knight. Carmina Burana The Wheel of Fortune motif appears significantly in the Carmina Burana (or Burana Codex), albeit with a postclassical phonetic spelling of the genitive form Fortunae. Excerpts from two of the collection's better known poems, "Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi (Fortune, Empress of the World)" and "Fortune Plango Vulnera (I Bemoan the Wounds of Fortune)," read: Sors immanis et inanis, rota tu volubilis, status malus, vana salus semper dissolubilis, obumbrata et velata michi quoque niteris; nunc per ludum dorsum nudum fero tui sceleris. . . . . . . . . . . Fortune rota volvitur; descendo minoratus; alter in altum tollitur; nimis exaltatus rex sedet in vertice caveat ruinam! nam sub axe legimus Hecubam reginam. Fate – monstrous and empty, you whirling wheel, status is bad, well-being is vain always may melt away, shadowy and veiled you plague me too; now through the game bare backed I bear your villainy. . . . . . . . . . The wheel of Fortune turns; I go down, demeaned; another is carried to the height; far too high up sits the king at the summit – let him beware ruin! for under the axle we read: Queen Hecuba. Later usage Fortune and her Wheel have remained an enduring image throughout history. Fortune's wheel can also be found in Thomas More's Utopia. Shakespeare William Shakespeare in Hamlet wrote of the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" and, of fortune personified, to "break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel." And in Henry V, Act 3 Scene VI are the lines: Pistol: Bardolph, a soldier firm and sound of heart And of buxom valor, hath by cruel fate And giddy Fortune's furious fickle wheel That goddess blind, That stands upon the rolling restless stone— Fluellen: By your patience, Aunchient Pistol. Fortune is painted blind, with a muffler afore his eyes, to signify to you that Fortune is blind; and she is painted also with a wheel, to signify to you, which is the moral of it, that she is turning, and inconstant, and mutability, and variation. And her foot, look you, is fixed upon a spherical stone, which rolls, and rolls, and rolls. Pistol: Fortune is Bardolph's foe, and frowns on him; Shakespeare also references this Wheel in King Lear. The Earl of Kent, who was once held dear by the King, has been banished, only to return in disguise. This