Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

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,
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.


— Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 5, lines 17-28)

"Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" is the beginning of the second sentence of one of the most famous soliloquies in Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth. It takes place in the beginning of the 5th scene of Act 5, during the time when the English troops, led by Malcolm and Macduff, are approaching Macbeth's castle to besiege it. Macbeth, the play's protagonist, is confident that he can withstand any siege from Malcolm's forces. He hears the cry of a woman and reflects that there was a time when his hair would have stood on end if he had heard such a cry, but he is now so full of horrors and slaughterous thoughts that it can no longer startle him.

Seyton then tells Macbeth of Lady Macbeth's death, and Macbeth delivers this soliloquy as his response to the news.^[1] Shortly afterwards he is told of the apparent movement of Birnam Wood towards Dunsinane Castle (as the witches previously prophesied to him), which is actually Malcolm's forces having disguised themselves with tree branches so as to hide their numbers as they approach the castle. This sets the scene for the final events of the play and Macbeth's death at the hands of Macduff.

Titular reuses

• Dusty death, a 1931 novel of drug smuggling by Clifton Robbins.
• "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" is a 1953 short story by Kurt Vonnegut
• All Our Yesterdays is used as the title of several works, encompassing literature, music and television, including a 1969 history of 1940s science fiction fandom by Harry Warner, Jr,^[2] and a 1994 novel by Robert B. Parker
• The Way to Dusty Death is a 1973 novel by Alistair MacLean
• "Out, Out—" is a 1916 poem by Robert Frost
• "Sound and fury" is used in the title of several works, including The Sound and the Fury, a novel by Faulkner; and a 2000 documentary about deaf children. It is also the name of Edward Vesala's ensemble.
• Hamilton uses the third and fourth lines of the section in the song "Take a Break"^[3]
• Struts & Frets is a 2009 novel by Jon Skovron^[4]
• Walking Shadow, published in 1994, is the 21st Spenser novel by Robert B. Parker.
• "Signifying Nothing" is the title of a short story in the 1999 collection Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, by David Foster Wallace.

References

1. Andersen, Richard (2009). Macbeth. Marshall Cavendish. p. 104.
2. Platou, Arnold S. (March 31, 2003). "Harry Warner's parallel universe". The Herald-Mail. Retrieved 22 October 2016.
3. ""Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow / Creeps in this petty pace from day to day"".
4. "Struts & Frets".

External links

• Soliloquy Translation (broken link as of 03 Nov 2015, available at the Wayback Machine
• Explanation of the scene