Macbeth

The object of the following paragraphs is to provide a personal interpretation of an extract drawn from the act 5, scene 5 of Macbeth. Just looking quickly, the intelligent reader can understand the extract is a declaration of scorn toward life.

Let’s start analysing the phonological level: reading the extract, you can focus your attention on the atmosphere created. It is made by frequent, long and deep sounds. To create the atmosphere, distant and open sounds are used, therefore the effect created is wide and includes an extensive space, which seems to be an echo.

Taking into consideration the semantic level, the intelligent reader can notice the use of the past tense present perfect. This verb tense helps to convey the idea of Macbeth to take distance from the past.

Right from the incipit, Shakespeare is attributing an human sense to fear and this is an unusual aspect. To better understand the meaning, you can substitute taste with feeling. The effect created is frightful because Macbeth is saying that he does not have fear about what may happen since he has experienced yet for long time the taste of fear.

Successively, third conditional is used to allude to something that has not happened yet. It refers to his senses that cannot perceive reality and in this particular situation the cry of women. The conditional sentence is suggesting a change in Macbeth because one time he would perceive what happens around him. The change has been negatively, now he is a stone man. Macbeth wants to tell the reader that there is no life in him and things became more horror because he is aware about what he did.

Seyton’s line is also relevant. From the syntactic point of view, the commas are very meaningful. The literary choice of punctuation is meant to express the serve’s difficulty to inform Macbeth about the queen’s death. In doing so, Shakespeare is slowing the reading. Macbeth’s reaction seems to be very distant. He states his awareness that death will come sooner or later. In saying this, Macbeth assumes a distant and detached attitude. Probably this statement is a way to defend himself because his wife’s death is a huge pain to support.

Analysing the phonological level, the attention is captured by the use of words such as struts and frets that remind something deals with hardness and cruelty. It is interesting to notice the frequent use of words belonging to the semantic field of time (hereafter; a time; to-morrow; from day to day; last; time; yesterdays; out, out, brief candle!) used to highlight Macbeth’s will to die. The most interesting among them is to-morrow. There might be several reasons why the word is separated: firstly, to postpone future and as a consequence death; moreover the sequence “to-morrow, to-morrow, to-morrow” scans a rhythm helped by the use of punctuation

What comes immediately in the intelligent reader's mind is Macbeth’s resignation toward life: it is a walking shadow. Another metaphor used  connotes life as a tale told by an idiot. If this definition is right, life loses all his values. Macbeth attributes to life only the capacity of walking. Finally, he quotes “an idiot” but coherently with all the sentence, idiot can be referred to actor or anybody who is performing on a stage. Therefore, he definitely states what life is: a tale signifying nothing.

To conclude, I would like to say that this extract is particularly relevant and invites people to think about life as existence but differently from other plays, this does not leave any message because Macbeth has lost all hopes. He is anesthetized by pains and making reflections, he is taking distance from all in order to convey a universal reflection.