The Wheel of Fortune is very much another way for people to blame what is happening to them on something besides themselves. There is nothing that can be done about what Fortune's wheel sends to its recipients. In Shakespeare's plays Fortune is personified as an actual person or player, who 'puppeteers' the characters under her control.
An example would be in Henry V 3:6, "cruel fate, and giddy Fortune's furious fickle wheel, that goddess blind,that stands upon the rolling restless stone--"
King Lear also exemplifies this when Kent speaks of fortune in Act 2 Scene 2, "Fortune, good night, smile once more; turn they wheel!"
I looked up some articles on Fortune in Shakespeare's plays and here are a few of them that sounded interesting:
- The Wheel of Fortune, the Wheel of State, and Moral Choice in Hamlet. Tikacz, Catherine Brown. 1992
- The Fellies, Spokes,m and Nave of Fortune's Wheel: A Debt to Arthur Golding in Hamlet. Taylor, A. B. 1987
- The Wheel of Fortune and the Maiden Phoenix of Shakespeare's King Henry the Eighth. Bliss, Lee. 1975
- The Wheel of Fortune in Shakespeare's Historical Plays. Chapman, Raymond. 1950
