Fortune, Fate, and Fools

There is much discussion in King Lear over the wheel of capricious Fortune, whom brings the high low and the low high on a whim. This certainly happens in the context in the play. Edmund rises from the fall of Edgar and Gloucester (3.3 22), Regan and Goneril benefit from the loss of their father’s authority, Oswald usurps Kent whom beat him mercilessly in the first act, and perhaps most fittingly the Fool becomes the wise man and the King becomes the fool. According to Kent (2.2 149) and Lear (3.2 58) their changes in fortune are the result of outside circumstances such as fate conspiring against them, as though Fortune is just spinning a wheel to victimize them. The fool knows better: “Fortune, that arrant whore/ Ne’er turns the key to the poor” (2.4 50-51) The rises and falls depicted in the play are the results of conscious efforts by actors such as Edmund and the mistakes of fools such as Lear (as the fool repeatedly points out). It seems that the play suggests that fortune and fate are but excuses for those “down on their luck” to absolve themselves of responsibility for being at the bottom of the wheel. Edmund, born a bastard, can be said to have a ‘legitimate’ excuse for his misfortune yet he seizes the day and usurps both his brother and father through his cunning alone. He is unwilling to just accept the cards that fate has dealt him and turns his draw into a winning hand. Regan and Goneril seize the “wheel” from Lear and orchestrate the falls of their father and his followers Kent and Gloucester. Even with Regan, Goneril, and Edmund firmly in control of fate, Edgar is able to rise up and seize it from them as well. Lear and Kent, complaining about Fortune’s fickle hand, sit on their asses pretending to put the “pelican daughters” (3.4 72) on trial. What the wisdom of the play (and of the fool) seems to suggest is that it is action (or the lack thereof) that makes real changes in fortune rather than passive obedience to fate. Edmund knows this; the fool knows this; Edgar comes to realize this later. Lear thinks himself “The natural fool of Fortune” (4.6 185) while raving mad. The question is whether Fortune is a supernatural force or the representation of the ‘players’ on the political stage who shape the lives of their subjects. Indeed one could say that every character in Shakespeare is subject to fate simply because they are scripted and must follow the lines they are given. Gloucester’s eyes will be clawed out because he is Gloucester, Lear will surrender his throne to his treacherous daughters because it sets the author’s plot in motion. The fortunes of these characters change only when the play is edited or adapted differently, so in a sense the whims of fortune are equivalent to the whims of the adaptor for a play. Are we merely players on a stage acting out the roles that fate has given us, or are we actors writing our own scripts?