A man that Fortune’s buffets and rewards / Hast ta’en with equal thanks. And blessed are those / Whose blood and judgement are so well co-mingled / That they are not a pipe for Fortune’s finger / To sound what stop she please.
Act III, Scene 2 · Hamlet
Context
Still praising Horatio, Hamlet admires his friend's stoic temperament, describing him as someone who accepts both good and bad fortune without emotional extremes.
Analysis
The extended metaphor of Fortune playing a human body like a musical instrument ('a pipe for Fortune's finger / To sound what stop she please') turns emotion into mere mechanical response, as if passion were something done to you rather than felt by you. Hamlet's admiration for this self-control is deeply ironic—he himself swings between paralysis and violent rhetoric, making Horatio's steadiness both an ideal he craves and a rebuke to his own volatility.
Essay Tip
Use this to argue that Hamlet valorizes in others the very qualities he cannot achieve himself—the metaphor of the 'pipe' reveals his envy of those who are not instruments of forces beyond their control.