Fortune and Virtue

Fortune and Virtue frames the Duke of Newcastle’s long adversity as a dispute over what deserves allegiance: the shifting favors of Fortune, or the steadier demands of Honesty and Prudence. In an allegorical hearing arranged by the Empress and the Duchess of Newcastle, Fortune explains her hostility as a response to the Duke’s preference for virtue; the Duke’s defenders recast that preference as principled restraint. Their case ends without a verdict when Fortune walks out, leaving the conflict unresolved and exposing how little moral reasoning can compel an unaccountable power.

The Dispute and Its Participants

The dispute enters the narrative through the Duchess of Newcastle’s request that the Empress reconcile her husband with Fortune. The Duchess says Fortune has opposed the Duke since she became his wife, and that he has complained of her opposition for as long as he can remember. The Empress agrees to try, but notes that she cannot address Fortune in the Duchess’s world without help from an Immaterial Spirit. Back in the Blazing-World, she summons spirits to assist in arranging a hearing.

The proposed proceedings assemble allegorical figures around a personal grievance. The Duke chooses Prudence and Honesty to plead for him; Fortune selects Folly and Rashness as her friends. The parties initially fail to agree on a judge, since, as the Empress observes, finding an impartial one is difficult. They finally settle on Truth to hear and decide the case. The Duke himself is absent: Fortune addresses the Duchess, the Empress, and the gathered company, and the Duchess answers for her husband.

Fortune’s Account of Enmity

Standing on a golden globe, Fortune argues that the Duke has always been her enemy because he preferred Honesty and Prudence, slighted her favors, and fought against her by placing innocence above her power. She treats the choice of moral principles over her patronage as an affront, claiming that the Duke dismissed her as a friend to fools and knaves. In her account, his allegiance to virtue is not neutrality but opposition, and his refusal to rely on her warrants her own hostility.

The Duchess disputes that interpretation. She says the Duke’s choice of friends was wise, and rejects the charge that he was personally disrespectful to Fortune. He would not entrust his reputation to her because, in the Duchess’s account, Fortune does not reliably favor the honest and honorable. Unable to serve both Fortune and his conscience, nature, and education, he chose the course he considered right. The Duchess lists the consequences she attributes to Fortune’s hostility: repeated battles, exile, severe hardship, a ruined estate, and the loss of most of his friends. Even under those reversals, she says, the Duke did not mistreat Fortune’s favorites and continued to show respect for her power; his request is only that she become his friend in future.

Virtue as Formation and Judgment

Prudence presents reconciliation, rather than retaliation, as the purpose of the hearing. She asks Fortune to accept an offering of peace and says she has come not to add wounds but, if possible, to heal those already made. Her appeal places the effort to settle the quarrel within a moral ideal: peace is more valuable than sharpening the conflict.

Honesty interrupts with a detailed account of how the Duke’s character was formed. She calls him her foster-son, saying she raised him from childhood and joined him in friendship with Gratitude, Charity, and Generosity. She sent him to Prudence to learn wisdom and the rules of Temperance, Patience, and Justice, then to the University of Honour, where he acquired honourable qualities, arts, and sciences. On his travels through the World of Actions, Observation served as his governor and Experience became his friend. This moral education, Honesty argues, made him fit for Fortune’s favors; she instead became his enemy because he would not flatter her.

Honesty also distinguishes principled refusal from contempt. She says she commanded the Duke not to flatter Fortune, while Prudence advised him not to despise her favors, since contempt could obstruct his worth and merit. He followed both counsels as far as honor, honesty, and conscience allowed: neither flattering Fortune nor treating her with disrespect. Honesty submits this account to Truth, making the Duke’s restraint—not a claim that he never encountered Fortune’s power—the core of the defense.

The Failed Reconciliation

Rashness turns the Duchess’s defense into grounds for punishment. It accuses her of presumption for speaking without Fortune’s command and for putting Honesty and Prudence above Fortune. It warns that if people regard virtue as superior, Fortune will be neglected and may lose her standing; it therefore urges her to impose as many misfortunes as she can upon the Duke, the Duchess, and their friends. The speech makes explicit the danger within Fortune’s position: her authority is defended not by answering the case but by threatening those who challenge it.

Prudence’s conciliatory proposal and Honesty’s plain account do not secure a hearing. Fortune finds Honesty’s speech rude and leaves in anger before Truth can deliver a decision. The Empress and Duchess are distressed that their efforts have failed. Honesty then rebukes the Duchess for seeking Fortune’s favor, interpreting the request as mistrust of divine blessing. The Duchess denies this: she says she neither mistrusts divine blessing nor depends on Fortune, but wants her husband to have no powerful enemies. The Empress reproaches Honesty for lacking Prudence’s discretion; Prudence smiles, and Honesty is briefly embarrassed before the two become friends again. The Duchess later returns to her husband, while the Empress promises that they will visit one another when they can.

Significance

The hearing gives Fortune and Virtue a dramatic form without pretending to resolve their opposition. Fortune’s own defense treats moral independence as a personal slight, while the Duchess and Honesty present it as a limit the Duke must observe if he is to preserve his conscience and reputation. Prudence supplies a counterweight: virtue need not scorn worldly opportunity, and peace remains preferable to needless antagonism. Yet Fortune’s departure prevents Truth from converting these positions into a judgment, so the hearing ends with the dispute still active.

The surrounding narrative sharpens the contrast between moral claims and limited knowledge. The Empress’s encounters with Immaterial Spirits show that spirits can be fallible: they acknowledge limits to their knowledge, and the Duchess cautions that created spirits have no general or absolute understanding. Against that background, the attempted arbitration does not grant its speakers unquestionable access to justice. Instead, it stages a reasoned appeal—supported by the Duke’s reported conduct and the Duchess’s account—whose success depends on Fortune’s willingness to listen. Her refusal leaves the Duke’s case morally argued but practically unsettled.