Fate

As I'm trying to view Shakespeare from a Mythological viewpoint I was trying to think of myths that work throughout Shakespeare's works.  One of these myths is fate.  Just to give everybody an idea of how prevalent the idea of fate is, here are some quotes from different plays about fate.  These are by no means all of the examples, but this is a long list.  (don't read them all if you don't want to, I just thought these were some good examples showing how fate was viewed.) 

• "If thou art privy to thy country's fate, which, happily, foreknowing may avoid, O, speak!" - Hamlet 1:1
• "And let us fear the native mightiness and fate of him," - Henry V 2:4
• "My fate cries out" - Hamlet 1:4   
• "Hath, by cruel fate, and giddy Fortune's furious fickle wheel, that goddess blind, that stands up on the rolling restless stone --" - Henry V 3:6
• "Where our fate, hid in an auger-hole, may rush, and seize us?" - Macbeth 2:3
• "To make them kings, the seed of Banquo kings!  Rather than so, come fate into the list.  And champion me to the utterance!" - Macbeth 3:1
• "O Fate! take not away thy heavy hand" - Much Ado about Nothing 4:1
• "Since fate against, thy better disposition, hath made thy person for the thrower-out of my poor babe" - The Winter's Tale 3:3
• "O, the Fates!  How would he look, to see his work so noble vilely bound up?" - The Winter's Tale 4:4
• "Who should withhold me?  Not fate, obedience, nor the hand of Mars" - Troilus and Cressida 5:3
• "And make us weep to hear your fate" - Pericles 3:2
• "I quaked for fear, lest the lunatic knave would have searched it; but fate, ordaining he should be a cuckold" - The Merry Wives of Windsor 3:5
• "Men at some time are masters of their fates:" - Julius Caesar 1:2
• "Fates, we will know your pleasures" - Julius Caesar 2:3 
• "Stand fast, good Fate: - The Tempest 1:1
• "What fates await the Duke of Suffolk?" - Henry VI, Part 2, 1:4

• "Hapless Aegeon, whom the fates have mark'd" - The Comedy of Errors 1:1

• "Then fate, o'er-rules, that, one man holding troth, a million fail, confounding oath on oath" - A Midsummer Night's Dream 3:2

• "Hard fate!" - Timon of Athens 3:5

• "I will oppose his fate" - Antony and Cleopatra 3:13

• "Reprieve thee from thy fate" - measure for Measure 3:1

• "Who, certain of his fates, loves not his wronger;" - Othello 3:3

Fate was seen as a thing or an object.  It controlled people's lives no matter how they fought it.  In some ways it reminds me of for-ordination, no matter what people do towards their fate or against it, they can't help but end up exactly as fate wanted.  


Macbeth is a prime example of this, three witches (sometimes called the 'three fates') prophesy to him that he will become a king - and he does.  The whole play centers around fate and it's role in people's lives, is it active or passive?  Fate is, "a predetermined course of events," something we might call destiny.

Wikipedia defines fate as, "a power or agency that predetermines and orders the course of events. Fate defines events as ordered or 'inevitable' . . . used with regard to the finality of events as they have worked themselves out."

As Macbeth states he "must embrace the fate of that dark hour" - Macbeth 3:1 lines 150-15.  This is something inevitable and uncontrollable.  In many ways fate is viewed as a god, it is fickle and foolish and all powerful.