Throughout The Changeling, many characters attribute their feelings and circumstances to destiny. The servant DeFlores, born wealthy, asserts that “hard fate has thrust me out to servitude.” When the noblewoman Beatrice falls in love with handsome Alsemero, she declares in an aside that “this was the man that was meant me.” Later, when she is discovered as a murderer, Beatrice again asserts that it is destiny—and not her own choices—at work (“upon yon meteor ever hung my fate”). By endowing metaphysical “fate” with so much power, characters like Beatrice—the play’s primary antagonist—attempt to escape responsibility for their own bad behavior. But rather than endorsing the view that destiny is determinative, The Changeling demonstrates that people can choose their own paths—and can learn from their mistakes by claiming responsibility for them. Beatrice’s father Vermandero and Tomazo de Piracquo, two of the show’s more heroic characters, model this kind of personal accountability: when Vermandero suspects his courtiers of wrongdoing, he actively investigates them, while Tomazo is able to apologize to those he wrongly accused by acknowledging his individual failings. Ultimately, then, The Changeling shows that people can determine their own “fates” through action; conversely, the play shows that to attribute one’s misfortunes to destiny is merely an attempt to shirk personal responsibility.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Destiny vs. Agency ThemeTracker
Destiny vs. Agency Quotes in The Changeling
ALONZO: I should depart
An enemy, a dangerous, deadly one
To any but thyself, that should but think
She knew the meaning of inconstancy,
Much less the use practice; yet w’are friends.
Pray let no more be urg’d; I can endure
Much, till I meet an injury to her,
Then I am not myself. Farewell, sweet brother.
How much we are bound to heaven to depart lovingly.
Exit.
TOMAZO: Why, here is love's tame madness; thus a man
Quickly steals into his vexation.
BEATRICE: Look you, sir, here’s three thousand golden florins:
I have not meanly thought upon thy merit.
DEFLORES: What, salary? Now you move me […]
Do you place me in the rank of verminous fellows,
To destroy things for wages? Offer gold?
The life blood of man! Is anything
Valued too precious for my recompense?
BEATRICE: I understand thee not.
DEFLORES: I could ha’ hir’d
A journeyman murder in this rate,
And mine own conscience might have slept at ease
And have had the work brought home.
BEATRICE [Aside]: I’m in a labyrinth;
What will content him? I would be rid of him.—
I’ll double the sum, sir.
DEFLORES: Look but into your conscience, read me there,
‘Tis a true book, you'll find me there your equal.
Push! Fly not to your birth, but settle you
In what the act has made you, y’are no more now;
You must forget your parentage to me:
Y’are the deed’s creature; by that name
You lost your first condition, and I challenge you,
As peace and innocency has turn’d you out, and made you one with me […]
Though thou writ’st made, thou whore in thy affection!
‘Twas changed from thy first love, and that's a kind
Of whoredom in thy heart.
BEATRICE: Vengeance begins;
Murder I see is followed by more sins.
Was my creation in the womb so curs’d,
It must engender with a viper first?
[VOICE] (within): Fire, fire, fire!
BEATRICE: Already? How rare is that man’s speed!
How heartily he serves me! His face loathes one,
But look upon his care, who would not love him?
The east is not more beauteous than his service.
[VOICE] (within): Fire, fire, fire!
TOMAZO: I cannot taste the benefits of life
With the same relish I was wont to do.
Man I grow weary of, and hold his fellowship
A treacherous bloody friendship; and because
I am ignorant in whom my wrath should settle,
I must think all men villains, and the next
I meet, whoe’er he be, the murderer
Of my most worthy brother. –Ha! Who’s he?
Enter DeFlores, passes over the stage.
O the fellow that some call honest DeFlores;
But methinks honesty was hard bested
To come there for a lodging, as if a queen
Should make her palace of a pest-house.
ALSEMERO: I ask you, sir;
My wife’s behindhand with you, she tells me,
For a brave bloody blow you gave for her sake
Upon Piracquo.
DEFLORES: Upon? ‘Twas quite through him, sure;
Has she confess’d it?
ALSEMERO: As sure as death to both of you,
And much more than that.
DEFLORES: It could not be much more;
‘Twas but one thing, and that—she’s a whore.
ALSEMERO: It could not choose but follow. O cunning devils!
How should blind men know you from fair-fac’d saints?
VERMANDERO: A host of enemies enter’d my citadel
Could not amaze like this: Joanna! Beatrice-Joanna!
BEATRICE: O come not near me, sir, I shall defile you:
I am that of your blood was taken from you
For your better health; look no more upon’t,
But cast it to the ground regardlessly,
Let the common sewer take it from distinction.
Beneath the stars, upon yon meteor,
Ever hung my fate, ‘mongst things corruptible;
I ne’er could pluck it from him.
