Patterning in Macbeth's Tomorrow Speech
by Kevin Peterson

Macbeth's Tomorrow speech makes recurring use of a device whereby a
line or a sentence will contain a word or phrase with a secondary
meaning which is not relevant where it occurs, but introduces a
meaning which will occur later. Listening to the speech is an
experience like a dream where the merest thought of something can
cause it to expand and take over the entire dream.

The most natural reading of the first two lines of the speech, were
they to occur alone, would be something along the lines of "It would
have been better had she died later, as there would have been time to
deal with it properly." The "a" before "time", however, suggests the
alternate reading of "It was inevitable that she would have died at
some point in the future." It is likely that both meanings would be
active to some degree in the mind of the listener. This second, less
likely, reading suggests the general tone of the speech, on the
inevitability of death. The very word "hereafter" introduces the
equating of temporal and spatial position: "hereafter" is after
whenever is "here", but "here" alone refers to spatial position.

The phrase "petty pace" seems somewhat odd. It is not natural for a
pace to be petty. Since tomorrow "creeps in", we must read "petty" in
its meaning as "small", even though "petty" would in almost any other
context mean "unimportant" or "trivial". Although the idea of
triviality is not present in the line, it is brought to the mind of
the listener by the use of the word "petty", coloring our
understanding of the rest of speech in the direction of "life is
pointless". 

Note also that "day to day" sounds exactly like "day today".

Assuming we knew when "recorded time" was, what does it mean for
something to continue until the last "syllable" of recorded time? This
suggests that recorded time is composed of words. What words might it
be composed of? "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" seems a good
candidate. This is a bit of stretch, but consider I.v.56-58:

	 Macbeth: Duncan comes here to-night.
	 Lady Macbeth: And when goes he hence?
	 Macbeth: To-morrow -- as he purposes.
	 Lady Macbeth: O, never
	      Shall sun that morrow see!

If Duncan shall never that "morrow" see, then the "to-" is the
end. This seems like a very forced reading to a modern ear, since
"morrow" has fallen out of use, and "tomorrow" is a single unit, but
it may have been more accessible to an Elizabethan audience. The image
suggested by this reading is one of time ending at night, before the
morning, which would add to the later idea of fools being shown to
their death by candlelight and life being a walking shadow.

"Recorded time", would generally refer to something like "recorded
history". While one could interpret "recorded time" to refer to
preordained events given the speech's general feel of lamenting the
inevitability of death, this interpretation is likely to be
overshadowed by the association of "recorded" with history and that
which has already happened. One would not normally refer to the "end"
of recorded time, but instead to the beginning of recorded time. If
recorded time had an end, the most reasonable point to place it would
be right now, but the sentence as a whole has a pattern "the last
... of ... time" which immediately brings to mind the idea of the end
of the world, the end of time.

The idea of "recorded time", as "recorded history" leads into the next
sentence, that "All our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty
death,". Although "yesterdays" seems to refer most directly to
something like "our past experience", but we cannot help picturing
someone or something showing leading the fool to his bedchamber where
he will die. "Way" could be read as either "manner" or "road", but the
imagery of "creeping" and "pace" earlier suggests the more literal
idea. This provides another example of the association of passage of
time with movement in space.

"Fools" would seem to mean foolish people from the context, but it
also has the meaning of a jester or clown, which will be echoed later
by the player strutting and fretting, and the idiot telling tales.

"Yesterdays" completes the pattern of "to-morrow" in line 19, and "to
day" in line 20. It would be interesting to look into how readily
available the meaning of "enlightened" as "caused to understand the
truth" would have been to an Elizabethan audience. To the modern ear,
it's very easy to hear this as saying that by showing the fool his
mortality, the fool is enlightened.

I am not able to read the speech without a slight pause after "dusty
death". With this cadence, there is a consonance between "Out, out,
brief candle" and "a walking shadow", the words "candle" and "shadow"
connected by sound in addition to being connected by meaning.

The idea of walking toward ones death may be reinforced by the
parallel between "petty pace", the fourth through sixth syllables of
line 20, and "dusty death", the fourth through sixth syllables of line
23. Not only are they alliterative phrases in the same position in the
line, but the alliterative consonants are both stops, the middle
syllable of each is "ti:", and both end with unvoiced fricatives. This
may also reinforce the idea of life's futility via the parallel between
"petty" and "dusty".

After such emphasis on physical movement and walking, the first
thought on hearing the next two words, "out, out" is likely to
involve a command that someone leave an area, but when the sentence is
done, it has changed meaning to blowing out a candle. This is the
candle that has lit the "way to dusty death", so with blowing it out,
we would expect to see darkness, and in the next line, "life's but a
walking shadow". The modern meaning of "shadow" would probably be
initially the most probable, but when the line moves on to "a poor
player", it takes on the wider meaning as well. 

The phrase "struts and frets" for what life, the player, is doing with
his hour on the stage, creates and image, at least for the modern
listener, of someone being overly dramatic, unable to accurately
portray an emotion and so forced to resort to over-acting to convey
what he is supposed to be feeling. This suggests both the "sound and
fury" of the "tale told by an idiot" in the next line, and the fool
who is being shown his way to death. The player, who "struts and
frets", would appear to be performing physical actions, but not
necessarily speaking. Thus, it is somewhat odd to say that after the
hour is up, he "is heard no more", but immediately after this, another
image of life, as a "tale told by an idiot", is presented, which does
involve speech. Indeed, we are explicitly told that it is "full of
sound and fury". The final line of the speech, "signifying nothing" is
the direct suggestion of life being meaningless, but it does not
surprise. It has been set up by the "petty" of line 20, and by the
general idea of life as a play beginning on line 24.



The equating of movement with the passage of time is a general theme
of the speech, and words relating to both ideas occur frequently. For
time we have "hereafter" in line 17, "time" in line 18,
"tomorrow" in line 19, "day to day" in line 20, "last" and "time"
again in line 21, "yesterdays" in line 22, "brief" in line 23, "hour"
in line 25, and "no more" in line 26. Only lines 24, 27 and 28 contain
no reference to time. Words related to movement occur as "creeps in"
and "petty pace" in line 20, "way" (as road) and "out, out" (as "get
out") in line 23, "walking" in line 24, and "struts and frets" in line
25. One could also include "lighted" in line 22.

In several places there are references to words or to speaking: "a
word" in line 18, "syllable" and "recorded" in line 21, "heard" and
"tale" in line 26, and "signifying" in line 28. Coupled with the image
of life as a player in line 24, these may serve to make us
more aware of the play as a play, rather than as reality, which may
either ease our own discomfort at being told that life is pointless
(because, after all, we are not players; life is no scripted for us),
or it may heighten the seriousness of Macbeth's condition: he is
condemned to do exactly what he has done, again and again, as the play
is written. It may do neither of these.



In addition to this form of semantic self-similarity, the speech has a
great deal of less meaningful patterning which in general makes it
seem more a single piece and more pleasing to the ear. The phrases
"she should", "petty pace", "dusty death", "poor player", and "tale
told" all alliterate. "His hour" does not alliterate in my
pronunciation, but may for some. At least with modern pronunciation,
the rhythm brings together "out brief candle" and "walking
shadow". The rhyme between "yesterdays" in line 22 and "way" isn't as
forced by the rhythm and may not be noticeable. "Struts and frets"
parallels "sound and fury", and "full of sound" alliterates with "fury
/ Signifying". There is, no doubt, much more to be found.