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The idea, based on the second commandment of the Decalogue that God takes an active interest in human affairs, intervening to protect the good and to punish the wicked, had always been considered a relevant element in the Christian view of history. The Reformation laid a new stress on the doctrine of special providence. The predestination was the fundamental bases for Protestantism. In fact the elect are guaranteed salvation by the God's free grace. This to emphasize man's complete dependence on divine grace . The role played by providence in human affairs is a preoccupation of many of Shakespeare's characters. For example Hamlet makes specific reference to the doctrine of special providence before his fatal duel with Laertes. The passive fatalism of Hamlet is in contrast to his earlier sense of will to change the world. He is volatile because he lives under his ideal of rational stoicism but at the same time he became an hostage to fortune. Also in Julius Caesar the minds of most of the major characters are confused by the interpretations of the play's unnatural portents and the real signs of divine interest.

While Cicero argues that, when it comes to interpreting omens, men construe things after their fashion. Clean from the purpose of the things themselves, Cassius notes the way people tend to blame heaven for the misfortunes they bring themselves:

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.53

In his Shakespeare, politics and the state Robin Headlam Wells remarks that from the variety of ways in which providence is referred to in the histories and tragedies, Shakespeare's intent is that of using a dramatic device to satirize credulity. Though images of nature appeals to providence in the plays usually form part of a dialectic in which opposing views are contrasted. In the history plays the Shakespeare's characters tend to interpret events in the light of their own interests, for this reason the plays reflect their sources.

Prophecy is an effective dramatic device and Shakespeare often uses it to create

52 David Cannadine, The Historian and the Reputation, op.cit., p.203

suspense. In many works as Julius Caesar or Henry IV and others of Shakespeare's time historians providence does not give the sociological interpretation. The key of the meaning was in history, not in God's will but in human action. Shakespeare's chronicle sources belonged to the past and they compared the moral with the political value of history.

As humanism came to influence every aspect of European thought, historians turned to classical antiquity for their models. The medieval sources tended to cover the human history with an apocalyptic vision whereas the new politic historians represented not the man's eternal salvation but the immediate problem of his political survival.

This new pragmatic approach to history is well described in the following pass extract by the Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans:

History is a certain rule and instruction, which by examples past, teacheth us to judge of things present and to foresee things to come, so as we may know what to like of and what to follow; what to mislike and what to eschew. It is a picture which (as it were in a table) setteth before our eyes the things worthy of remembrance that have been done in old times by mighty nations, noble kings and princes, wise governors, valiant captains and persons renowned for some notable quality, representing unto us the manners of strange nations, the laws and customs of old time, the particular affairs of men, their consultations and enterprises, the means that they have used to compass them withal and their demeaning of themselves when they were come to the highest, or thrown down to the lowest degree of state. So as it is not possible for any case to rise either in peace or war, in public or in private affairs but that the person which shall have diligently read, well conceived, and thoroughly remembered histories, shall find matter in them whereas to take light and counsel whereby to resolve himself to take a part, or to give advice unto others, how to choose in doubtful and dangerous cases that which may be for their most profit and in time to find out to what point the matter will come if it be well handled; and how to moderate himself in prosperity, and how to cheer up and bear himself in adversity. These things it doth with much greater grace, efficacy and speed, than the books of moral philosophy do, forasmuch as examples are of more force to move and instruct, than are the arguments and proofs of reason, or their precise precepts, because examples be the very forms of our deeds and accompanied with all circumstances.

To be short it may be truly said that the reading of histories is the school of wisdom, to fashion men's understanding, by considering advisedly the state of the world that is past and by marking diligently by what laws, manners and discipline, empires, kingdoms and dominions, have in old time been

established and afterwards maintained and increased or contrariwise changed, diminished and overthrown.54

Shakespeare was aware of the limitations of the past historical sources but while the new historians analysed the involvement of the man in the history actions, many writers still were convinced that providence was responsible for the course of history.