Macbeth Act V Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow GCSE Analysis and Word Bank. ( Bolton English Tuition )

Macbeth GCSE Analysis: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow Speech-Handy Vocabulary.

SEYTON	The queen, my lord, is dead.
MACBETH	She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day	20
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.

Lady Macbeth predeceases Macbeth, why?

Lady Macbeth’s death ironically consigns her to hell (according to the beliefs about suicide at the time) yet returns her ‘lost’ husband, Macbeth,  to humanity.  He mourns the fact that he has no time to mourn his beloved wife. Macbeth has not only murdered ‘sleep’ ( metaphor for innocence) he has also destroyed his relationship to time, in that he has extinguished his life’s possibilities and is now facing imminent death beyond his castle’s  walls.

  For in killing Duncan, Macbeth has murdered his own life too.  And now he  recognises that the impossibility of a ‘hereafter’ is his responsibility. He can blame none but himself. This sense of personal responsibility enlarges Macbeth’s character again. He is tormented figure, rather than just being a ‘butcher’ or ‘fiend’.  Macbeth’s returned humanity creates sympathy in the audience,  so that his death, though a moral and structural necessity, is that of a soldier and warrior,  rather than as the ‘butcher’ Malcolm believes him to be.

 His speech shows acute awareness of the ironies around self-determination. Human agency he believes is a delusion. We are actors on life’s stage and our transience mocks our pompous belief in our own self-importance.  Power corrupts and the Witches contaminate both Lady Macbeth and her husband, insidiously, rendering them puppets to evil ambition and  pride.

What is the ‘word’ that Macbeth would have had ‘time’ for?

Is time the dominant theme of the speech? Transience? Ephemerality

Epiphany/Revelation

Authenticity

Resurrected humanity.

Animation or personification of time. ‘Creeps’ something grotesque as parodies our sense of self-importance.

Manliness linked to humanity rather than brutality and murder.

Self-reflection

Self-awareness

Futility

Indifference/Monotony

False sense of autonomy previously

Human agency an illusion

Inability to mourn/grieve

Life as theatre.

Self-hood a performance.

Delusion of our importance.

Like Shelley’s  Ozymandias?

No promise of a resurrection. Condemned himself to oblivion?

Irony of the word ‘tomorrow’. Drained of all hope and promise

Life as repetition fuelled by delusion

Macbeth acknowledges that he is not the author of his own destiny or drama.

Sense of transience or ephemerality of the human.

Life metaphorically linked to the easily extinguished motif of the candle.

Macbeth is a puppet of the witches. A victim of his own susceptibility to flattery.

Hubris. Downfall of Macbeth through pride.

Audience’s sympathy surprising. Macbeth’s feelings are deeply authentic and resurrect his seemingly buried  humanity. He can blame no one but himself. The stark isolation of Macbeth at the end of the play engenders sympathy and renews our interest in his character. Makes his death a sacrifice?