In the final act of the play, a “blazing star” or meteor serves as a portent of doom and foreshadows the play’s bloody climax, which sees the deaths of most major characters and results in a catastrophic upheaval of the social order of the play:
Lussurioso. We are for pleasure.
Beshrew thee, what art thou? Mad’st me start!
Thou hast committed treason – a blazing star.Noble. A blazing star, O where, my lord?
Lussurioso. Spy out.
Noble. See, see, my lords, a wondrous dreadful one.
Lussurioso. I am not pleased at that ill-knotted fire,
That bushing staring star – am not I duke?
It should not quake me now. Had it appeared
Before it, I might then have justly feared.
But yet they say, whom art and learning weds:
When stars wear locks, they threaten great men’s heads.
Is it so? You are read, my lords.
In early modern thought, meteors and other unusual astronomical phenomena were generally thought to signal grave spiritual disorder on earth and impending tragedy. The festive spirit of the banquet held to honor Lussurioso as he inherits his father’s Dukedom is cut short by this “blazing star,” which Lussurioso himself recognizes as a dangerous sign. He is “not pleased” by the site and immediately feels less secure in his position, noting that such portents of doom “threaten great men’s heads.” Lussurioso’s anxieties are soon confirmed, and the meteor foreshadows the gruesome slaughter that will take place at the banquet.
