Till the Time Opens: Fate and Mutability

The Changeling opens with an almost obsessive compulsive parsing of omens and astrological significances. For example, Jasperino urges Alsemero to seize the propitious conditions for his sea voyage:

“’Tis the critical day, it seems, and the sign in Aquarius” (1.1.49)

Perhaps, the ensuing tragedy could have been avoided if Alsemero had heeded the signs. In contrast, De Flores replies to Beatrice-Joanna’s urging to be “wondrous careful in the execution” of their plot, by suggesting “Why, are not both our lives upon the cast?” (2.2.139-140).

In an attempt to consider what Middleton and Rowley are up to in The Changeling we will address the relationship between destiny and chance, between predestination and the roll of the dice.

Lorenzo Spirito. "Wheel of Fortune with the Zodiac Sign of the Moon" 
in Libro de la Ventura (Book of Fortune), 1508.

The following are images taken from an almanac and astrological guidebook written in 1622:

Richard Allestree, 1622 a new almanack and prognosti[cation] ... of our Lord God, ... being the 2 from bissextil yeer: calculated and properly referred to the longitude and sublimity of the Pole Articke of the famous towne of Derby, & may serue generally for the most part of Great-Brittaine

Your task for this week’s blog is to attempt to make sense of the relationship between the characters’ fixation on marking auspicious, promising, or providential circumstances and the actual agency of the characters in determining their fate. Put simply, what does it mean to be in the right place at the right time in a play consumed with changeability and substitution? Draw on a specific moment in the text to support your answer.