Shakespeare and the Early Modern Self 163
his play, having been duped by the witches and abandoned by his
troops, Macbeth knows he’s doomed. Then he hears the news of his
wife’s death, and it shakes his worldview to its base:
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.
(V.v.18–28)Macbeth’s speech is a hymn to nihilism. Nothing matters; nothing
is of value. Life is a matter of “walking shadow,” human beings who
traverse the world like the ghosts who populate the infernal regions
in Homer or dwell in Plato’s cave. The world that Macbeth describes
is one where no human action counts; everything is an empty play,
and all the tumult and expenditure of force mean nothing. It is a
world, in other words, that is nearly the inverse of the heroic, epic
world. In that world human excellence matters. There glory counts.
The world that Macbeth describes is a world of sterile drama, full
of players, who perform shadowy, transient plays, not the substan-
tial, glowing men and women who populate the world of the epic.
Excellence in that world matters to the gods and to men and women
of discernment. No one in The Iliad, except for vile Thersites, could
entertain sentiments like Macbeth’s. At the end of the play, Macbeth
is entirely unlike Othello, who can still delude himself into thinking
that he can construct his own reputation and that the construction