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MACBETH. 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,
In the speech, Hamlet contemplates death and suicide, weighing the pain and unfairness of life against the alternative, which might be worse. It is not clear that Hamlet is thinking of his own situation since the speech is entirely in an abstract, somewhat academic register that accords with Hamlet's status as a (recent) student at Wittenberg ...
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, often shortened to Hamlet (/ ˈ h æ m l ɪ t /), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play.
Accordingly, the meaning might be: 'when we have unwound and worked off this coil of mortality.' In this way, the length of our life is metaphorically the length of thread that is coiled on a spool, a metaphor related to the ancient Greek mythological figures of the Fates .
William Shakespeare's play Hamlet has contributed many phrases to common English, from the famous "To be, or not to be" to a few less known, but still in everyday English. Some also occur elsewhere (e.g. in the Bible) or are proverbial. All quotations are second quarto except as noted:
Even in the famous 3.1 soliloquy, Hamlet gives voice to the conflict. When he asks if it is "nobler in the mind to suffer", [80] Cantor believes that Shakespeare is alluding to the Christian sense of suffering. When he presents the alternative, "to take arms against a sea of troubles", [81] Cantor takes this as an ancient formulation of goodness.
The play opens with Hamlet deeply depressed over the recent death of his father, King Hamlet, and his uncle Claudius' ascension to the throne and hasty marriage to Hamlet's mother Gertrude. One night, his father's ghost appears to him and tells him that Claudius murdered him in order to usurp the throne, and commands his son to avenge his death.
From the "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" soliloquy (V.v; including "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 "It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing"):