SOURCE: Kiefer, Frederick. “Fortune and Occasion in Shakespeare: Richard II, Julius Caesar, and Hamlet.” In Fortune and Elizabethan Tragedy, pp. 232-69. San Marino, Calif.: The Huntington Library, 1983.

In the following essay, Kiefer surveys the interaction of fortune and occasion in Shakespearean tragedy, focusing on three tragic Shakespearean figures: Richard II, Brutus (of Julius Caesar), and Hamlet.

Playwrights seldom provide an elaborate description of Dame Fortune—certainly no counterpart in words to the vivid depictions of Continental emblematists. Nevertheless, their plays reflect the changing concept of Fortune in the Renaissance. And in the work of one playwright in particular, Shakespeare, we can actually observe the transition away from the traditional view of Fortune.¹ In three tragedies written during the closing years of the sixteenth century, Shakespeare manifests a growing interest in Occasion.

The plays are Richard II (c. 1595), Julius Caesar (c. 1599), and Hamlet (c. 1600). In the earliest of these...