Summer

Summer appears indirectly in Borachio’s attack on fashion as a force that turns the “hot bloods” of youth into restless, shifting figures. Its significance lies in the passage’s comic association of seasonal heat with youthful volatility: clothing does not merely cover the body but continually reshapes its public identity, making fashion a visible emblem of instability and excess.

Seasonal Heat and Youthful Impulse

Borachio describes fashion as a “deformed thief” that turns about “all the hot bloods between fourteen and five-and-thirty.” Summer is not named in the speech, yet the language of heat and blood places the season within a wider image of youthful energy. The age range stretches from adolescence into early adulthood, suggesting that fashion preys on a whole social generation whose physical vitality makes them especially susceptible to display, imitation, and change.

Fashion as Historical and Theatrical Change

The passage presents fashion as an endlessly altering performance. Young men may be dressed like Pharaoh’s soldiers in a smoky painting, like the priests of Bel in an old church window, or like the shaven Hercules in a stained, worm-eaten tapestry. These images move across military, religious, and heroic worlds, turning the body into a surface on which fragments of the past are repeatedly reproduced. The reference to a summer-like heat of “hot bloods” therefore supports a contrast between living, restless bodies and the fixed images they imitate.

Clothing Overwhelming the Body

Conrade answers that fashion “wears out more apparel than the man.” The observation shifts attention from the seasonally charged body to the material cost of constant change: garments are consumed faster than the person can give them stable form. Fashion becomes an appetite that exhausts clothing while leaving identity unsettled. Borachio’s own movement away from his original subject into an extended account of fashion confirms Conrade’s accusation that he, too, has been made giddy by it.

Comic Function and Thematic Significance

Summer’s indirect presence contributes to the scene’s comic portrait of excess rather than establishing a literal setting or date. Heat, blood, youth, and fashion combine into a picture of social life governed by rapid transformation. The season’s implied energy is unstable: it animates the young, but it also makes them susceptible to borrowed appearances. In this way, Summer belongs to the passage’s broader concern with how surfaces, costumes, and public performances can continually alter what others think they see.