Definition of "moonlight"

If you will patiently dance in our roundAnd see our moonlight revels, go with us;If not, shun me, and I will spare your haunts.

c. 1595–1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “A Midsommer Nights Dreame”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act II, scene i]

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!Here will we sit and let the sounds of musicCreep in our ears: soft stillness and the nightBecome the touches of sweet harmony.

c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act V, scene i]

[…] the sight of the blade which glistened by moonlight in his face, checked, in some sort, the ardour of his assailant […]

1751, [Tobias] Smollett, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to IV), London: Harrison and Co., […]

’Tis eight o’clock,—a clear March night,The moon is up,—the sky is blue,The owlet, in the moonlight air,Shouts from nobody knows where;

1798, William Wordsworth, The Idiot Boy‎, lines 1–4

It was the pensive oysterman that saw a lovely maid,Upon a moonlight evening, a-sitting in the shade;

1830, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Ballad of the Oysterman‎, lines 5–6

She passed away noiselessly, and the moonlight kissed the wall which her shadow had dimmed.

1849, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], chapter 13, in Shirley. A Tale. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Smith, Elder and Co., […]

“ […] What say you, gentlemen, shall we have a moonlight hunt?”

1889, Robert Louis Stevenson, chapter 12, in The Master of Ballantrae‎

The windows were curtainless, and the yellow moonlight, flooding in through the diamond panes, enabled one to see even colours, whilst it softened the wealth of dust which lay over all and disguised in some measure the ravages of time and the moth.

1897, Bram Stoker, chapter 3, in Dracula, New York, N.Y.: Modern Library

They were still under the white plum tree and their faces were touching except for a pale thin ray of moonlight between.

1925, F[rancis] Scott Fitzgerald, chapter 6, in The Great Gatsby, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, published 1953

It was as if a globe had been filled with moonlight and hung before them in a net woven of the glint of frosty stars.

1937 September 21, J[ohn] R[onald] R[euel] Tolkien, chapter 16, in The Hobbit: Or There and Back Again, 3rd edition, London: Unwin Books, George Allen & Unwin, published 1966 (1970 printing), page 272

Let’s go on a moonlight swimFar away from the crowdAll alone upon the beachOur lips and our armsClose within each other’s reachWill be on a moonlight swim

1957, Sylvia Dee, “Moonlight Swim” (song recorded by Nick Noble and Elvis Presley)

On a moonlight night it would be different. The happy voices of children playing in open fields would then be heard. And perhaps those not so young would be playing in pairs in less open places, and old men and women would remember their youth.

1958, Chinua Achebe, chapter 2, in Things Fall Apart, New York: Astor-Honor, published 1959

There are three individual rear seats. They all slide, they all fold, or they can all be removed completely, so that you can moonlight as a van.

2004 July, Richard Porter, Paul Kerensa, “MPVs as minicabs” (00:22:29 from the start), in Top Gear (2002 TV series), season 4, episode 7, James D. May (actor), United Kingdom, Isle of Man, Channel Islands, via BBC Two

Believing the bones to belong to a cave bear, the quarry owner passed them on to a local schoolteacher, Johann Carl Fuhlrott, who moonlighted as a fossilist.

2014, Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, Picador, page 240