit, to-whoo, a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the Hathi Trust and the Library of Congress and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one. [Click on the image to enlarge it.] — George P. Landow.

Bibliography

Gallery of Shakespeare Illustrations from Celebrated Works of Art. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co., 1909. Hathi Trust online version of a copy in the Library of Congress. Web. 12 August 2021.


Last modified 12 August 2021