Player King: nothing worldly lasts; love can change too (3.2.186-197) #InkyCloak #SlowShakespeare

PLAYER KING Most necessary ’tis that we forget

To pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt.

What to ourselves in passion we propose,

The passion ending doth the purpose lose.

The violence of either grief or joy

Their own enactures with themselves destroy.

Where joy most revels grief doth most lament,

Grief joys, joy grieves, on slender accident.

This world is not for aye, nor ’tis not strange

That even our loves should with our fortunes change,

For ’tis a question left us yet to prove

Whether Love lead Fortune or else Fortune Love.   (3.2.186-197)

The King’s consoling, pragmatic commonplaces continue, as he speaks of the possibility of his future widow’s remarriage: most necessary ’tis that we forget to pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt. Sometimes we have to change our minds, and even break vows that we have made to ourselves, or to others; that’s just life. What to ourselves in passion we propose, the passion ending doth the purpose lose. Of course we mean the things that we vow with love, we mean them with all our hearts—but when that love ends, is ended by death, then even our most solemn promises become redundant. The violence of either grief or joy their own enactures with themselves destroy: intense love, intense grief alike, they wear themselves out. That’s OK. Because grief and joy are inseparable, two sides of the same coin; one can turn to the other in an instant: grief joys, joy grieves, on slender accident. This world is not for aye. Nothing lasts for ever! Nor ’tis not strange that even our loves should with our fortunes change—and because the things of the world are mutable, it’s no surprise that our love changes too, over time. For ’tis a question left us yet to prove whether Love lead Fortune or else Fortune Love. Is love stronger than chance or vice versa? We don’t know. But this is the way of the world; we can’t turn back the clock. Love doesn’t have to last, unchanged, to have been true love. (The discussion of Fortune is conventional here, but the speech glances back at the Pyrrhus speech, its powerful invocation of Hecuba’s grief at her husband Priam’s murder, and its excoriation of Fortune, imagining its wheel destroyed at such a dreadful sight.)

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