Beginning of Essay
"There's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will." These words from Hamlet are echoed, even more pessimistically, in Shakespeare's later play, The Tragedy of King Lear where Gloucester says: "Like flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods, t ....

Middle of Essay
.... are used to account for human action and misfortune. Just as the stars in their courses are fixed in the skies, so do the characters view their lives as caught in a pattern they have no power to change. Lear sets the play in motion in banishing Cordelia when he swears "by all the operation of the orbs from whom we exist and cease to be" that his decision "shall not be revoked". How like the scene in Julius Caesar wherein Caesar says "For I am constant as the Northern star" Lear vows to be resolute but dies regretting his decision at the hands of his daughters who claim love him "more than word can wield" and are "alone felicitate" in his pres ....