Close Reading Assignment 10

Macbeth’s soliloquy in act 5, scene 5 refers to Lady Macbeth’s premature death.  Although some take the first line, “She should have died hereafter” (Macbeth 5.5.20), to mean that she had to die sometime, I believe that the entire passage needs to be considered to understand Shakespeare’s intent here.  If Shakespeare intended it to mean ‘she had to die sometime’, that would depict Macbeth as an uncaring person.  I think that Shakespeare intended the passage to be read as Lady Macbeth dies prematurely, which saddened him.  In the line “There would have been a time for such a word” (5.5.21), Macbeth is saying that today is not the time to hear of her death, that tomorrow or tomorrow’s tomorrow would have been better.  It shows that Macbeth is truly saddened by the loss and does not want to accept her death. In one line in this passage Shakepspeare uses “dusty” to describe death that may be a reference to the “ashes to ashes and dust to dust” of the bible, that life is a circle and back to dust we will inevitably go.  There is a question as to whether he should have used the word “dusky”, which maybe he should have as the rest of the passage refers to murkiness and shadows.  In the next few lines Shakespeare describes life as short and meaningless and in the line “life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage” (5.5.27-28), he is disheartened that life is such an illusion as the shade that can be caused by a candle.  Poor player may refer to an insignificant person getting his 15 (or 60) minutes of fame by pretending to be something he is not.  The effect of these words is to illustrate Macbeth’s disgust at the lack of meaning to life, especially his life, which has been turned upside down by his greed.  In Macbeth’s line that life “is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” (5.5.30), Shakespeare suggests that humans are full of a lot of bluster with not a lot of substance. This is a pretty powerful blow as we all need to think we are significant in someway or to someone in order to have a fulfilling life.