Brandon AguilarProf. KlockEnglish 201May 12, 2010

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow: Shakespeare’s MacBeth

William Shakespeare’s play MacBeth is a bloody saga of homicidal aspiration. The

reaction of the title character to the news: “The queen, my Lord, is dead,” (5.5.17) involves a

rumination upon mortality, revealing the psychology of the character and presenting a

philosophical view of existence.

He claims, “She should have died hereafter; / There would have been a time for such a

word.” (5.5.17-18) This soliloquy begins with an expression that her death should have been

postponed yet ends with a cursing defiance to life’s emptiness. It conveys the nihilism through

which MacBeth lives, courting destruction, seemingly impervious to vulnerability

There are references that life is an auditory and visual experience. “There would have

been time for such a word.” (5.5.18) Words, though readable, are often transmitted acoustically.

Words seem to be metaphors for moments lived. “To the last syllable of recorded time,” (5.5.21)

he says, presenting the idea of life as a conversation, truncated too soon in this instance. It is a

“tale/ Told…full of sound…’ (5.5.26-27)

There is an idea of life as storytelling and performance. The “walking shadow, a poor

player” (5.5.24) references actors onstage illuminated by light, a self-reflective gesture by the

playwright.

MacBeth seems to react with a seething rage to news of his wife’s suicide. “And all our

yesterdays have lighted fools/ The way to dusty death.” (5.5.22-23) The “our” could be a specific

reference to his relationship with Lady MacBeth. It seems he calls her a fool. Oftentimes,

survivors of a suicide victim experience confusion, anger and can even become suicidal

themselves.

His lack of affect is startling, and may seem to indicate indifference for Lady MacBeth.

However, people can respond to shock and trauma in contradictory ways.

Disassociating himself from the present reality is what this speech is about. He looks

“into the seeds of time” (1.3.59) and envisions a vast perspective, suppressing awareness of his

1

own culpability. “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,” (5.5.19) is a defense mechanism.

Dreaming of infinity, concealing himself.

MacBeth’s stunted emotive capacity is contrasted to the grief MacDuff experiences when

told of familial loss: “All my pretty ones? Did you say all?...What, all my pretty

chickens…”(4.3.221-223)

“Dusty death,” (5.5.23) evokes the passage of time, as it calls to mind ruins abandoned,

neglected, left to rot and disintegrate. Perhaps referring to dust alludes to the perishable bodily

substance which comprise a living flesh. “Creeps in this petty pace,” (5.5.20) suggests a slow-

moving crawl: the journey of insects, worms or maggots. Shakespeare conjures a grave scene

without saying it.

Lighting the way to death is the inevitable progess of life. While most people shun

thoughts on the finite quality to life, to MacBeth it’s as if it’s a heady aphrodisiac, an impetus to

live forcefully. “I have almost forgot the taste of fears.” (5.5.9)

He exclaims, “Out, out, brief candle!” (5.5.23) in a way which seems necrophiliac, like

he’s glorying and reveling in destruction. Maybe MacBeth’s odyssey is a suicide mission of his

own. It doesn’t seem he’d ever stop slaughter voluntarily. He had little compunction in satisfying

his blood-thirsty wife in the first place. Without her psychotic presence goading him on, he

seems bereft with self-pity.

Are they in love?

Harold Bloom writes, “The sublimity of MacBeth and Lady MacBeth is overwhelming:

they are persuasive and valuable personalities, profoundly in love with each other. Indeed, with

surpassing irony Shakespeare presents them as the happiest married couple in all his work. And

they are anything but two fiends, despite their dreadful crimes and deserved catastrophes.”i

Of course, it begs the age-old question: what is love? While it could be many things to

many people, it seems fair to say the “dead butcher and his fiendish queen” (5.8.69) share at least

a synchronous destructiveness: shared delusions of grandeur and homicidal ideations. It’s

important to note: dysfunctional toxic love can be wholly satisfying to those who experience it;

so perhaps Bloom is right.

“Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player…”(5.5.24) seems to be MacBeth’s assertion

on his own being. MacBeth is the one strutting and fretting, while he personifies it as this

outward abstraction: life.

2

He knows he will be “heard no more”(5.5.26) because he has contributed nothing of

lasting value, has no children, and has thrived through murder. He seems to recognize himself as

an “idiot” (5.5.27) who creeps, frets, struts and walks.

Essentially, it seems he’s projecting “an idiot, full of sound and fury, /signifying

nothing.” (5.527-28) It’s a moment of self-awareness, though disassociated as a globalized

opinion on existence.

Clinically, in current times, it seems MacBeth could be diagnosed as an antisocial

sociopath. Elizabeth Varcolis writes, “Antisocial personality disorder is characterized by deceit,

manipulation, revenge, and harm to others with an absence of guilt or anxiety. [They] have a

sense of entitlement, which means they believe they have the right to hurt others, take what they

want, treat others unfairly, destroy the property of others….Therefore, there is no restraint on

their behavior with any assumption of guilt, remorse, or responsibility for their actions.”

This speech does seem a fitting end to a dramatization of this story. What happens next is

mostly epilogue. MacBeth’s beheading is less interesting than his summarizing of what death

means. The audience would identify with MacBeth more than with his killers.

While MacBeth’s speech is hardly ecstatic, it is a sort of rousing rallying cry to live

boldly. To conquer life, for it is nothing essentially. “There’s nothing serious in mortality. All is

but toys.” (2.3.89) Perhaps rather than being completely nihilistic, there is a deranged joy and

hopefulness behind it. Life is nothing: so you might as well live.

MacBeth is a warrior, king of his domain, even the face of eternity is a piddling trifling

matter, capable of being bent to his will (or at least ignored). He accepts no judgment. There is

no God, or other authority, to which he deigns. While his contempt may border on the

pathological, there is an enviable heroic quality to his callousness. A carpe diem to the masses.

3

iWORKS CITED

Bloom, Harold. Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. New York City: Riverhead Press, 1998.

Shakespeare, William. Macbeth. New York, NY: Spark Publishing, 2003.

Varcolis, Elizabeth. Essentials of Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing. St. Louis, MO: Elsevier, Inc., 2009.