whom fortune once favored with power and prestige, ends up placed in the stocks, he says:

Fortune, good night, smile once more; turn thy wheel!

By this, he means his luck has bottomed out: he knows, however, that this can be a temporary state, so he cries out for better luck to come his way, envisioning it as a wheel turning.

Order and harmony, in the Elizabethan era, existed on earth and in the heavens. According to the beliefs of the time, any earthly disruption would be evident through nature, and violent storms would often accompany any disturbance in the natural order. Everything had its place—and its relative importance—and the Chain of Being was not to be interfered with.

The wheel of fortune, which had its origin in the Middle Ages and continued in popularity during the Elizabethan era, was based on the belief that fate and fortune were believed to control life. The "wheel" could turn in your favor or reduce your status as misfortune struck. Consequences would largely be considered to be beyond a person's own control; hence the importance of not upsetting the Chain of Being unnecessarily.

A man was effectively placed on the wheel in terms of his status in life, noblemen filling the higher spaces and the poor at the bottom. The goddess of fortune could spin the wheel as she chose. Even Shakespeare speaks of "Fortune" in Hamlet and the wish to "take away all her power." It was a contradictory theory, obviously not favored from a Christian point of view, when, especially in Elizabethan times, the theory of doing good deeds assuring you a place in heaven would have been contrary to the idea of the wheel.

The Elizabethan era was also an "age of discovery," and more scientific methods and approaches were being introduced. Shakespeare favored the humanistic approach, believing that man has a hand in his own destiny and is not merely or literally "in the hands of the gods."