“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow” is Macbeth’s answer to the news of his wife’s death: life is a brief, meaningless performance that creeps on day after day toward nothing, and it is spoken by a man who has destroyed everything that once gave his life meaning.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow: The Full Speech
She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
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.
Text based on the First Folio (1623), Macbeth, Act 5, scene 5, with modernized spelling and punctuation.
At a Glance
Here are the key facts about “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow” for quick reference.
What “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” Means
The whole speech in plain English, before the line-by-line detail.
Macbeth has just been told that his wife is dead. His first reaction is strangely flat: she would have died sooner or later, or she should have died at some later time, when there would have been room for such news. Either way, he has no time to grieve now.
Then his thought widens from one death to all of life. Each tomorrow crawls after the one before, at the same small, slow pace, until the very last moment of history. And every yesterday has only lit the way for foolish people to their deaths and their return to dust.
“Out, out, brief candle!” he cries. Life is like a candle that burns for a moment and goes out. It is a shadow that moves but has no substance, and an actor who struts and worries through his short time on stage and is then never heard from again.
Finally, life is a story told by a madman: full of noise and passion, but meaning nothing at all. The speech ends on a line that is only half the length of the others, as if even the verse has given up.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Line by Line
Each line, with the sense of it in plain English.
Where the Speech Comes in Macbeth
The moment around the speech makes it even bleaker.
It is near the end of the play. Macbeth has murdered King Duncan, his friend Banquo, and Macduff’s wife and children. Malcolm’s army is marching on his castle at Dunsinane, and Macbeth is defiant, trusting the witches’ promises that no man born of woman can harm him and that he is safe until Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane. “The cry is still ‘They come!’” he says. “Our castle’s strength / Will laugh a siege to scorn.”
Then a cry of women rises from inside the castle. Before he even learns its cause, Macbeth reflects that he has grown numb: “I have almost forgot the taste of fears.” Once, a scream in the night would have chilled him; now “I have supped full with horrors.” His servant Seyton returns: “The Queen, my lord, is dead.”
The speech follows. And it is interrupted almost at once: a messenger arrives to report that Birnam Wood seems to be moving toward the castle. The first of the witches’ promises has turned out to be a trick, and Macbeth resolves to leave the castle and fight his last battle. For the whole story, see our full guide to Macbeth, and for the other plays, our guide to all of Shakespeare’s plays.
Themes
The three big ideas the speech turns on.
Time
The speech is about time before it is about anything else. Tomorrows creep; yesterdays lead fools to death; a life lasts “his hour upon the stage.” For a man who once wanted to “jump the life to come,” time has become an endless, pointless crawl. Our guide to the themes of Macbeth follows how the Macbeths try to seize the future and end up with none.
The Meaninglessness of Life
No speech in Shakespeare is more hopeless. Life is a shadow, a bad actor, a fool’s story, “Signifying nothing.” It is worth remembering that this is Macbeth’s view, not necessarily Shakespeare’s: it is the vision of a man who has murdered his way to a throne and lost his wife, his friends, and his peace along the way.
Life as Theater
Shakespeare often compares life to a play, most famously in “All the world’s a stage” from As You Like It. Here the comparison is at its darkest. Life is not a grand drama but “a poor player,” a mediocre actor who struts, frets, and vanishes, forgotten as soon as he leaves the stage.
Form and Language
How the speech is built, and why it sounds the way it does.
Repetition
“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow” repeats the same word three times, joined by “and,” so the line itself seems to drag on without progress. It makes the listener feel the “petty pace” before Macbeth names it. “Out, out” repeats too, like someone trying to snuff a flame.
Four Images of Emptiness
In five lines, Macbeth gives four pictures of life, each emptier than the last: a brief candle, a walking shadow, a poor player, and a tale told by an idiot. Each one takes away a little more, from light, to substance, to dignity, and finally to meaning.
The Half Line
The speech is in iambic pentameter, but it ends on “Signifying nothing,” a line of only five or six syllables. After ten full lines, the rhythm simply stops, and the silence that follows does what the words describe.
A Double-Edged Opening
“She should have died hereafter” can be read two ways. It may mean that she would have died at some point anyway, a cold shrug. Or it may mean that she should have died later, in a time of peace, when there would have been room to mourn her. Actors choose between them, and the choice decides whether Macbeth still feels anything for his wife.
A Closer Reading: The Actor Who Calls Life a Bad Play
The most famous speech about the emptiness of life is spoken by an actor, on a stage, to an audience that has come to watch him, and that makes it both darker and stranger than it first appears.
When Macbeth calls life “a poor player / That struts and frets his hour upon the stage / And then is heard no more,” the actor playing him is doing exactly that: strutting and fretting through the two hours of a play, after which he too will be heard no more. Shakespeare, an actor himself, puts the harshest possible judgment of his own profession into the mouth of a player at the very moment the audience is most absorbed in his performance.
Yet the speech disproves itself. Macbeth says life is “a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing.” But the tale he is part of is Macbeth, and it signifies a great deal: about ambition, guilt, and what a person becomes when he kills to get what he wants. The emptiness Macbeth sees is real, but it is his own, the emptiness of a life he hollowed out himself. Four centuries of audiences have found these twelve lines anything but meaningless, which may be the play’s quiet reply to the man who spoke them.
Common Questions
The questions readers ask most often about “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,” answered briefly.
What Does “She Should Have Died Hereafter” Mean?
Either “she would have died sometime anyway” or “she should have died later, when there was time to grieve.” The line can be read both ways, and productions choose.
What Does “Out, Out, Brief Candle” Mean?
Macbeth compares life to a candle that burns briefly and is easily snuffed out. It follows directly from the image of yesterdays lighting fools to their death, and it may also refer to his wife’s life, just ended.
What Does “Full of Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing” Mean?
That life is like a story told by a madman: loud and passionate, but without any meaning. It is the bleakest conclusion in Shakespeare.
Does Macbeth Grieve for His Wife?
Not in the usual way. Just before the news, he admits he has “almost forgot the taste of fears,” and his response is numb and philosophical rather than tearful. Whether a flicker of grief lies beneath it depends on how the first line is read.
Which Famous Works Take Their Titles from This Speech?
Several, including William Faulkner’s novel The Sound and the Fury and Gabrielle Zevin’s novel Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. Few passages in English have given more titles to other writers.
Related Reading
Three pages that take “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow” further.