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.
Act V, Scene 5 · Macbeth
Context
Continuing his response to Lady Macbeth's death, Macbeth delivers his most famous meditation on the meaninglessness of life. This soliloquy represents his fullest articulation of despair.
Analysis
The anaphoric repetition of 'Tomorrow' enacts the very tedium Macbeth describes—each repetition feels like another identical, weary step, the syntax itself 'creeping' forward at a 'petty pace.' But Shakespeare then accelerates into a cascade of metaphors (shadow, player, tale, candle) that pile up so rapidly they almost contradict the slowness he's describing, creating a formal tension: is life boringly repetitive or chaotically meaningless? This instability denies the reader any stable position from which to judge whether Macbeth's nihilism is profound insight or the self-pitying delusion of a tyrant.
Essay Tip
Use this to argue that Shakespeare doesn't let us simply dismiss Macbeth's despair as villain talk—the speech's formal brilliance (its rhythms, its metaphors) forces us to take his nihilism seriously even as we recognize it's partly self-inflicted, creating an uncomfortable sympathy.