The inventor is a hapless creature in his two Shakespearean appearances: things come back to haunt him. Thus Horatio in his summary of tragic confusions of Hamlet speaks of "purposes mistook Fall'n on th' inventors' heads" (Ham.5.2.385), and Macbeth, deliberating about the killing of Duncan, worries about "bloody instructions, which, being taught, return /to plague th' inventor" (Mac.1.7.9-10).
17 September 1999