The First Player's speech asks the gods to change all that, so that the world will be ruled by justice, not chance.
These famous lines, which open Hamlet's third soliloquy, suggest that the randomness of fortune is not only painful, but steals the sense of self. As he goes on, saying that those are blessed who are not "a [musical] pipe for Fortune's finger" to play on, it seems that Hamlet is praising a quality that he wishes that he had, and that he feels himself to be "passion's slave," unable to maintain a steady sense of who he is.
She swears up and down that she will not remarry, which prompts the Player King to offer her some philosophy about love and fortune. He points out that a man who has been blessed by fortune, so that he is rich, has the love of many friends, but if that man should lose his money, he will likely lose his friends, too. As it turns out, the Player King is right. His wife does remarry, and quickly, too. In Hamlet's view, Polonius' "fortune" is not just a matter of bad luck; Polonius has earned his death.
According to this view of things, Polonius' death is not an accident at all, but part of heaven's plan. In the dark, he slipped into Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's cabin and searched their packet. Thus what looks random, such as an "indiscretion," may turn out to be part of a divine plan for our own good.
A little later, Hamlet repeats this idea. An outdated inheritance from the ancient Greeks, who thought a pantheon of oddly human-like gods ruled the world from the top of a mountain, our word fate comes from the Latin faturn, "that which has been spoken" "fate, n. Fate is the inevitable and unavoidable future--destiny--as Greek mythology personified in the Moirai who determined the length and course of an individuals life by spinning a yarn on a loom--spinning a yarn, indeed.
Greek tragedies often made fate the divinely decreed, unassailable end of ones life which, despite attempts to alter it, always won out in the end.
This critique of fate, written in the twenty-first century by me, an atheist, could just as easily have been written by a sixteenth-century Christian like Shakespeare. Yet Hamlet is filled with fate, starting in the first scene. The Ghost is a "portentous figure" 1. These passages bookend the story of Young Fortinbras' campaign against Denmark, which culminates in the final scene of the play. Symbolically, the armored Ghost in the first scene points forward to the national, military tragedy of the last scene even if, more literally, the Ghost points backward to Claudius' crime against King Hamlet.
What does that mean? How can a Ghost pointing to the past be "fate"? For starters, the revenge the Ghost assigns to Hamlet is a dooming of sorts. Our comprehensive list of every Shakespearean character and the play in which he or she appears. Included is our exclusive spelled pronunciation guide, essential for actors and teachers, and an in-depth biography of many of Shakespeare's most popular and fascinating creations.
How do you pronounce Fortinbras, anyway? All Rights Reserved.
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