How does fate play a role in Othello and Hamlet?

Answer 1

That it affects the choices of the main characters is the role of fate in "Oedipus Rex" by Sophocles (495 B.C.E. - 405 B.C.E.).

Specifically, Theban monarchs Laius and Jocasta hear that their son Oedipus is fated to grow up to kill his father. So they leave him to die from exposure on the mountains outside Thebes. But Oedipus manages to survive, only to hear a similarly prophesied fate. Like his parents, Oedipus patterns his choices against fulfillment of his fate as his father's killer, his mother's husband and his children's half-sibling.

Answer 2

The central power of the play. Laius and Jocasta attempted to change their fate by abandoning the son that they believed would kill Laius and sleep with Joctasta but as a result their plan backfired and it only allowed fate to intervene more easily.

Answer 3

Chance plays its part in Hamlet. It is by chance that Hamlet ends up on the pirate ship and is able to return to Denmark. This is what really saves his life from the trap Claudius has set, since even if he hadn't changed the orders, he wouldn't have been there to be executed anyway.

Answer 4

Hamlet was lucky to get the chance to check out Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's orders on the boat, and even luckier to have a signet with which he sealed the forged letters he replaced them with.

Othello was unlucky not to get into an argument with Emilia about Desdemona's chastity before killing Desdemona, which might have forced Emilia to reveal the truth about the handkerchief. But maybe he wouldn't have listened anyway.

Answer 5

That it advances one, destroys another and leads to two deaths is the way in which fate affects the characters in "Oedipus Rex" by Sophocles (495 B.C.E. - 405 B.C.E.).

Specifically, Theban King Oedipus hears that he is fated to kill his father and marry his mother. He indeed is the killer of his father, King Laius, and the husband of his mother, Queen Jocasta. The knowledge of the realization of the fates that he so seeks to avoid leaves him friendless, homeless, jobless, spouseless and sightless. But at the same time, the same fate turns around and hands the Theban throne over to Creon, Jocasta's brother and Oedipus' brother-in-law.

Answer 6

Shakespeare does seem to wish us to think that fate had a lot to do with Romeo and Juliet's tragic end. He calls them "star-crossed lovers" in the prologue and has Romeo misgiving "some fearful consequence hanging in the stars" which is all going to happen because he crashed Capulet's party. Romeo also calls himself "Fortune's Fool".

This is all very well, but Romeo is fortune's fool because he allowed himself to lose control and give in to his feelings of guilt and anger. Indeed a great deal of what happens is due to circumstances very much in the control of Romeo and Juliet.

There is one overwhelming piece of bad luck over which nobody had any control--the fact that Friar John would be unable to deliver his message to Romeo, so that Romeo would be unable to rescue Juliet from the tomb and take her to Mantua with him. Of course if we consider as a part of the story the idea that Capulet decided Tuesday night to move the wedding from Thursday to Wednesday morning, Friar John's message would have been no good even if it had arrived. The aplomb with which Juliet and the friar accept this changed wedding date and thus a change in their carefully worked out timetable (to say nothing of the failure of anyone to worry about all those wedding guests who are going to show up on Thursday a day late) makes the whole "change of the wedding date" episode so incredible that it is frequently cut from performances of the play.