12 William Shakespeare, The Riverside Shakespeare, eds. This reconstitution of the iconographic image is necessary to fully obtain the emblematic message not to put one’s trust in Fortune’s gifts because “Fleeting fortune shows faith in no one.” 11 These traditional attributes were so familiar that the reader of the emblem would automatically have filled in the syntactical gap, placing, in his or her mind’s eye, the nude figure in its traditional position on top of the ball or turning the wheel, reconstructing the classic image of ever revolving Fortune. On the ground, beside her, we see the tell tale wheel propped up against a plinth, and a ball lying in the grass. These gifts represent the worldly material goods over which Fortune, in the Boethian tradition, exercised control. 10 In an emblem from Jean-Jacques Boissard’s Emblematum Liber (1593), a female figure extends a moneybag (wealth) and a crown (power) to a man whose hands are outstretched to receive them (Fig. 9 In the emblem literature of the early modern period, Fortune was often depicted as a naked female figure riding the waves of a tempestuous sea, or surfing on her wheel or sphere, the wind blowing her hair. 7 We can still see such images of Fortune today, whether during a visit to Little Moreton Hall, where Fortune and Destiny confront one another at either end of the Long Gallery, 8 or reproduced as “The Wheel of Fortune” in any deck of Tarot cards. 6 Medieval and Renaissance visual images of Fortuna turning her wheel, or accompanied by a sphere, denoting instability and mutability, were everywhere. 5 In The Consolation of Philosophy, one of the sources of Shakespeare and his contemporaries’ conceptions of her, Boethius describes a two-faced, monstrous woman, turning a wheel, distributing her gifts blindfolded. 11 For the image and the translation of Boissard’s emblem, please see The Glasgow Emblem Project, Fre (.)Ģ We all know the stock image of Fortuna, turning her wheel, raising people up and bringing others down. 10 See for example Gilles Corrozet, "L'ymage de Fortune", in Hecatomgraphie, 1540, reproduced from Gla (.). 9 See for example Bonifacio Bembo, Antonio Cicognara, I Tarocchi dei Visconti (15 th century) (.). 8 The end tympana of the Long Gallery at Little Moreton Hall have plaster figures of Fortune and Dest (.). 7 See for example Hans Sebald Beham, Fortuna, 1541, Private collection (.). Shakespeare othello mac#
Richard Green, New York and London, Mac (.) 6 See Book II in Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, ed.5 See for example the copy of a miniature found in Herran von Landsberg, Hortus deliciarum (12 th cent (.).How is Fortune “unbound” in Othello ? Shakespeare dispenses with a personified goddess, who guides “the fateful paths of ships, individuals or weapons,” 4 to create a language of fortune in order to represent Othello’s nature and that of his handkerchief, his most visible property. I would like to shed light on aspects of Shakespeare’s opportunism, and his boldness in playing with and on the trope of Fortune. 3 In the following essay, I will briefly examine some of Shakespeare’s multiple uses of fortune in Othello. 2 Other reviewers were kinder to Kiefer’s comprehensive study of Fortune, conceding the difficulty of untangling all the guises of the poetic figure of Fortune in the late sixteenth century.
Lyon notes that early modern dramatists “made opportunistic, eclectic, and diverse use of Fortune.” 1 He argues that Kiefer “falls victim” to Shakespearean diversity and eclecticism and so fails to make coherent sense, for example, of the hash of “Fate, Fortune and human responsibility” in Romeo and Juliet. 4 Michael Witmore, Culture of Accidents: Unexpected Knowledges in Early Modern England, Stanford Univ (.)ġ In his review of Frederick Kiefer’s Fortune and Elizabethan Tragedy (1983), John M.3 See Rolf Soellner, “The Many Facets of Fortune”, Review of Fortune and Elizabethan Tragedy by Frede (.).Lyon, Review of Fortune and Elizabethan Tragedy (1983) by Frederick Kiefer, The Modern Lang (.)
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