1. By Eyla Sloan and Alana Lancaster
The Wheel of Fortune
By Eyla Sloan and Alana Lancaster

2. What is it?
In the Elizabethan era it was believed that you're fortune or fate was controlled by a goddess with a wheel.
Men were placed on the wheel to match their position in society. Men of the upper class were placed on top and pore men with tragic lives, on the bottom. At any time the goddess could spin the wheel and men with fortune in their lives would have tragedy and men with tragedy would have fortune

3. Shakespeare's use of the wheel of fortune
*The wheel of fortune is actually referring to the uncertainty of fate. Shakespeare uses this to describe the tragedies that suddenly occur in his plays, he uses this in hamlet were hamlet wants to get rid of fortune as he thinks she is mean and useless
Out, out, thou strumpet, Fortune! All you gods, In general synod take away her power; Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel, And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven, As low as to the fiends!

4. Controversy
The wheel of fortune can ruin peoples lives so it is interesting that the controller of this wheel is a female.
The idea that good things can happen to bad people and vice versa was contradictory to the Christian belief that if you do good deeds you go to heaven and if you do bad ones you go to hell.
You cannot know what will happen, it is uncertain, this clashes with astrology and reading the stars to tell the future along with all the other ways used to tell the future.

5. pictures Scene involving wheel of fortune, hamlet
In this picture instead of men there is birds placed around the wheel
King Lear, showing tragedy
Upset creatures experience the wheel turning

6. Bibliography http://www.shakespeare-navigators.com/hamlet/Fortune.html
the wikispace
google images :)