LIFE IS A TALE, TOLD BY AN IDIOT

4 March 2022

As we talked about Shakespeare, you might be interested in this short speech from Macbeth, perhaps one of the best known, though there are hundreds.

Shakespeare's English is difficult, even for an English man, even for me But Ian McKellen makes it easy to understand.

What do you think?

https://youtu.be/zGbZCgHQ9m8

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.

Sir Ian Mckellen tells us that this piece is reflections on a theme. The theme is how brief and pointless is life. Blackness. Despair. Finite, eternity, we will all die. You must understand the sense of Shakespeare's words to get the sounds right. 

He will tell us all the devices (timbre, voice, eyelids...metaphor, rhythm, picures...) that Shakespeare uses.

Shakespeare is telling a story. This is Macbeth's last soliloquy.

Ian McKellen is a great Shakespearean actor. His audience is other actors. He wants to tell them that to be a great actor, first, you must understand the piece; and then second if you feel and understand, then you can use all your resources (voice, rhythm facial expression, body language, clothes, the production set) to bring the audience into the play.

Then McKellen explains the importance of time and we can imagine someone plodding down a country lane.

There would have been a *time* for such a *word*.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

To the last syllable of recorded time.

Out, out, brief candle. 

The wind blows out the candle of life and the fool collapses in a dusty pile in the country lane.

His wife has just died. The fool has died. Macbeth is going to die. It is about all our deaths.

Life is a walking shadow. 

A walking gentleman is someone available for small walk-on walk-off parts in the theatre. Here, it is not even a "walking gentleman", it is only a "walking shadow". So life is a walking shadow means there's not really very much to it.

A poor player

Life is a poor player- means this lowly walking shadow.

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage.

What a picture of life! Life is like a player (an actor) that struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more.

So this poor player who struts and frets (pride and anxiety) his hour (that is all we get!) and then he dies and is forgotten. We die and then we are forgotten, no-one to mourn or miss us. That is really black!!!

 It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

The last beats of that pentameter ♤ are missing, there is silence, I am not there, it is total oblivion (lali), total silence, total emptiness.

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.

♤Pentameter: a line of verse consisting of five metrical feet, or (in Greek and Latin verse) of two halves each of two feet and a long syllable.

MORE EXPLANATION NOW IVE READ THE PIECE MANY TIMES

Theatre is tragedy or it is comedy. What is the difference?

Tragedy ends badly and you know that from the beginning. There is nothing you can do about it. It is destiny.

Macbeth realises this. He thinks he has been clever and manipulated others and cheated, to get what he wants. But no. He is a poor player, he struts and frets his hour upon the stage of life, he is the idiot because he was fooled, his life ends as a gust of wind blows out a candle, he goes to his dusty death, his life has been full of sound and fury, but actually it meant nothing, nothing.

So it is a tragedy because his life was worthless. He did realise this, but too late, only after his wife died, it was too late to learn, too late to change.

But comedy is different. It ends better than it starts. Why? Because we learn from life. And so we can change the future. Life is transformative. Transformative.

All of Shakespeare is about time. Time. Tik,, tok,, tik,, tok... Our life is nothing more than the passage of time, on which are threaded events. It can move fast. It can move slow. And all our yesterdays, our past and all we've lived and done, have lighted fools, have shown us, have led usfools, the way to dusty death, to our death, we crumple back into the earth as a handful of death.

Death never happens at the right moment. It is always too early, too soon. Of course! But if life has transformed us, from an imperfect creature, to perfect, we can return a better person, to our maker. Perfection. So the point of life is to improve ourselves. And in a tragedy, this is not possible. The evil is already written, it is our destiny, though we learn about it too late to change anything. We do not understand in good time.

Here again is Macbeth's last soliloquy:

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.