Long story short, they’re all around legends, and everybody likes them! They’re good people, who are good at what they do. Macbeth is an incredible warrior who is celebrated for his achievements, and Lady Macbeth is a strong, smart and efficient stateswoman, who is incredibly well liked in their community and circles. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are an upstanding, courteous and dutiful military power couple of sorts. Before we meet the weird sisters, King Duncan, or Birnam Wood, let’s briefly chat about who these people are. Now it’s not often that I find myself giving context for Shakespeare in regards to what’s happened before the play even starts, but this is quite an important thing to know when it comes to this monologue. To better understand it, let’s take a closer look. But what’s so special about this Lady Macbeth monologue? Well this is largely considered to be the turning point in the Macbeth’s bloody rampage for power, and the pin drop moment when they decide to go ahead with their plan, and this particular Lady Macbeth monologue is a large driving force in making that happen. There is truly a never ending rabbit hole of debate you can dive into surrounding this character, and a number of different theories surrounding her motives. When it comes to the kind of moral ambiguity that Shakespeare was so well known for, you really can’t go past Lady Macbeth. He is the author of, among others, The Secret Library: A Book-Lovers’ Journey Through Curiosities of History and The Great War, The Waste Land and the Modernist Long Poem.Lady Macbeth is considered one of Shakespeare’s greatest antiheroes, from one of Shakespeare’s great tragedies, and for good reason. The author of this article, Dr Oliver Tearle, is a literary critic and lecturer in English at Loughborough University. It is part of the power of this speech that Macbeth’s language conveys his disordered mental state, the fact that he is overcome by the pointlessness of his whole endeavour, and – because he cannot escape his own mind – of life itself. In Macbeth’s phrase, ‘sound and fury’ are not two distinct phenomena, but more intimately joined: what ‘sound and fury’ means here is something like ‘furious sound’. These two substantives are joined by the word ‘and’. ‘Sound and fury’ is a more interesting phrase than it first appears: it’s an example of hendiadys, a curious literary device whereby one idea is expressed by two ‘substantives’ (specifically, nouns or adjectives). In short, what is the point of anything, when a man’s life appears to achieve nothing? Duncan is dead Banquo is dead Lady Macbeth is dead and Macbeth seems ready for his own death, now all appears lost. Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,Ĭontinuing the idea of life as an actor upon a stage for an hour only, Macbeth develops this, thinking about plays, illusion, stories, and fictions: life is like a story, but a bad story, told by someone too stupid and blustering to say anything of significance. He then likens life to an actor who comes out onto the stage, struts his stuff, says his lines for an ‘hour’, and then disappears again. Life is like a candle which burns for a short while only, so Macbeth argues that it should just be put out, since it will soon be ‘out’ anyway. That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, More alliteration, with dusty death inviting the actor playing Macbeth to highlight and emphasise the harsh d sounds. In other words, until the very end of the world, the apocalypse, where all time ceases to be.Īnd all our yesterdays have lighted foolsĪnd every day that has already occurred in the past has only brought fools one day closer to their deaths.
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