"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!"
-William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act V, Scene 5
Oh, God, I'm using Macbeth again (I'm writing a sci-fi novel adaptation of the play, so it's on my brain a lot, especially when I have time like I did today to work on it a little).
But look at this line! It's gorgeous! All those tacit persuasion patterns. The diácope of Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow; the alliteration: petty pace, day to day, dusty death; the natural isocolon of his meter (10 syllables, 11 syllables, 10 syllables, 11 syllables, 11 syllables); the epizeúxis (emphatic repetition) of Out, out; the polýptoton of tomorrow, day, and yesterdays.
What would it be like without all that lovely textual juice?
Tomorrow and the day after that and so on creep along slowly until the end of time, and yesterday and all the time before that is just getting us fools one step closer to death. Life gets snuffed out like a candle with a short wick.
Booooring. Thanks for making the English language sound awesome, Will.
Showing posts with label shakespeare. Show all posts
Showing posts with label shakespeare. Show all posts
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Sunday, January 22, 2012
All hail, Macbeth!
"It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."
-William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act V, Scene 5
As a playwright and person-who-won't-shut-up-about-theatre-ever, I'll likely be pulling a lot of my sentence examples from play dialog throughout the semester. It seemed appropriate to start with something from a famous classic. Probably one of Shakespeare's most famous lines, and the one that gave William Faulkner a novel title, it's always been one of my favorites.
The poetry of this line has always captivated me. Basically, Mackers is saying that life is nothing but a story filled with rage and expression and passion and emotion, but in the end none of that means anything. Ignoring iambic pentameter for a moment, there are so many ways that this line could have been structured or rewritten to convey the exact same meaning, but without the Bard's touch, it would never be as memorable.
(Horribly Silly) Imitation:
It is a sandwich eaten by an vegetarian, full of empty calories, filling up nothing.
I could have just as easily explained that as someone who doesn't eat meat, I also don't eat a lot of sandwiches (from places like Subway, for example) because bread and lettuce and a small selection of vegetables and cheese is not a highly nutritious or adequately sustaining meal. So, like the idiot's tale, my sandwich has the potential to seem full of many things, but when all is said and done I'll still be hungry in an hour after eating it.
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."
-William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act V, Scene 5
As a playwright and person-who-won't-shut-up-about-theatre-ever, I'll likely be pulling a lot of my sentence examples from play dialog throughout the semester. It seemed appropriate to start with something from a famous classic. Probably one of Shakespeare's most famous lines, and the one that gave William Faulkner a novel title, it's always been one of my favorites.
The poetry of this line has always captivated me. Basically, Mackers is saying that life is nothing but a story filled with rage and expression and passion and emotion, but in the end none of that means anything. Ignoring iambic pentameter for a moment, there are so many ways that this line could have been structured or rewritten to convey the exact same meaning, but without the Bard's touch, it would never be as memorable.
(Horribly Silly) Imitation:
It is a sandwich eaten by an vegetarian, full of empty calories, filling up nothing.
I could have just as easily explained that as someone who doesn't eat meat, I also don't eat a lot of sandwiches (from places like Subway, for example) because bread and lettuce and a small selection of vegetables and cheese is not a highly nutritious or adequately sustaining meal. So, like the idiot's tale, my sandwich has the potential to seem full of many things, but when all is said and done I'll still be hungry in an hour after eating it.
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