Macbeth: tomorrow, and tomorrow and tomorrow… (5.5.16-27) #DaggerDrawn #SlowShakespeare

MACBETH      She should have died hereafter.

There would have been a time for such a word.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.                            (5.5.16-27)

 

Twelve lines, a Famous Bit, but unable to be taken for granted; it’s slippery and opaque (and I’m not doing justice to it). Macbeth’s just been asking himself if he’s still capable of feeling anything, specifically fear, and now he’s got to test that: can he feel even this? There’s a sense of traumatic dissociation here, as he almost watches himself and comments on his own reactions and his own situation more generally. She should have died hereafter; it can mean either, she’d have died anyway, in due course, so what’s the big deal, or else, if she’d died at another time, not right now, then I could take it in, I could, somehow, react. I think I prefer the second, which I’ve seen in performance, a crumple into a sob, quickly suppressed. There would have been a time for such a word: word here can mean the thing that’s just been said, rather than a single word, but it works, too, to think of that word as dead, the enormity of it, the magnitude of the loss, in that little word. I’d have had time to grieve, at any other time. I don’t, now; no time to mourn my lover, my partner, my wife, for all that we’ve destroyed each other by doing what we’ve done.

 

Then a bitter, exhausted realisation: hereafter is meaningless anyway, and so, really, is time. Because tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time. It’s all just another day, one after the other, a succession of tomorrows; tomorrow may be another day, but it’s still just another day, no cause for optimism or hope. The petty pace can be a place, a pass, a small, insignificant place—the world—or it can be a way of walking, creeping, just getting by, not stalking with magnificence, bestriding the world like a colossus but rather simply existing, ordinary, unremarkable. One foot in front of the other, one day after another, on and on, until the end, the last word, the last sound. Time stretches out, undifferentiated, a directionless, meaningless trudge. Why should tomorrow be any different? Why should tomorrow—or anything—mean anything at all? Because all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Nothing we’ve done counts for anything either, and it’s foolish to think so. There might be a flash of personal insight here: all I’ve done is lead men to their deaths, condemn men to death, kill people. It has all just led to death, insignificant and undifferentiated death, dust to dust. That’s life.

 

Out, out, brief candle! Himself, his life—and his wife too, and life in general. Life’s but a walking shadow, an illusion, insubstantial and fading. Even more, to be alive is to act, like a poor player, a mere actor, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, does his best, puts on a show with his lordly gait, his play of passion, for as long as the play lasts, or his part in it. But then—gone. It’s as if he didn’t exist. Life’s a tale told by an idiot—me, for instance—full of sound and fury, emotion and eloquence, but ultimately signifying nothing. Utterly meaningless, null and void.

 

Twelve lines of deep existential crisis that come—not quite out of nowhere—that are deeply indebted to Christian and classical thought (especially Seneca), that the actor has to find somewhere, in the midst of shouting at people and embodying hubris. The best I’ve seen, still, Antony Sher in the Swan in 1999: at around tale told by an idiot the house lights came up and he started to climb off the stage and walk out.

 

 

View 5 comments on “Macbeth: tomorrow, and tomorrow and tomorrow… (5.5.16-27) #DaggerDrawn #SlowShakespeare

  1. Each day is a sequence of tomorrows; tomorrow may be another day, but it is still just another day, and there is no reason to be hopeful or optimistic about the future.

  2. Then why live? For truly, if you hold these sentiments genuine, then seize your knife or acknowledge the truth of your cowardice.

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