PLAYER KING The great man down, you mark his favourite flies,

The poor advanced makes friends of enemies,

And hitherto doth Love on Fortune tend,

For who not needs shall never lack a friend,

And who in want a hollow friend doth try

Directly seasons him his enemy.

But orderly to end where I begun,

Our wills and fates do so contrary run

That our devices still are overthrown.

Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own:

So think thou wilt no second husband wed

But die thy thoughts when thy first lord is dead.     (3.2.198-209)

Most of this is so readily cut, but it’s a neat presentation not just of moralising political commonplaces but of a version of tragedy that is often elbowed out by flashier Aristotelian readings. This is the way the world is, the King is saying, everything is subject to Fortune, and what goes up must come down, with all the inevitable consequences of that fall. The great man down, you mark his favourite flies—no one wants to know a failure, yesterday’s hero—while the poor advanced makes friends of enemies; you have to be pragmatic, get the haters onside if you want to keep winning, especially if you’ve come from nowhere. And hitherto doth Love on Fortune tend, this is why love (of all kinds) is subject to the vagaries of chance, it doesn’t exist in a vacuum, it’s contingent. For who not needs shall never lack a friend (the powerful and wealthy always have plenty of people on their side) and who in want a hollow friend doth try directly seasons him his enemy (just you see who sticks with you when the chips are down, you’ll find out who were only fair-weather friends, and indeed who’s now prepared to sell you out completely). (There might be a glance here at Horatio, and at Rosencrantz and Guildenstern too; Hamlet has recently meditated on friendship to Horatio, after all.)

But orderly to end where I begun—back to my point! our wills and fates do so contrary run that our devices still are overthrown. We can’t always get what we want, and our best-laid plans, our most cherished principles—sometimes they have to be abandoned. That’s life. Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own. We can think what we like, but we can’t predict the way things will turn out, let alone control it. So think thou wilt no second husband wed—and I know you do, with all your heart—but die thy thoughts when thy first lord is dead. You may just end up changing your mind; you may have no choice.