- All's Well That Ends Well
- Antony and Cleopatra
- As You Like It
- The Comedy of Errors
- Coriolanus
- Cymbeline
- Hamlet
- Henry IV, Part 1
- Henry IV, Part 2
- Henry V
- Henry VI, Part 1
- Henry VI, Part 2
- Henry VI, Part 3
- Henry VIII
- Julius Caesar
- King John
- King Lear
- Love's Labor's Lost
- A Lover's Complaint
- Macbeth
- Measure for Measure
- The Merchant of Venice
- The Merry Wives of Windsor
- A Midsummer Night's Dream
- Much Ado About Nothing
- Othello
- Pericles
- The Rape of Lucrece
- Richard II
- Richard III
- Romeo and Juliet
- Shakespeare's Sonnets
- The Taming of the Shrew
- The Tempest
- Timon of Athens
- Titus Andronicus
- Troilus and Cressida
- Twelfth Night
- The Two Gentlemen of Verona
- Venus and Adonis
- The Winter's Tale
In this passage, Machiavelli spells out his model of the universe: a universe in which humans have some control of their own destinies, though much of their lives remains controlled by "fortune." The passage is important because it situates Machiavelli in the rise of humanism during the European Renaissance. During the Middle Ages, philosophers thought of people's lives being almost entirely controlled by fortune (i.e., God). During the Renaissance, however, thinkers began to argue that humans, with their capacity for free will and free thought, could often control their own destinies. So even though the passage might seem restrictive in…