(Just learned his wife died/killed herself)
Macbeth: She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
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.
(note: no formatting below..)
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In this passage, Macbeth opens with no visible sorrow for his wife, despite just being told she killed herself. He even seems to expect it when he is told, as he says “there would have been a time for such a word” (ll. 20), as if now was not the right time for her to die, which alludes and implies that it may have been better had she of died earlier. As such, this characterizes Macbeth beyond what we saw earlier in the play, where he seemed to be in a loving and caring relationship with his wife, while now he shows now remorse and thinks it just not the right time! He continues, almost lazily, by saying “to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day” (ll. 21-22) which implies either Macbeth’s boredom, which is doubtful, as how can someone be bored when he is ‘losing his head’ and hallucinating? On the other hand, however, it could imply that Macbeth has just given up, and realizes he is soon going to die because of the murders he committed. He foreshadows his own death when he states “Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time” (ll. 22-23), with the “last syllable of recorded time” being the key point- it’s not just any last syllable, its Macbeth’s last syllable.
He alludes to his acknowledgement of his errors, murder, when he states “And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death” (ll. 24-25), as yesterday he made a choice to murder, and it was a “fools” choice. He also alludes to the three witches with this comment, as the witches lit the way for him to murder Macbeth, and Shakespeare may have meant for us to acknowledge this connection: Throughout the play, anything referring to the witches was always in threes. Three witches, three prophecies, and now in this passage he states three times, “to-morrow, to-morrow, to-morrow” (ll. 21). Macbeth also seems to have developed an anger or dislike towards the witches, as he then states, “Out, out, brief candle!” (ll. 25), he can also be alluding to the witches who “lit” his way there in the first place.
Macbeth further demonstrates his having given up when he metaphorically states that life is worthless: “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” (ll. 26-30). When a “poor player” “struts and frets his hour” “and then is heard no more”, it can be assumed that all they do is be born, poor and helpless in a mean, dirty world, strut his stuff and worry about life, until finally his day comes and he dies- then he is gone, never to be remembered again or thought of again… He is just simply “heard [from] no more”.
Macbeth has quite obviously given up, surrendering to his future, as it is already laid out afore him: three prophecies, of which one states that he shall not die until the woods of Birnam march to Dunsinane, of which they soon do, although not quite in the way Macbeth expects. He has also grown separate and alone, from not just his wife, his friends, but from the rest of the world too. He feels life means nothing, and has no value or purpose to it, and in this sense, Macbeth has become a Nihilist.